Hoodang Fresh Hop IPA

It's been a while since I have written on here.  In my time away from the blog, I have continued to try new brews, and have brewed 2 more original beers myself.  I had an IPA (that went very fast,) and a Vanilla Porter.  I also harvested 7 pounds of hops, and stuck them directly into the freezer after picking.  What do you do with 7 pounds of fresh hops in the freezer?  You make an IPA!  For this beer, I decided to go all-grain.  It's been nearly 2 years since I did an all-grain beer, so I thought this was the perfect time.

Since I do all my brewing inside, I use a 2 pot method for my boil, and with just one cooler for my mash tun, I do a batch sparge.  All-grain brew day took me 5 hours from start to finish (including cleaning.)

Using fresh hops, I new I would need more than my typical 4 ounces of pellet hops, so I brewed with just over 3 pounds of fresh hops (all Nugget,) and reserved about 3/4 of a pound for dry hopping.

To the right, you'll see my set up with the batch sparge in action.  Below, You may notice a hop bag with 1/3 pound of Nugget hops in the mash tun.  Just another way to try and get the most out of the hops.

Not shown, I made a gallon of "hop tea" while the other two kettles were busy brewing.  I heated up a gallon of water and submerged another hop bag with another 1/3 pound of nugget hops in it, and let it steep for an hour.  I added the hop tea directly to the fermenting bucket.

This picture shows both brew kettles in action.  The first running wort is in the pot on the right, with the remaining wort on the left.  When I do two pots, I don't hop the first wort pot. I do this partly for less clean up, but I also think it stretches the hops a bit further by using it in the weaker wort.  This is after my first hop addition of a full pound of nugget hops.

I added another half pound of hops after thirty minutes, and the final pound fifty minutes into the boil.  After the sixty minute boil, I quickly cooled both pots down with the wort chiller before transferring it to the fermenting bucket with the hop tea.

This shows the two and a half pounds of hops left in the pot after I transferred the wort.  The pot holds about four gallons of liquid, and I got about one and a half gallons of highly hopped wort.  I'll let it ferment for a week before adding the last of the four pounds of hops for this beer to the fermenter to dry hop.  I'll post results in a few weeks.

Below is a picture of me (left) and my brother in-law (right,) Chad.  He started home brewing a few years before me, and had a huge influence on me and my love of great beer.