On a whim, I purchased some New Zealand hops last summer, thinking I would make a New Zealand Pale Ale.
I finally got around to brewing it last week. Here is a link to the recipe:
http://hopville.com/recipe/1119492/imperial-ipa-recipes/ariki-imperial-pale-ale
Frankly, it is kind of a "kitchen sink" brew. I had a number of ingredients I was trying to get of -- rice and rye being two. So, I ended up throwing those into the mix.
I find that since I have switched to the "Brew In A Bag" method of all-grain brewing, the process appears to be very forgiving. Right now I have 4 all-grain sessions under my belt -- an APA, a belgian farm house ale, a lighter beer with hints of lemon (using pilsner as my base malt), and now this imperial ale. The first three have turned out quite nicely. At some point, I will put links to my recipes, should anyone be interested.
Improvements in my brewing -- My efficiency seemed to improve this time around. I didn't get a great original gravity reading (namely because of all of the solids in my sample) -- but I am very confident that this is going to be a really, really big beer. My best guess is that it will be between 10 and 11 % alcohol when all is said and done. I think I did a much better job of squeezing out my bag of grain this time around. I have a few ideas on how I want to improve on getting the wort out of the spent grains.
Always some issues -- It appears I picked the coldest day of the year to brew. The outside temperature was around 30. That lead to some difficulty in keeping my mash temperature stable. It went down about 5 degrees in the course of 90 minutes.
Additionally, I did not get the boil off I was anticipating. This may just be poor planning. Consequently, I ended up with about a gallon and a half of more wort than I was anticipating. So, I have my little 3 gallon carboy half way filled with the last of what was in my brew pot. So, there is 3 to 4 inches of trub at the bottom of that carboy. But hopefully I can get close to a gallon of additional beer out of the process.
Because of the anticipated high alcohol content, I ended up pitching 2 packages of yeast -- Nottingham to be exact. That yeast is a workhorse. But I would always rather pitch too much yeast than pitch too little yeast.
The beer has been in the fermenters for 9 days and fermentation has significantly slowed, bubbling once every 30 seconds to a minute. So, I will probably take a sample gravity reading tonight and prepare for the "dry hopping" stage. Perhaps I will even post what I find out and my initial reaction? But probably not.
