Blackacre IPA

Today I brewed an IPA designed to take advantage of my friend Eric's fresh hop harvest this year. I'm looking forward to seeing whether it works out.

The Recipe:

9 lb 2-row pale malt
1 lb crystal 20°

13.2 AAU (34g @ 11.1% AA) Chinook @ 60
4 AAU (32g @ 3.5% AA) Czech Saaz @ 30
4 AAU (32g @ 3.5% AA) Czech Saaz @ 20
4 AAU (32g @ 3.5% AA) Czech Saaz @ 5

135-140g fresh hops of unknown variety went into the primary fermenter.

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 152° using 12 quarts; fly sparged with ~170-190° water until I had about 25 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.052
Est. IBU: 85.3

Brewing was mostly uneventful. I ended up with about 2% less grist than the grain bill indicates, as it ended up on the floor next to the grain mill because of poor receptacle placement on my part. Speaking of milling, I think the mill was well-adjusted today, as I got 76% efficiency; not as good as last week, but still way above average for me. I am thinking I might try a batch sparge next week and see if that improves efficiency at all.

There was one tiny mishap and that was that I intended to put the fresh hops in the fermenter and pour the wort on top of them; however, I forgot about them and ended up putting them in after filling the fermenter but before pitching the yeast. I don't know if this will even matter, but it should be interesting to see what happens.