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So ever since I first tried a DogFish Head 120 Minute IPA, I decided once I have a solid grasp of brewing, excellent fermentation control, and the ability to ferment 10 gallons in one vessel, I was going to brew this beer! Well that time has finally arrived, and I brewed this beer on February 15th, 2009 for the first, but definitely not the last time.
I found a few different recipes online that other’s posted of their efforts to clone this amazing beer, and used aspects of these as well as my own experience to make my own recipe.
The brew day went well, although it was a bit longer than I normally like, it was expected since there was a step mash, and a 120 minute boil involved. I had a few friends over that had never brewed, and they brewed up an extract red ale while I churned out this beast of a recipe.
This is the grain bill that I used:
16lb Maris Otter
16lb 2 Row Pale Malt
1lb Amber Malt
I mashed in at 98 degrees, with the intent of doing step adjustments at 122,135,149, and mashing out at 168. Well the steps took longer to reach than I though, so I just gradually heated the mash to 149 and held it there for about 45 minutes, then mashed out at 168.
The sparge went just as expected, and probably took an hour from start to finish. With my system I start heating the boil kettle as soon as I start sparging. The way it works out, is by the time my sparge is finished, the wort is near boiling, saving me time. The hop schedule was simple yet time consuming. First off, here are the hops that I used for this beer:
3oz Amarillo
3oz Simcoe
3oz Warrior
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The hops were mixed together in a bowl, then divided into 36 dixie cups. The idea behind this is to continually add hops to the boiling wort, but since I haven’t designed an automatic hopping machine (yet), I needed an easy way to keep track of the hops added. Once the wort began boiling, I added 1 cup of the hops. Every 3 or so minutes throughout the entire 120 minute boil a cup of the hops was added. 15 minutes prior to the end of the boil I added in some yeast nutrient (a lot), and some super moss.
When the boil was done, I turned off the heat, and immediately began chilling the wort through my ChillZilla and into my 15 gallon fermenter. I collected just over 11 gallons of wort, and then started to aerate the wort. I aerated with an aquarium pump, a hepa filter, and a stainless stone, and probably let it go for a good 10 minutes, until the foam was reaching the top of my fermenter.
I added in some FermenCap-S from Northern Brewer to help reduce the chance of blowoff. It was now time to add the yeast, so my huge starter of Rogue Pacman yeast was added, and into the fermentation chamber it went! I set the temp at a cool 64 degrees F for a smooth fermentation, I was not in a hurry to get this one done. Within about 3 hours fermentation had begun. I had a bubble air lock in place, but decided at this time to go with a blow off tube just to be safe. Although it never reached the point of “blowing off”, it was nice since the height inside my fermentation chamber makes it difficult to remove the lid with an airlock in place, but not with a blowoff tube.
I let it ferment on it’s own for 24 hours, then the following night I began with the daily additions of sugars and hops. From the research I did prior to brewing this beer, I found it necessary to continually and gradually feed the yeast additional sugars in order to reach an alcoholic level as extreme as this in a beer without the yeast just giving up and or becoming completely mutated.
I took a total 22.5 lbs of dextrose (corn sugar), and added it directly to the fermenting beer twice a day, morning and night. Originally I planned to carefully remove a half gallon or so of the fermenting beer, dissolve the sugar into it, and return it to the fermenter. This lasted through the first attempt, and I said screw that, too messy, I’ll just pour it in, so I did.
I was not scientific with this process. My sugar came in 5 lb bags, plus 2 1lb bags, and a partial 1lb bag I already had. I just put the sugar in a sealed plastic container, and used a Solo cup to add sugar to the beer twice a day. Now I did weigh the first cup I put in, and don’t remember what it held, but I did the math in my head and figured how many cups to add a day in order to have all 22.5 lbs of the sugar added equally over the course of 14 days.
In addition to twice daily sugar additions, I also made daily hop additions as well. The following hops were mixed together in a vacuum sealable container, and I added one Dixie cup full of hops with every night time addition of sugar. I intentionally did not put all the hops in during this primary stage, as I wanted to have some left to add to the secondary fermentation. I ended up with about half of the hops left for secondary, exactly what I was hoping for.
Here’s the fermentation and dry hops:
2oz Amarillo
2oz Simcoe
2oz Warrior
To make sure I had a very healthy fermentation, I aerated the beer prior to my evening hop additions for the first 5 days. On the 5th day, immediately following the aeration, I added a healthy starter of White Labs Super High Gravity Ale Yeast, WLP099.
The fermentation was very steady for the entire duration of the sugar additions. I kept the temperature of the fermentation chamber at 64 degrees. After the final sugar additions were done, I waited 2 days, and then gently stirred the beer with a sanitized spoon. I scooped the bottom first to see if there was a lot of sugar that had settled at the bottom. At first it looked like a good inch or 2 of sugar had settled to the bottom, then I realized it wasn’t sugar, it was yeast!
At one week after the last sugar addition, I stirred the beer again just to keep things moving along. By now the fermentation had begun to slow down a bit, but it was still fermenting away. I decided to check the gravity the following day, and it was sitting at 1.055. I kept the half pint or so that I used to check the gravity and do my first taste test…
The aroma was nearly identical to that of DogFish Head 120 IPA, very floral, and very nice, I was super excited! The taste however was much sweeter than I wanted, but still dangerously drinkable. The most amazing part was according to my calculations, this beer is sitting at 19ish% ABV, and I couldn’t hardly detect any alcohol, this will be a dangerous one!
The beer continued to ferment at a steady rate for another week, with a good bubble from the blowoff tube every 10-15 seconds or so. In order to ensure a complete fermentation, I raised the temperature of the fermentation chamber to 68 degrees for the final week or so of the fermentation.
I checked the gravity again on March 8, 2009, and it was sitting at about 1.046. Obviously I had to taste it again! The sweetness is nearly gone, and the alcohol is now present, but not overpowering.
With my next brew day a week away, I decided to let the beer remain on the yeast for a few more days, as there was still some fermentation activity, and the beer was still a tad on the sweet side, but much closer to where I wanted it.
On March 15, I was ready to transfer the beer to secondary fermentation. I sanitized 1 6 gallon carboy and one 5 gallon corny, added half the remaining hops to the carboy, and half in a nylon sack, and racked the beer in them. I again checked the final gravity, and it was right at 1.043.
I allowed the beer to rest at this point for 4 weeks in the carboy, but the keg went directly to the tap! There was so much trub, it clogged the first line I hooked it up to, but I thought it might be the tap (see my write up on my new taps in the wall system), so I hooked it up to another, then another, and arghh, clogged em all! Well, I blew them backwards with compressed air, and it made a lil mess, but all is good.
For the first week I pulled 2-3 oz a day to keep the trub from gathering in the bottom and clogging the dip tube. It was amazing how the beer cleared and improved over just a few days time. I’ll leave the hops in the keg for a good 4-6 weeks, and the batch in the carboy will be bottled after 4-6 weeks and aged for as long as I can stand it!
I’ll be brewing this one again, but I’ll probably do a stout with the same method first…