EKG IPA

Yesterday I brewed up the first stage in my yeast recycling experiment: an IPA hopped entirely with East Kent Goldings. The reason I did this is that the EKGs that I bought in bulk were whole leaf and take up an astonishing amount of space, so I wanted to clear out some room in my hop freezer.

The Recipe:

9 lb 2-row pale malt
12 oz Victory malt

10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 60
10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 30
10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 20
10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 10
10 AAU (56g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 5

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

Mashed at 152° for an hour using about 12.5-13 quarts of water. Sparged with 170°-180° water until I had about 26 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.054
Est. IBU: 87.5

I don't really think of goldings as West Coast IPA hops, but we shall see. If anything evaluates the character of EKG in an IPA, this should be it. There are 10 oz of hops in this beer, and it should be noted that I used dried whole-leaf hops rather than pellets so the volume of hops was intimidating: five dinner plates each stacked about five-inch high piles of hops. Preposterous!

Actually, the hop volume became an issue toward the end of the boil. At this point, the liquid in my brew kettle had attained the consistency of a chowder and required constant stirring to prevent boil-over. Even stopping for thirty seconds would cause pressure to build up under a raft of hops and then violently erupt.

In the end, the hops soaked up quite a lot of water so, despite a moderately low 74% efficiency, I got an OG of 1.054, which is right in line with what I wanted. I did end up with less wort in the fermenter, however, because of all the absorption. I would say I got about 10% less liquid than my last batch, based on an eyeball comparison.