Love the commercial version so decided to try this. I've changed things a little for my taste. I've made the grain bill simple in an attempt to get the lighter color. I deleted the crystal malt for that reason, and because the Ithaca website says only 2-row and honey malt. Plus, I use Pale Malt (Hugh Baird) because it's what I can get by the sack cheap. The Hugh Baird adds some color so I definitely didn't want to add any cyrstal to my version. I normally make a 11 gallon batches, but decided to make this one 11.5 gallons to try to compensate for the massive amount of hops. I was intrigued by Waorgany's hop schedule, so I used it and hints from the Ithaca's website. Normally, I'm anal about AA% and converting IBU for recipes. But with this amount of hops......who cares? I used the OP's suggestion of using less water in the mash and had a corresponding loss in efficiency. Expected to end up with 1.074 and ended up with 1.071. No biggie and I should have thought to compensate for this....my bad.
Brew 5-4-13
11.5 gallons @ 78% efficiency (Expected anyway...)
29# Pale Malt (2-row)
1.5# Honey Malt
60 Min 2oz Centennial
50 Min 1oz Amarillo
40 Min 2oz Citra
35 Min 2oz Chinook
30 Min 2oz Simcoe
25 Min 2oz Cascade
20 Min 2oz Ahtanum
15 Min 1oz Amarillo
Dry Hop for 7 days. 2oz each of Centennial, Simcoe, and Cascade.
SA-05 for the yeast.
Mash 152 degrees for 60 minutes. I used 1.1qt/# for strike water. I ususally use 1.3qts because I use a RIMS.
OG: 1.071 Slightly less than expected (see above).
The boiling wort smelled awesome and the whirlpool in my pot left a huge pile of spent hop material in the kettle. Still the carboys look like they were filled with pea soup! Fermented in the mid 60s and today (5-8), came home from work and fermentation looks like it is about finished. So, I bumped the temperature to 70 degrees. Will let sit for 2-3 more weeks and then secondary for dry hopping. Then cold crash and keg. I'll report back.