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THE STEINBECK “GRAINS OF WRATH” TRIPLE IPA The final step in creating awesome high gravity beers is more psychology than brewing-related: patience. You’ll need plenty of it in high gravity brewing. High gravity beers need far more time in the bottle to mature than their regular gravity counterparts. While you can easily pop open your homebrewed pale ale after two weeks in the bottle, you’ll need perhaps five to six times that amount of time for the high gravity beer to reach full potential. During this time, the remaining yeast and other compounds in the beer help to remove substances like diacetyl that create off- flavours and integrate the malt, hop and other flavours into something better than you started with. Waiting is tough, I know, but certainly worth it. By all means, sample the beer as it matures, but be prepared for a few surprises. Often, high gravity beers (such as the recipe provided here) will taste very “rough” for the first month or so in the bottle. After that, they start to mellow, the flavours combine, and wonderful things start happening! So, give your beer time and you will not regret it. Now, go brew something big and extreme. So, you’ve resisted the temptation of adding a boat-load of sugar to your boil, you’ve selected the right yeast strain, and you’ve fed it some healthy nutrients. What now? Well, for very high gravity brews, it helps to keep a close(r) eye on your fermentation. For one, try to keep the fermentation temperature stable. While this is important for most beer brewing, it is doubly so for HOMEBRU GET INVOLVED IN FERMENTATION 5 GIVE IT TIME 6 high gravity beers. Temperature fluctuation adds stress to yeast cells that are already working hard in a high gravity wort. Any temperature between 16 and 21°C will be ideal, as long as you select your preferred temperature and keep it there. Wrapping your fermenter in wet towels, placing it in a container of regularly replenished iced water, investing in an external temperature controller for your beer fridge, or hijacking a friend’s wine cooler are all viable strategies to ensure constant fermentation temperatures. Another method to consider is to very gently agitate your fermenting wort a few times every day for the first six days of fermentation. To do this, gently rock the fermenter or twirl it slowly for a few minutes. This allows for the yeast cells to have greater access to nutrients suspended in the wort as well as countering the build- up of CO2, which is not a friend of hard- working yeast. Agitation also releases living yeast cells from the (relatively) unproductive yeast cake that forms at the bottom of your fermenter. But the emphasis here is on gently . USE YEAST NUTRIENTS 4 But adding sugars gradually is not all that is needed to guarantee good yeast health. Since the sugars used in brewing don’t contain much in the way of nutrients for your yeast, you’ll have to add some pre-packaged yeast nutrient in the boil as well as during fermentation. There are plenty to choose from, but good results can be achieved with a product called Servomyces as well as omnibus supplements like Fermentis’s Springferm that combine vitamins, zinc, nitrogen, and autolysed yeast cells for a well-balanced yeast diet. In the world of yeast nutrients, a little goes a long way. Generally, for a 19 -litre batch, you’ll only be adding around a teaspoon of yeast nutrient (in total, across the boil and in the fermenter). Don’t overdo it! Too much nutrient is never a good thing. Sample the beer as it matures, but be prepared for a few surprises Agitating too vigorously may not only cause a mess and risk contamination, but might also interfere with regular yeast functioning, so take it easy! This extreme beer takes the average double IPA for a walk up the high gravity beer ladder, so we’re calling it a triple. Use the techniques discussed to produce a flavoursome, hoppy beer with a winter-warming kick. Nuts & bolts Batch size: 19 litres Method: All-grain, BIAB Estimated OG: 1.087 (this will be the reading after the boil but before adding sugars into the fermenter) Estimated FG: 1.010 - 1.015 Mash ingredients 6.5kg pale malt 700g crystal malt (60-lovibond) Mash your grains in 28 litres of brewing water at a strike temperature of 70°C for a mash temperature of 65°C. Hold for 90 minutes, then mash out at 76°C for 10 minutes. Boil ingredients 30g Fuggles [4.5%] @ 60 min 28g Centennial [10 % AA] @ 60 min 15g Amarillo [8.5 % AA] @ 60 min 28g Cascade [5.5 % AA] @ 40 min 28g Amarillo [8.5% AA] @ 20 min 400g Lyle’s Golden Syrup @ 20 min 1 tsp of Irish moss @ 10 min ½ tsp of yeast nutrient @ 10 min 10g Centennial [10% AA] @ 5 min 30g Cascade [5.5% AA] in the whirlpool Fermentation schedule Use a high attenuating, alcohol-tolerant yeast such as a barley wine strain or clean Belgian strong ale variety. Day 1: Add 30g Demerara sugar, ¼ tsp yeast nutrient. Day 2: Add 30g table sugar Day 3: Add 30g Demerara sugar Day 4: Add 60g table sugar, ¼ tsp yeast nutrient. Day 5-8: Add another 60g table sugar, 40g Demerara Sugar, and 150g Lyle’s golden syrup in roughly equal portions per day. Day 9: Dry hop with 40g of Amarillo [8.5% AA] for 3 days BREWER TIPS Bottle the batch using 118g of dextrose or 108g of table sugar. Age for at least one month in the bottle before serving, but this beer will be even better after three months of cellaring. 54 | Autumn 2020 | ontapmag.co.za