Middle States Imperial Pale Ale

Yet again I apologize for the delay in updating this blog.  My goal is to at least do an updated everytime I brew a new beer (if it's a new recipe).  However life has brought me to the middle of the country and from late last year through the first quarter of 2013 I was in the process of packing up everything we own and moving to the wonderful town of Lawrence, Kansas (my day job has brought me here).  Hopefully that helps explain the lack of attention the blog and brewing in general has recieved lately.  But enough with that, we are all settled in now and I can get back to brewing!

I will admit it, I'm obsessed with heavily hopped, clean and crisp, extremely drinkable Pale Ales (or I guess in some cases IPA's). This time around I decided to strip out pretty much all the speciality malts that seemed to be adding too much caramel notes to my IPAs.  Not sure anyone in the middle of the US (commerical brewery wise) is brewing an IPA like this.  Closest I have found is Boulevard 80-Acre (a hoppy wheat beer).  Most of the pale ales and IPA's out here still have a heavy dose of some sort of specialty or munich malt that just isn't what I like in a beer like this.  I also wanted to put some Mosaic hops to use and decided to go 100% Mosaic with this beer.  Since my efficiency was a lot better than expected this turned into more of an Imperial Pale Ale than a regular Pale Ale or IPA.

Middle States Imperial Pale Ale (aka Double Mosaic Pale Ale)

11 Gallon Batch

60 Minute Boil

Brew Day – 30 March 2013

Grain

22 lbs of American 2 Row (88%)
1 lb of Oats (4%)

1 lb of Wheat (4%)

1 lb of Corn Sugar (4%)

Hops
3 oz of Mosaic (12.8% AA) for 60 Minutes
1 oz of Mosaic (12.8% AA) for 15 Minutes

3 oz of Mosaic (12/8% AA) at KO

4 oz of Mosaic dry hop for 12 days
2 oz of Mosaic dry hop for 3 days

Yeast
WLP-001 – 2 vial with large starter

Targets
Pre-Boil Gravity without sugar addition = 1.049
OG = 1.058
FG = 1.005
ABV = 7 %
IBU = 47

Mash
7.5 gallons @ 149 for 60 minutes

Sparge
Fly sparge with 8.25 gallons of water @ 200

Mash & Sparge Notes
Pre-boil gravity with no sugar = Missed taking this.

Boil Notes

Actuals
OG – 1.071 or 17.2 Brix

FG – 1.005
ABV = 8.8 %

OG was a little bit higher than expected. Got really good efficiency out of my mash this time around and fermentation went great and got this beer really nice and dry.