National Homebrew Club Ireland

General Discussions => Brewing Communities => Belfast Homebrewers => Topic started by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 09:50:23 AM

Title: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 09:50:23 AM
So the Homebrew forum in work brought the following article to my attention!

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/6351/doubleIPA.pdf (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/6351/doubleIPA.pdf)

The official Pliny the Elder recipe for homebrewers. However it also goes into some pretty interesting depth on how to go about brewing a Double IPA.

That is an HUGE amount of hops.
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: matthewdick23 on May 31, 2013, 09:54:15 AM
yeah, iirc their dry hoping schedule is mental.

lets do it as a club. im up for it.

i did a 'clone' of dogfishs 90 min. brought it to first meet up. have a bottle or two left. was pretty nice, but used bags for the hops so lost a lot to that i think.

Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 10:10:13 AM
Would certainly be a bit of a statement beer to take to the next brewday at the Hudson if we could do that one in advance somewhere.
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 10:12:47 AM
Though it's also pretty expensive to just go and share with any old punter!
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on May 31, 2013, 10:53:34 AM
That's one tempting looking recipe! Pretty cool that you have a homebrewing club in work. Couldn't see our lot going for that unless they could write the beer in Java  >:(

I love the Dogfish 90 min. Can't believe it: the last time I was in the States you could get a 6 pack of it for about 4 bucks in the local Shaws. Scandalous!


Quotebut used bags for the hops so lost a lot to that i think

You saying you dry-hopped in muslin bags, Matthew? I tried that for 2 brews in a row earlier this year. Never again. Both ended up infected, even though I boiled the sh1t out of the bags beforehand. One brew was still drinkable but the other (The London Pride sample I brought to the brew day) was drain feed. Nowadays I let the little buggers roam free in the fv and just suffer the syphoning pain.

I'd be on for a iipa brew day but we'd have to either brew a smaller batch, or be a bit stricter in our process (though I'm still proud of our first brew day effort; still getting nicer).


-Barry
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 11:01:32 AM
I'm the only one in Belfast that does it....however working at Intel allows for a slightly wider net to be cast...mostly guys in the US
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: matthewdick23 on May 31, 2013, 11:08:51 AM
barry- no i bagged the hops in the boil. terrible decision as i used so many hops. continually hopped the beer over 90 minutes. was a pita.

thats a crazy price for 90 min. they musta made a big labeling mistake in the shop to sell it at that price. i still have some real 90 minute left at home i think from the states.

Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on May 31, 2013, 11:34:12 AM
I think a lot of can be down to luck, i.e. the quality of the hops you happen to get. You get bags where the hops regain their perfect cone shape and swim around with dizzying aquatic majesty as soon as they hit the wort. Then you open another bag of the same variety and it's like the sweepings from your back yard after a storm i.e. all brown and leafy and showing no discernible quality save for clogging everything up.

-Barry
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 11:51:04 AM
My hop basket worked pretty awesome for the boil there at the weekend.

The convection in the boiler made sure it got cycled around the wort pretty good. Probably need an additional one though, only good for 30g or so of hops
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on May 31, 2013, 12:12:58 PM
You got a link to where you got that hop basket? I've a hop strainer for my boiler, so no issues there, but I'm always on the lookout for something decent for dry hopping. I would rarely dry hop above 30g.

-Barry
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 12:28:18 PM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/K%C3%BCchenprofi-1099902810-Spice-Ball-10-5/dp/B000NLO0CA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1369999446&sr=8-4&keywords=spice+ball (http://www.amazon.co.uk/K%C3%BCchenprofi-1099902810-Spice-Ball-10-5/dp/B000NLO0CA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1369999446&sr=8-4&keywords=spice+ball)

I bought that one, but any big Spice Ball/Tea infuser you can find would do the job. Whether buying a load of smaller ones would be more cost effective, I'll leave up to you


Our boiler drains painfully slowly so we tend to do a straight pour after cooling, this was pretty handy
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: steveb on May 31, 2013, 05:03:37 PM
I brewed this a few years ago and it was really amazing. Yeah, the amount of hops is incredible. I dry hopped in an carboy and it looked mental, like a beer with a huge green hop head. I got a bottle of genuine Pliny for comparison, but it couldn't hold a candle to the freshly brewed version. God knows how long it spent on the boat, etc. Definitely the freshness is really important with these hop monsters, even after a month, my Pliny had lost a lot of it's hoppiness.
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Will_D on May 31, 2013, 08:56:33 PM
Quote from: Bill_00 on May 31, 2013, 09:50:23 AM
So the Homebrew forum in work brought the following article to my attention!

So what's the polite way to say"Pricked my attention all right - ye have a forum at work for HB!!"
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: sub82 on June 02, 2013, 07:37:56 PM
That recipe sounds great! Would love to do an iipa.
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Irish Party Ale on June 07, 2013, 12:52:44 PM
Great recipe - now I know what Im doing for my next brewday!
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on June 18, 2013, 09:46:09 AM
Hey Bill_00,

Just ordered myself one of those large spice infusers. I figure if it's metal it shouldn't have the same bacteria potential as a muslin bag for dry hopping.

I had a rather disastrous attempt, last Thursday night, to harvest my Wyeast 1968 Fullers yeast after kegging my latest London Pride attempt. The syhpon stem kept clogging with hop bits and in the end I just poured trub and all into 2 bottles through an un-sterilised sieve and funnel. If I'm wise I'll never use that particular yeast.
Another reason for the purchase is so that the neighbours will never again have to suffer me swearing loudly at the back of the house at 12am whilst shaking a clogged syphon stem in the air like a maniac. The ones behind us closed their bedroom window at one point  :-[

Did you say you have used this infuser for dry-hopping?

-Barry
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on June 18, 2013, 09:52:43 AM
Well, my latest brew is the first time I've used it properly, but yeah, used for dry hopping as well as the boil.

Probably could have done with a bit of weighting for the dry hop
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on June 18, 2013, 09:54:55 AM
QuoteProbably could have done with a bit of weighting for the dry hop

You saved any old marbles from your boyhood?

-Barry
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bill_00 on June 18, 2013, 10:13:46 AM
Unfortunately not, and POGs aren't nearly heavy enough!
Title: Re: Pliny The Elder (And general Double IPA tips)
Post by: Bazza on June 21, 2013, 04:50:29 PM
Hey Bill_00, my spice ball just arrived there. It's big. If it was just a tiny bit bigger I could use it as a hair net of a night in.

Should do the job. Now to find a heavy steel ball. Where's Chuck Norris when you need him?

-Barry