Pop quiz: What's cooler than cool? Cold IPA!
Hello everybody, welcome back for yet another edition of Behind the Brew.
Today we are here to talk about our newest beer kit. This is the Chill Factor
Cold IPA. We're going to talk a little bit about what the beer is, we're going to go over how to
brew it all-grain, how to brew it extract, and what you can expect with the final beer.
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So, what is a Cold IPA. It's one of the newest evolutions of the IPA style. Probably the style
of beer that is tweaked the most -- this way, that way, new versions come up all the time.
You might think of Hazy IPA, Brut IPA, Black IPA, and so on. This time around we have the Cold IPA.
So, really, what is it? It's more or less modeled after the West Coast style of IPA.
You're going to get nice clarity, you're going to get a nice bracing bitterness, but this is really
brewed to be a perfect showcase of hops. These hops are going to stick out like never before.
There's really no malt character to mask them too much, and it's just aroma and flavor like crazy.
What are the techniques to make a Cold IPA? Generally, it's broken down into three different
categories. First, is your malt bill. You're going to want something that is really clean,
so that way you don't have anything getting in the way of the hops. For this, you want basically
a clean American base malt, some adjuncts or sugar (or both). During fermentation, you want
to dry hop when it is at high krausen; that gets you a lot of those hop aromas way into the beer,
and that way it comes out. Right here I can almost smell this pint from where I'm standing.
And third, is to use a lager yeast at a slightly elevated temperature. You want to pick a lager
yeast that is low in both sulfur production and also has a good amount of attenuation
because you do want this beer to be pretty dry. In this case, this came out to 1.009 final gravity.
Let's dive head first into the Brew Cave and tell you how we did this.
For the all-grain version, we used Rahr North Star Pils. This is one of the newer malts from Rahr,
and what it is is a Pilsner malt that's slightly under-modified, and has a really nice clean malt
aroma, malt flavor. You're going to get really fresh bread, you're going to get maybe a tiny bit
of biscuit flavor in it, and it's really clean. In addition to the North Star Pils, we did use
some flaked rice. That's going to help get some extra fermentable gravity points in the beer.
It's not going to raise the color at all. It's really not going to provide any flavor
other than just like a clean, crisp rice flavor. And a little bit of simple sugar,
too, to help dry the beer out. That's going to provide something light in body, really dry,
and that serves as a great base to let those hop flavors shine.
With the all-grain version we are going to utilize a relatively low mash temperature
because we do want this beer to be as fermentable as possible in order to get that low final gravity
that will give a nice, dry, crisp flavor. So, we're targeting 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Mash
that for an hour just like you normally would. In this case, we did recirculate the mash. So,
you're going to see it started out real cloudy with a lot of proteins and starches in the beer
that are unconverted; as time goes on it will clear up, clear up, clear up, and you know you
have a really nice fermentable wort. Lauter and sparge as normal, get your boil kettle full.
We are going to do a full 60 minute boil for the all-grain version. And that is just to
make sure all the precursors to DMS are volatilized in the boil, so that way you
don't end up with a beer that tastes like creamed corn or something you don't want.
It might seem weird, but during the entire hour-long boil there are no hop additions, so
I don't know -- find a book to read for a while, clean something.
And once you're boil is done, go ahead and kill the heat, add your hops,
whirlpool it for 20 minutes, and that's going to get you your bitterness, flavor, and aroma;
all those oils are going to remain in the wort so they can later be expressed in the finished pint.
The hops that are included in this recipe kit is a little mix of classic old-school American hops
blended with the new. So, we've got Centennial. That's going to give you some grapefruit, citrus,
a little bit of earth. Then we have Mosaic, which is going to give lots of tropical fruit flavors,
stone fruit, little bit of earthiness, little bit of pine. Together they really play well together.
You're going to get ample aromas of citrus, passionfruit, guava, little bit of pine and
earthiness. It's really just an awesome of old and new creating something even newer.
For the extract version, we have a jug of Pilsen malt extract,
one pound of dry Pilsen malt extract, and also two pounds of rice syrup solids.
