#23 GIPA (German Eis-PA)

Brewed: 25th November, 2009

Time for a catch up post. This brew came about after a BABBs social outing up to Eagle Heights Brewery at Mount Tamborine. On the day we were there, they made up 500L of boiled sweet-wort, which was packaged into 20L cubes and distributed to members of the club. Each member who took some wort home was able to further process the wort and ferment it out however they pleased, with the only exception that no further malt could be added to it (other fermentables, such as sugar, honey, etc were ok). The results were to be brought back to the club's first meeting of the year in January, where we got to try everyone's beer side-by-side. The grain bill for the wort was 100% Munich malt, mashed at 66.5°C then boiled for 45 minutes.

Here's a picture of me on the day peering into the Mash/Lauter tun as Johann, another BABBs member, was mixing in the grain:



A great day was had by all, starting off at Eagle Heights Brewery, then heading up the road to MT Brewery for a few more beers before returning home. There's more pictures from the day on Eagle Heights Brewery's website, and more information about the day in the BABBs November newsletter.

Anyway, back to the brew. I didn't want to do anything too fancy with it, as I wanted the Munich Malt to shine through the end result. I was considering doing a SMaSH, but then had the idea of combining German and English ingredients, and doing something along the lines of an IPA, a style I hadn't tried brewing before. So I ended up with German malt, German bittering hops, English flavouring hops, and English yeast.

One of the most interesting things to happen with this batch was that at the end of five weeks of cold conditioning at around 0-1°C, when I went to transfer the beer to a keg, I found that it was a little too cold and had partly iced up on the inside! I only noticed this after I had started transferring, so I couldn't wait for it to thaw out. In the end, I decided to leave the ice behind and ended up with an Eis Bier! A German Eis Bier (Ice Beer) is made in a similar way, where once the beer has finished fermenting, it is cooled to below 0°C. At this temperature, the water component of the beer starts freezing, but the alcohol, which has a lower freezing temperature, remains in liquid form. Once the water is in ice form, it can be separated from the beer, thus concentrating the remaining flavour and alcohol. In my case, I only lost about 2 litres out of 16 to ice, which increased the alcohol content by about 1%. Ordinarily, brewers yeast can only tolerate alcohol up to 12-15% ABV, but by repeating the process, you can get the alcohol content much higher, which is how some beers can achieve up to 40% ABV.

I was pretty happy with how this one turned out - a great strong malt flavour. If anything, it is a little too bitter, but I'm planning on letting it sit for a couple of months and see if it smooths out.

There was a wide variety to the beers that were brought to the January meeting by the other members. There was a Belgian interpretation, a Bock and Dopple-bock, a couple of Dunkels, a sour-orange and a berry infused brew, and then there were those that were flavoured with oak chips, chai spices, and even pureed banana! I also took the oportunity to enter a bottle to be judged by Eagle Heights Brewery's owner, Ed Gordon, with the chance of winning a case of Mikkeller beer. I guess that will be announced at the next meeting.

This was the recipe I went with:

Light Munich Malt: 100%

Perle pellets (8.3% AA): 30g @ -60mins ~35 IBU
East Kent Golding pellets (4.8% AA): 47g @ -15mins ~15 IBU

Pre-boil gravity: 1051
Pre-boil volume: 20L

Boil time: 60 minutes

OG: 1064

Volume in fermenter: 16.2L
Yeast: WLP005 British Ale Yeast
Ferment temp: 19C

FG: 1018
Pre-ice ABV: ~6%
Final Volume: 14.2L
Final ABV: ~6.9%