Curmudgeon IPA

A week ago Sunday, my old home brew partner Matt was back in Toronto for a few weeks, visiting family and friends and getting his German work visa sorted out. No better time to reunite the brewing duo and craft a beer together. This beer will be the first ever BCCB (Big Country Collaboration Beer), as aside from guest brewer Matt joining me, I also have my roommate's girlfriend Jeanette designing a label. Collectively we have decided to create a beer inspired by the personality of our roommate and dear friend Max. With Matt and I both having lived with Max, we feel we can develop a taste profile for a beer that mirrors Max's personality. Jeanette being Max's girlfriend and having a background in graphic designing, will be creating a beer label that screams Max.

The name of the beer comes from a term that all of Max's close friends know him as and that Max lovingly embraces.

I decided an IPA would be the best style of beer to impart the flavours that would remind the drinker of someone with curmudgeon like characteristics. I realized after deciding on the recipe that I coincidentally followed the Bavarian Purity Law and with Matt's German girlfriend visiting with him, I had a little fun with it.

The base malt for this grain bill is 2-Row Malt, which is a very common choice for many all-grain beers. Crystal 40L Malt is a good choice for any pale ale as it will add some colour, which would be lacking if only 2-Row Malt was used, but it won't impart the caramel notes that a higher coloured Crystal Malt would. Finally, I used Munich Malt to add more malty sweetness as I plan on using high alpha acid hops and I wanted to balance out the bitterness.

While Matt was catching up on his Sunday morning beauty sleep, I was up and at it turning the kitchen into my brewhaus and milling all of the grain.

Once Matt joined me, I put him to work sanitizing all of the equipment, which is something I'm sure no home brewer enjoys, but needs to be done. Since Matt is the guest brewer and was a little late to the party, I thought it was only fair.

Once we got going, we mashed in at 1.3 quarts per lbs of grain, for a total of 15.6 quarts at a strike temperature of 165°F. I waited about 5 minutes and checked the settled temperature and it was still around 158°F, so I added some cold water to get closer to the targeted 152°F. It ended up hovering around 150°F for the duration of the 60 minute mash, but that shouldn't cause too much of an issue with the conversion efficiency.

Once the 60 minute mash was complete, we started separating the liquid (wort) from the grains. This was where we ran into a bottleneck in our process, we had quite the stuck sparge. Separating the wort from the mash as well as gathering 6 gallons of total pre-boil wort by sparging (170°F water), probably took us around an hour or so. Matt was constantly stirring to aggravate the grain bed and remove the clog. A couple times I even had to blow back into the siphon tubing to remove the clog as a last resort. This was definitely the most frustrating part of our brew day and we ended up with a little less than 6 gallons, which means our original gravity (OG) will be higher than targeted and therefore the ABV will be higher as well. Before the boil, I measured the pre-boil OG in order to calculate my efficiency. It ended up being 1.052, which means I had an efficiency of 26 (52 X ~6 (gallons of wort) / 12 (pounds of grain)). An efficiency of 26 is a bit higher than the last brew (OCS = 24), but it's still shy of 28, which is the average for efficiency.

During the 60 minute boil, Matt and I added the two hop additions at the 60 minute mark and the 15 minute mark. At the 60 minute mark we added the Mosaic hops, which had an alpha acid rating of 12.7%. Alpha acids are a chemical compound located in the resin glands in the flower of the hop plant. The higher the alpha acid in the hop addition, the more BU (bittering units) they will provide. To provide some context, the Golding hops used during the OCS brew were 5.8%AA. Aside from Mosaic being relatively high in alpha acids, they impart many flavours and aromas, like earthy, grassy, herbal, citrus, cedar, floral, pine, tropical, spice and stone fruit. Many of these flavours and aromas will disappear over the course of the 60 minute boil, but any that remain will be a welcomed addition to the Curmudgeon IPA. With 15 minutes left in the boil, we added the Falconer's Flight hops, with an alpha acid rating of 11.4%. This hop will bring many of the flavours that you would recognize with a typical IPA, with distinct tropical, citrus, floral, lemon and grapefruit tones.

Once the boil was complete, we cooled the wort in the bathtub, transferred the wort to the plastic fermenter and took another OG reading. The final OG was 1.075, so depending on the final gravity, it's likely the ABV of the beer will be closer to 7.75%. The higher ABV could be a blessing in disguise, as a curmudgeonly beer should be pungent with "get off my lawn!" bitterness, and put you to sleep by 9pm on a Saturday night with it's surprising inebriating qualities.

Thanks for reading!