Brew Log 1/7

Now that the New Year has started and I'm back at school, I can return to the best hobby that anyone can have, BREWING.  This post is the first in a series that will document the beer that I brewed the past Friday, show some pictures of the process, provide some background on the style, and attempt to give you guys some more insight into the home brewing process.  For details on the brewing process, refer to the "How is it made?" post.

Beer o' the Week: Belgian American IPA
If you've been keeping up with the blog, you should know that the IPA style includes a wide variety of beers, but the two traditional styles are British IPA and American IPA.  The British IPA uses British Pale Malt as the main grain, and is heavily hopped with British hops at all stages of the brewing process to produce a very bright, bitter flavor.  The American IPA uses American 2-row Pale Malt as the main grain and is heavily hopped with American hops at all stages to produce the distinct IPA bitterness and hop flavor.

The Belgian-American IPA is somewhat of a hybrid beer.  The backbone of the grain bill is Belgian Pilsener Malt, a light Belgian style that provides a sweeter background than American or British Pale Malts.  The beer is then heavily hopped with an American strain of Saaz hops, Mt. Hood.  Saaz hops are added later in the boil for flavoring and aroma, which is very typical of Belgian style beers.

Here's an overview of the recipe:

Grain Bill
10 lbs Belgian Pilsener Malt
1.5 lbs Crystal Malt (10L)

Hopping Schedule (where minutes indicates minutes IN THE BOIL)
2.0 oz Mt. Hood        60min
2.0 oz Saaz                30min
1.0 oz Saaz                5min

Yeast: White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast

All the Ingredients!

The resulting beer will have a relatively sweet, full bodied background with a strong floral/spicy hop flavoring that will be accented by the Belgian Ale Yeast.  Here are some pictures of fermentation (which started about 18 hours after the yeast was added:

Visible fermentation will continue for another 5-7 days, after which we will transfer the beer to a different fermenter for another week or so, ensuring the beer has fermented completely.  Then we'll keg the beer and enjoy it about 2 weeks after!

Always down to split a homebrew or answer any questions
Todd