Back In The Game - Dead Ringer IPA

It has been awhile since brewing my last beer at home, and a lot has changed in my life over that period. I have sold my house and live in a new duplex with my son every other week and after a couple of months, I have truly started to settle in. I have just begun to organize all my home brewing equipment and look to make 2013 the year I get serious about home brewing.

So the latest ingredient kit (malt extract) that I got, was from Northern Brewer and it's called the "Dead Ringer IPA". Since I'm still on my IPA kick, I thought this would be a great one to get back on track with.

Here are the ingredients that came with the kit:

• 1 lbs Briess Caramel 40
• 9.15 lbs Gold malt syrup
• 5 - 1 oz packs of Centennial hops (4 for brewing day, and 1 for dry hopping)
• Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
• 5 oz Priming Sugar

With the help of my buddy Rich, 2 days before brewing day I did my first ever Yeast Starter. He let me borrow some DME (dry malt extract) and several pieces of equipment that I needed to pull this off. He also pointed me in the direction of a great link showing the basic steps to creating a Yeast Starter.

sketchy activities

So with the new equipment at hand, and having watched the video about 4 times to make sure I fully understood everything, I went to my new gigantic kitchen and began. If you didn't know much about home brewing (or me for that matter) and you saw what I was doing, you'd swear I was making meth or something illegal. Measuring amounts of white powder (DME) and using a 5000mL flask on my stove to boil liquids doesn't look so innocent, it's a good thing I had the curtains pulled down.

Brew day was last Wednesday (January 16th), and I had friends Josh, Rich and Blake Hoffman over to help out with everything. We had the burner set up in the garage and all the ingredients and equipment inside the house. It was really cold outside, so we kept having to do shifts of standing around the wort as it was steeping the grains and boiling the wort with adding hops. And as you can see in the picture to the left, we were obeying the #1 rule on brewing day.....drinking beer. Everyone brought over some different kinds of beer, with Rich bringing some home brew to try, and it reminded me of one of my favorite parts of home brewing, getting together and talking about beer while sharing/tasting different kinds of beer.

Blake before he passed out

Once we were done with the boiling and adding the hops, we made an ice bath in a tote out in the garage, where the cold weather outside really helped. Then we brought it inside and poured it through a strainer and funnel and into the glass carboy for primary fermentation, gave it a really good shake, then added the yeast and continued to shake for roughly 4 minutes (2 minutes me and 2 minutes Hoffman), at the end Hoffman was winded and passed out, since it was the most physical activity he has done all winter. The first two days in the carboy had plenty of activity and the airlock filled with whiskey was bubbling away.

All in all, I'm glad that I started back up with brewing beer, and look to continue this throughout the year and want to get better at it, and get more knowledgeable about beer in general. 

Here is the schedule for the rest of this beer:

• 2 weeks primary (1/16)
• 2 weeks secondary (1/30 - add hops)
• 2 week in the bottle (2/13 - bottle)
• I've found that a week or two in the fridge can help clear up the beer as well

Bubbling away!