Recipe: Noisy Birds NE IPA
Noisy Birds NE IPA
A recipe for a strong IPA with a sweet orange flavor.
Brew Size: 5 gallons
10 lb. pale malt
1 lb. flaked wheat
1 lb. flaked oats
12 oz Dextrin malt
3 oz. Simcoe
3 oz. El Dorado
3 oz. Citra
1 oz. Nelson Sauvin
Wyeast 1318 London Ale III
Brew Day: 4/20/2021
Bottling Day: 5/01/2021 and 5/11/2021
Hop Schedule:
At first wort hopping
.15 oz Simcoe
.15 oz El Dorado
.15 oz Citra
At 40 minutes boil
.3 oz Simcoe
.3 oz El Dorado
.3 oz Citra
At 30 minutes boil
.5 oz Simcoe
.5 oz El Dorado
.5 oz Citra
At 20 minutes boil
.6 oz Simcoe
.6 oz El Dorado
.6 oz Citra
At 10 minutes boil.
.6 oz Nelson Sauvin
Dry Hopping:
For eight days
.7 oz Simcoe
.7 oz El Dorado
.7 oz Citra
For four days
1 oz Simcoe
1 oz Citra
1 oz El Dorado
.4 oz Nelson Sauvin
A special beer for a few reasons. Started brewing on 4/20, first bottled on May Day, and then, after a few hiccups, bottled the rest a day after I earned my Ph.D.! A beer of many momentous celebrations.
For this brew, I tried to copy Grimm’s Gull Wing Door—a New England IPA that tastes like toast with grapefruit jam. Grimm is one of my favorite NYC breweries, and I miss them a lot since moving back to California. I couldn’t find a recipe, so I repurposed WeldWerk’s “Juicy Bits” NE IPA recipe (https://beerandbrewing.com/weldwerks-brewing-co-juicy-bits-new-england-style-ipa/), checked out what hops Grimm used, and made relevant changes.
I settled on using the Nelson Sauvin mostly for aroma (“sauvin” is in reference to sauvignon blanc, and the hop has a white wine profile). I also wanted to give the El Dorado another Kiwi to hang out with—they’re both hops from New Zealand, where soil fertilized by volcanic activity allow the Hopbits to grow all manner of aromatic, juicy strands. I suspect a lot of unexpected journeys will result from this strong NE IPA.
Crows rattled and clicked at me for the time I was outside, but without any tiny beer glasses, I didn’t have much to give them—although maybe they got a laugh out of me trying to light matches with strike paper that disintegrated like ancient papyrus in the wind.
Poured in the grains into my ice chest mash tun. Kept the mash about 159° for 60 minutes. I threw hops into the brew kettle and gave it an ice bath. This was my only time doing a first wort hopping—putting hops in the boil kettle as the wort is transferred from the mash tun--which is supposed to keep hop oils in the beer and produce a pleasant bitterness.
The brew was a deeper green than anything I’d made before—fitting for 420—and had a lot of hop particles swimming around. I’d use hop bags next time, as the stuff was some thick cauldron brew. I ended up not being able to draw much beer through the spigot of my primary and broke my auto-siphon, so I cold crashed the rest (i.e. putting the primary fermenter in the fridge) to try and get the solids to settle. I also went out and got another auto-siphon, but ended up just using the spigot to bottle again.
And then I had my Ph.D. exam looming, meetings to make, and life just kept telling me to let the beer cold crash for longer than I expected. About a week later I came back and bottled again.
I tried a few new techniques in this all-grain brew, including creating a yeast starter (started on 4/18 with dry malt extract, decanted 4/19, and then let boiled up some more DME to feed them yeasts a second time, then decanted on brew day—made me pretty attached to my yeasty boys). I’ve also never cold crashed a beer before bottling or dry-hopped before.
Other notes: I upgraded my kettle as I couldn’t brew anything at 5 gallons or larger without splitting the batch into different boiling vessels. What I’d like to focus on next time is trying to control the number of particulates in the beer—bottling was much more difficult given how many solids were in the beer.
Tasting Notes: I had a little before bottling and was surprised at how sweet the beer tasted—like juicy stone fruit and melon—and how subtle the bitterness ended up being. After letting the bottles condition for over a month, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy the beer was to drink. Sweet and smooth. But also much less hoppy than I would have liked--more watery than thick and fruity. I might add a bit more hops to the mix next time around.