BILCO: A Brother-in-Law Collaboration

My brother-in-law Michael has become quite the craft beer aficionado over the past few years. He has also become a skilled hop cultivator as well, and we recently merged his homegrown Cascades with my homegrown Chinooks for a memorable joint venture.

This is our recipe for BILCO, a Brother-in-Law Collaboration. We aimed to make a big IPA and added 5 ounces of our dried backyard hops to the kettle. The final product had a hop presence that was closer to a pale or an amber, but we got a lot of compliments from our friends just the same. Perhaps in making a more balanced beer we appealed to hop heads and mainstream beer folk as well. We're definitely making this one again!

Besides combining our brewing and hop cultivating efforts, this recipe merges two IPA traditions as well. We paired caramelly British specialty grains with our piney, orangey backyard American hops. This brew was destiny; the Atlantic Ocean couldn't keep these ingredients apart.

BILCO

Style: IPA

Water:

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

½ gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Thomas Fawcett & Sons Pale Crystal Malt

Extract:

9 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

2 oz. Chinook, whole cone (bittering @ 60 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 15 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 10 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (aroma @ 5 min.)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

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:
Original gravity should be around 1.073 and finishing gravity should be around 1.015, making for an ABV of 7.6%. You could certainly recreate this recipe using pellet hops. If you use whole cones like us, I would recommend tying them off in muslin bags to make it easier to remove them from the wort when the boil has finished. Using a large strainer, you can press the excess liquid out of the bags and back into the kettle if you're worried about losing any hoppy goodness.

This was an amazing fall beer/winter warmer, but brew it anytime you please. Cheers!