Mini-mash IPA with Recipe

Time flies. Just doesn’t seem to be enough time these days. There was a hiccup with the kegerator – ok I might have broken it while trying to knock some frost off. I was hoping that I could have enjoyed the Pliny clone a little longer, but I was very happy with the results. The Chocolate-Orange Porter is getting better with age, and the American Brown Ale is almost gone. The Brown Ale took a very long time to carbonate. It didn’t really show any signs of carbonation for almost two weeks. I need to make sure that the beers are ready before I give them away.

I have trying to challenge myself with each batch and refine my methods. I want to move into all-grain brewing, but I really could use some more equipment. After yesterday’s mini-mash experiment, I could see having a few extra containers would help. I also learned that the mash retains heat very well – even outside. The next purchase will be an 8 gal brew pot and wort chiller. The bathtub/sink cooling process is taking too long. With the larger pot, I can do full boil brewing and be able to bring the temp down quickly for pitching the yeast. Regardless, the wife is happy that the kitchen was not destroyed in the process.

Buying a pre-package ingredients kit makes life easier by eliminating some of the guess work. I decided to try mini-mash recipe and was having difficulties in finding a kit that I wanted to try. I found a recipe in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing and headed to More Beer for ingredients. It was fun picking out the grains, grinding and overloading the arms to head to the checkout. I also picked up a couple of ingredients for the next batch, Flanders Red Ale which needs six months of aging. I wanted to make sure that I had some beer ready for the end of March for the wedding party. Little bit sooner than six months away.

The Mini Mash method provides an introduction to all-grain brewing which matches commercial brewing methods and allows the brewer to have complete control over the product. The Mini Mash uses the same principals of mashing, but at a smaller scale. This will provide a better flavor but still allows for some learning room since the malt extract will provide alot of the sugars for fermentation. The extra steps do add some time to the overall process, but it was exciting to see how just barley, hops and water can be made into beer. The only additional piece of equipment that I needed was a lauter tun, basically a vessel to extract the sweet wort from the grains. I was able to improvise by using the 6 gallon plastic bucket that came with the initial beer equipment kit and a large mesh bag from More Beer.

Here is the recipe and basic steps I used.

Name: India Pale Ale: Mini Mash
Final Amount: 5 gals

Ingredients
3.5lbs American Pale
1lb Crystal 75 Malt
.5lb aromatic malt
2tsp gypsum
4lbs plain light Dried Malt Extract (DME)
2oz Centennial Hops (Boiling): 15 HBU (420 MBU)
1oz Amarillo hops (finishing)
1/4tsp Irish moss powder
1 White Labs California Ale yeast (WLP001)
3/4c corn sugar (bottling)

1. Add the crushed malted barley to 5qt of 150ºF water and mix well.
2. Hold temp at 133ºF for 30min.
3. Add 2½qt. of boiling water to the mash.
4. Hold at 149-155ºF for 45min. stirring occasionally.
5. Add more heat to raise the temp to 167ºF.
6. Pour mash into lauter-tun and sparge with 2.5gal of 170ºF water.
• Scoop water out of the pot until 2” cover the grain bed
• Recirculation 3 times.
• Connect 3/8” ID tubing to spigot and collect. 1/3c every 20secs. Should last around 40min.
• Maintain 1-2” of water on top of grain.
• Take hydrometer reading.
7. Bring sweet wort to boil and add malt extract and boiling hops.
8. Boil for 60 min.
9. Add finishing hops and Irish moss at last 5min.
10. Strain, sparge and transfer to fermenter with 2gal of cold water.

Tags: Ale, Home Brewing, Life