Homebrew Recipe: New Year's Hopsolution IPA (All Grain)

There's nothing quite like hop puns in beer names is there?  Next time you're a little bored, try to think of some that haven't been used.  Then hit the Google and see how you did.  At any rate, not wanting to be left behind in the hop and holiday pun category, last year's New Year's IPA got it's own pun.  Truth be told, I never checked to see if that one had been used before...


Last year, a bunch of friends, including Hacksaw himself, came up to hang out for New Year's Eve and the surrounding days.  Knowing this ahead of time, I set out to ensure my kegs were full of delicious homebrew to be imbibed by all.  I brewed this guy on December 6th last year to have it ready by then, so if you're starting your New Year's brew now, you're a little behind the eight ball, but it's still doable.  Plus, I had to have it basically kegged before Christmas since I was travelling over that time.

So, if you're trying to find a good, clean, easy-drinking IPA for your New Year's Eve party, this is your guy!

Recipe

Grain Bill

13 lb 2-row

1 lb Crystal 20L

0.5 lb Crystal 40L

Hop Schedule

1.25 oz Simcoe (60)

0.75 oz Cascade (30)

1 oz Centennial (5)

0.75 oz Simcoe (0)

0.25 oz Cascade (0)

Yeast:  Safeale-05

OG:  1.056

FG:  1.008

ABV:  6.3%

Procedure:  Mashed grain at 152F for 1 hour, mashout to ~170 before sparge.  Sparge, bring to a boil, add hops according to schedule.  Cooled using wort chiller and ice bath combination, pitched yeast.  For this brew, I used some reharvested Safeale-05 yeast from a previous batch along with a fresh packet.  This was one of my first forays into yeast reharvesting and I wanted to be safe.

Tasting Notes:  Really approachable IPA, the hops are in the nose and flavor profile so the bitterness is there but not overwhelming.  We had a nice time tipping these back over the course of New Year's Eve weekend.

Tweaks/Improvements:  I'm not really sure why I added the half-pound of Crystal 40L in there.  I think I had a hard time accepting that you could make a good beer with just two types of grain.  So I'd probably ditch that next time, or do a full pound of 40 and get rid of the 20.  There is also nearly limitless possibilities for hop experimentation in a recipe like this.  More, less, dry hopping, different varieties, pretty much everything is on the table.