Mitch,
First off, thank you for a very fun and insightful read! Love the book! Second, thanks for making bad ass hoppy beers! Can't wait until they hit the Nebraska market someday, but Iowa and Missouri will do for now .
A couple of questions:
1. Can you elaborate on the hop additions used in the recipe section of the book? I know they are calculated by weight, so when you say for example in the Ruination recipe "62.5% Columbus at the start of the boil, then add 37.5% Centennial during the whirlpool," that should be 62.5% of the hop mass is Columbus at 90 minutes and then the remainder of the mass is centennial at flameout/WP. Is this something where we just need to put it into our software of choice and fudge around with the numbers? This doesn't seem to take into account changes is AA% on a yearly basis. I understand the issues with utilization, you mention, based on equipment. Is there a way you can take us back to middle school and do an example/demonstration of the hop calculations for a recipe based on the parameters in the book?
2. Can you take us through the process of designing/building a malt/grist bill and hop selection and additions for your 2 new latest hoppy beer releases (or any beer for that matter): Ruination 10th Anniversary and "Enjoy By?" How do these beers differ from the original Ruination or the regular IPA in Stone's portfolio? Did you incorporate some of the info you learned while researching IPAs into these 2 newest releases? What are you looking for in the finished product in beers like this?
Thanks again and cheers!
Brian Hoesing
Hi Brian:
1. Yes, I know this a bit confusing. Another way to look at it:
Target IBU: 105
SOB:
Columbus 62.5%
Whirlpool:
Centennial 37.5%
This is based on alpha acids of 10% for the Centennial and 12.8% for the Columbus. I should have included those numbers in the recipe-my apologies!
As far as calculating this out, the BeerSmith and ProMash systems work well. There are also hop calculators on the web, such as the Rager formula. John Palmer’s book, How To Brew, also has an excellent hop calculation technique that accounts for boil time and gravity of the wort.
I opted not to try and put this information in the book because there are so many formulas out there, and your results will vary significantly depending on the parameters of your brewing system. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, honestly, and I hesitated to recommend one system over another.
2. What we did with the Stone Ruination Tenth Anniversary IPA was simply add more hops! We made it a higher alcohol beer (from 7.7% to 10.8%), by adding more pale malt-we kept the light crystal at the same weight, but increased the pale malt to reduce the total crystal % from 5.8% to about 4%, and then added more hops across the board. We used the same varieties as in regular Stone Ruination IPA, with the exception of the dry hop, where we added Citra to the Centennial, and the overall dry hop rate was doubled. One of the most heavily hopped beers we have ever brewed.
With the Stone Enjoy By IPA, we took a different approach, using the hop bursting technique, sort of, and a recipe approach similar to what homebrewer Kelsey McNair used in the beer we brewed together-the Kelsey McNair/Ballast Point/Stone San Diego County Session Ale, where many hop varieties were added in the late stage additions. In the case of the Stone Enjoy By IPA, we used 11 different hop varieties, and all but one variety were used in late hop and/or dry-hop. I am liking this technique, a lot.