Chin Music

This is my wet hopped Belgian IPA that I make with my homegrown Chinooks. If you don’t have access to fresh hops, you could substitute the 6 ounces of wet Chinooks in the aroma addition with one ounce of pellets. It might not be conventional to finish with Chinook, but I did it and I like it.

Chin Music

Style: Belgian IPA

Water:

2 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. 10 L Cara-Hell

Extract and Sugar:

8 lbs. extra light DME

1 lb. of Belgian clear candi sugar

Hops:

1 ½ oz. Chinook pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

½ oz. Chinook pellets (flavor @ 20 min.)

1 oz. Cascade pellets (flavor @ 20 min.)

6 oz. freshly picked wet Chinook hops (aroma @ 10 min.)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey (two packets pitched in the primary)

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 ¼ 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 should be around 1.080 and it should finish around 1.015, which should make for an ABV of 8.5%.

I usually don’t rack my beer from the brew kettle to the primary anymore. I typically just pour it in through a funnel and try to reserve the trub. In this case, however, I would recommend racking because of the volume of fresh whole cone hops. If you pour the wort through a funnel or a strainer it will probably clog up.

If you’re worried about losing the fermentable sugars clinging to the hops, you could put the hops in a strainer, sparge them with water over a sanitized bucket, and then use this liquid to add to the primary to achieve your total volume. I might try this next time to see if it helps keep the original gravity where I want it. I imagine it may help draw some more flavor off of the wet hops too.