Galaxy Cuckoo

So, I finally got a hold of some Galaxy hops! I’ve been meaning to brew with them for a while because I wanted to make a beer to suit my wife’s tastes. She loves Galaxy Unicorn. This should be more sessionable than the Pipeworks brew it seeks to emulate, yet still very hoppy and fruity.

Here’s the recipe; brew it before they release a new hop from the Southern Hemisphere that will make Galaxy passé.

Galaxy Cuckoo

Style: Wheat IPA

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Carapils

Extract:

7 lbs. wheat DME

Hops:

1 oz. Columbus pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (flavor @ 30 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Citra pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (dry hop)

1 oz. Citra pellets (dry hop)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

The original gravity was 1.062 and the final gravity was around 1.014; ABV should be around 6.3%. I drank my hydrometer sample the other day after bottling and I was blown away by the aroma. I dry hopped with Galaxy and Citra; it was a lupulin KO!

I stand by the logic of dry hopping with pellets after making this one. Whole leaf hops look pretty cool in the carboy, but they act like one big sponge and I think some volume is lost. They often impart less aroma in my experience too, perhaps because the cell walls aren’t broken down as much by the extrusion process that pelletized hops go through. Just a hypothesis; don’t quote me on that one.