20th Brew - Double Quad IPA - February 7th, 2009

Fresh off the heels of the lambic I've decided to follow through on my threats to make a 120 min IPA clone. I'm calling it a Double Quad IPA because quads are usually around 10% and double that is 20%, which is the approximate target for their beers ABV.

For those not familiar with Dogfish Head 120 min IPA, its an extremely hoppy beer (on the order of 150 IBU) but is also very strong (~20 % ABV). This beer is continuously hopped for 120 minutes during the boil with 3 high alpha hops. If thats not enough, it is then dry hopped daily for a month in the fermentor and then aged on whole leaf hops. Check out the DFH site for the full description.

It's not exactly clear how Dogfish head ferments their beer but I imagine its probably similar to the procedures outlined by white labs for their WLP099 Super High Gravity Yeast. The trick to fermenting with this yeast is not producing a wort with the full amount of sugar (~1.200 sg!). White labs suggests starting with a 6-8% beer and then adding a little sugar every day after the beer gets rolling. My plan is to use mostly dextrose for this part with some dry malt extract. I found a good example of the process one home brewer followed on the web and the procedures he has outline appear to be very close to what my research has found.

The fun part of this brew is going to take place during the boil. In order to closely approximate the continuous hopping we will be adding additions of hop pellets every 2-3 minutes for 2 hours. The hop bill for this hopping will most likely be at least 9 ounces of pellets. The only problem with this is that all of these hops are going to be a nightmare when we go to chill the beer due to all of the sediment it will produce. If I use my bazooka screen, its bound to get clogged very fast. If I skip the bazooka screen, the quick disconnects are bound to get clogged and the chiller will get tons of hop particles caught inside. To resolve this I'm considering using my hopback with a straining screen inserted to remove all the crap. The benefit to having the straining on the outside of the kettle is that if it gets clogged I can stop, clean it out, and continue chilling. An added bonus to this is that I could add some hops to the hopback in place of some of the dry hopping.

After the continuous hopping, the next hardest part is going to be monitoring the fermentation every day and doing the sugar additions. This is probably going to require two sugar additions a day, nutrient additions, daily oxygenation, and occasional dry hopping. I'm planning on doing a large 2-3 vial starter with the high gravity yeast and a second starter using a standard IPA yeast to help incorporate a decent amount of flavor from a yeast more commonly used for IPAs. I'm not sure what kind of pitching schedule I will be using just yet, but theres bound to be multiple pitching's to ensure the beer fully ferments. I don't want to be left with a 15% beer that is SUPER sweet, so hopefully this phase goes well.