Shere Khan IPA

Regular readers may have noticed by now that I've got a deep appreciation for the work done by the Thornbridge brewery.  I was blown away the first time I tried one of their beers - it was draught Jaipur at the Sheffield Tap. Jaipur has gone on to win award after award, and is often credited with spearheading the recent resurgence in strong hoppy IPAs in Britain.

One of my favourite Thornbridge beers is the India Pale Ale called Kipling - it's a blend of classic IPA strength and bitterness, but using New World hops to impart a fruity slightly floral character.  It really is a cracking beer, and I heartily recommend you try it if you haven't already.

I found a recipe that purported to produce something not too far away from Kipling, and decided to have a go.  I've called it Shere Khan IPA after the chief antagonist of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book stories.

The recipe I wanted to follow specified 85% Pale Malt, 7.5% Torrified Wheat and 7.5% Munich Malt in the grist.  However, the morning before brew-day I had a stores and supplies crisis and realised that I didn't have enough Munich.  I've substituted what I was short for some Carared Malt - so my final beer is going to be a good bit darker than Kipling, and the malty characteristics will be different too.  But it'll still be beer.

Beer Profile:

Original  Gravity (expected): 1.053

Final Gravity (expected): 1.013

ABV (expected): 5.28%

Estimated Bitterness: 40.3 IBU
Estimated Colour: 10.7 EBC

Boil Volume: 28L

Fermentables:

4535g Maris Otter Pale Malt (85%)

400g Torrified Wheat (7.5%)

300g Munich Malt (5.62%)

100g Carared (1.87%)

Boil Schedule - 60 minute boil:

20g Nelson Sauvin [12.7%] - 60 min - 22.8 IBU

20g Nelson Sauvin [12.7%] - 30 min - 17.5 IBU

1tsp Irish Moss - 10 min

60g Nelson Sauvin [12.7%] - 30 min steep, after boil

Yeast:

1 x Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

The grain was mashed in 14.4L of water at 65C for 90 minutes, and then sparged with 19L at 76C.  All the liquor was treated by boiling the night before with 2 crushed Campden tablets, 14g or Gypsum and 1.5g of Epsom Salts.

I ended up with 23L of wort going into the fermentation bin with a gravity of 1.056 - a good bit higher than I was expecting.  The higher gravity will mean that the actual bitterness will be a little lower than the 40 IBU I was expecting.

I also changed my hop usage techniques a little.  Because my boil pot doesn't have a tap I've always syphoned the wort into the fermenter, since when it's full it's too damn heavy to pour.  And because a syphon tube often gets blocked with leaf matter, I had previously been adding hops to the boil pot in a nylon BIAB bag so they can easily be removed.

That ends up being quite wasteful in terms of the wort left in the bottom of the pot with the hot break proteins.  So I figured that a good compromise would be to syphon off the majority of the clear wort, and then pour the remainder into the fermenter through a double layer of sterilised muslin cloth to filter out the trub and leaf matter.  This seemed to work quite well - I'll use this technique from now on.  Every day's a school day.

Another new thing for this brew is that I've kept back some of the spent grain from the mash to use in baking bread.  In Germany this is called Treberbrot - literally "spent grain bread".  I'll do a separate post about that.

I'm quite hopeful about this one.  If it works out well I might try a black IPA version and call it Bagheera IPA.