Now this is the extract brewers equivalent of using flaked rice in a mash. It has all the rice
sugars, it's got the rice flavor, but also it's very fermentable. So, instead of using sugar in
the extract batch, it's just the rice syrup solids, which really help dry the beer out.
When doing extract kits you might be used to brewing with a bag of steeping grains and doing
a full hour-long boil. But, in this case, this is a pretty simple recipe. Since we are trying
to keep the malt bill as clean as possible we have not used any steeping grains -- no caramel malts,
nothing like that. We have just gone with 100% Pilsner malt extract and rice syrup solids. That's
all that goes into the boil actually. For this one there are no bittering additions at 60 minutes,
there are no later flavor additions at, say, 10 or 15 minutes or what have you. In this case,
all of the hops go in right after the boil. For the extract version, only boil it for 20 minutes;
all this really does is make sure the wort is perfectly sanitary. Once you kill the boil,
you're going to add the hops -- Mosaic and Centennial. A 20-minute whirlpool is going to
provide you with all the bitterness you need, it's going to be about 60-65 IBU. And because we're not
boiling, a lot of those oils are going to stay in the wort, and will provide you with great aroma,
great flavor, instead of being volatilized and boiled off. It is a pretty short boil, so go ahead
and put your wort chiller in about ten minutes left in the boil. That just ensures it's sanitary
and give you something to hold onto to give it a stir while you're whirlpooling your hops.
And at this point, now that you've created your wort, the process is the same for all-grain and
extract. Once you get your chiller in there and you're chilling your wort, go ahead and take it
a little bit lower than you normally would. We are using a lager yeast in this beer recipe,
albeit at a higher temperature than normal, so target a temperature of about 62 degrees, maybe
a little bit lower, and chill your wort there before you get it into your fermenter. With this
kit we are using the Weihenstephan lager strain. It is probably the most ubiquitous lager strain in
the world. This lager strain can actually tolerate higher temperatures without producing any sulfur,
really minimal esters, so it's a great choice for this beer. Go ahead and target a fermentation
temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit; this will give a nice balance of yeast activity,
it will be real vigorous. Also the temperature is low enough to keep the esters suppressed. So,
you're going to get the best of both worlds: you're going to get a really strong fermentation
and also a very clean fermentation, and this lends itself perfectly to this style.
And now that we've covered the grain bill, we've covered the yeast strain and temperature,
the third part of making a Cold IPA is the dry hopping. In this case, we are going to
dry hop at high krausen, and that's going to make sure that any oxygen that gets into the
fermentation isn't going to cause any oxidation, and it's going to be gobbled up right away by the
yeast. And those hops get an extended period of time in the wort to really release their oils,
and that's just gonna ramp up the aroma like crazy. And when you do add your hops,
you might see them floating on top of the krausen. That's not a problem. Because that beer is
chugging around in there so much, those hops will get in, will get mixed in. It will do its magic.
And then you're going to ferment that to completion, let it sit a little while
longer just to make sure that there's no off-flavors left over by the yeast.
And then what we end up with is something really light, awfully aromatic, and it is so light you
could almost mistake this for a Classic American Pilsner or any light lager in that case. It looks
like a Kolsch, it looks like a Helles, but it does not drink like it. You got a lot of flavor.
Really crisp, nice and dry. The recipe and the technique might seem really simple,
it may seem a little chintzy that you're only doing two total hop additions -- one whirlpool,
one dry hop -- but it provides everything you need. You'd be hard pressed to get this much hop
character from a traditional one-hour addition, a 20-minute addition, a five-minute addition, and so
on. It's all there. You've got the bitterness, you've got the aroma, you've got the flavor,
which are really ramped up. And the dry hopping serves to round that all out, and it's a hop bomb!
If you love your hops and don't want them to be impeded by any malt of fermentation
character -- boom! The Chill Factor Cold IPA is available on northernbrewer.com
in both all-grain and extract versions.
This is one of those kits we really went down the rabbit hole on, did a ton of research,
we interviewed pro brewers to get their takes on it, to get their insights, tips, techniques.
If you want those resources to see how we arrived at this beer kit, go ahead and look at our blog,
subscribe to our channel, and check out our upcoming Northern Brewer University course.