Cryo Adventure

Until recently if you wanted a super hoppy beer you had to consume something north of 6% ABV or something well north of that mark.   Like a Double IPA, Imperial IPA, or a stupid strong IPA (think Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA).

I enjoy hoppy beers, but I’d like to have more than one or two.   Founder’s All Day IPA weighing in at a mere 4.7% is probably may favorite.  It’s delicious and something you really can drink all day.

The Columbia Crew recently went to Philly Beer week (see my bud Warren’s Blog for the details).    One of the highlights was a visit to Tired Hand’s Fermentaria where I had many awesome beers, but one beer really stood out for me.   That would be their Hop Hands Pale Ale weighing in at 5.5% which is hopped like crazy with Simcoe, Amarillo, and Centennial.   This is an absolutely crushable beer.   I love it, maybe more so than All Day IPA (that’s saying a lot).

So that brings me today’s brew day.   I’m not sure what distinguishes a Pale Ale   from a Session IPA these days or whether what I’m making should be considered a straight up IPA so I’m going to refrain from using those terms.   Today’s beer while be called “Cryo Time”.

The goal with this brew is to feature hops so I decided to go with a simple malt bill consisting of nothing but Briess Brewer’s Malt.   The hops added to this beer will be considerably more interesting.  Here’s the Beer Smith profile:

So as you can see I’m using a total fo 3 oz of Cryo hops.   What’s a Cryo Hop you ask?   It’s a concentrated form of a hop.   Hop manufactures have figured out how to extract the Lupulin power from hops and pelletize them.   The net effect is a pellet that packs about twice the hop power of a normal hop pellet.

There are some conventional hop pellets in this brew as well.   I’m using a 1/2 oz of Warrior as a First Wort Hop for bittering and will be using 1 oz of Cascade pellets along with the Cryo Hops for dry hop ( the idea is to have something for the Lupulin powder to cling to).

So in all there is the equivalent of 7.5oz of hops in this brew which has a SG of only 1.058.

It’s fermenting now so I’ll report back in a couple weeks 🙂