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When Mike and I tell people we are homebrewers, we are often asked how we find time to brew. We are both full-time teachers, so we have to prioritize and make time for brewing. Over the last 10 years, we have had moments when it seemed like we were brewing every weekend and moments when it seemed like we never had time to brew. When the COVID quarantine hit, we were unable to brew for months mostly because the quarantine happened to coincide with a major kitchen remodel. The timing of our kitchen demo was unfortunate. We demolished our kitchen the week before the world shutdown from COVID, found termites in our brewhouse, AND were forced to move all of our classes online. Basically, due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to shut down our brewing for about 6 months. When the 2022 New Year started, we decided we wanted to focus our efforts on brewing. Mike and I both live our lives without regrets, and we didn’t want homebrewing to become a shoulda, woulda, coulda hobby in our life. We spent much of the COVID quarantine at home and sampled a variety of beers. Most of our reactions to the beers we tasted were, “We could make that” or “Why don’t we make that?” So, how do we go about finding the time to work full-time in stressful careers, enjoy quality time together and with friends, enjoy hobbies besides brewing, and spend time with our two wonderfully goofy greyhounds? Some pics of our kitchen remodel that paused our brewing. It was an experience we hope we don't have to repeat--nothing like two teachers teaching two classes simultaneously on Zoom while in the middle of a kitchen remodel. Did I mention the restaurants closed while we had no kitchen? 0 stars...do not recommend. Prioritize brewing & brew tasksMike and I have more hobbies than time. We golf, surf, paddleboard, hike, travel, camp, and a long list of other activities. Mike and I decided we needed to cut down on some of our activities and only focus on a few. We decided we needed to devote most weekends to brewing and some weekends to our other hobbies. During the week, we often turn off the tv and tinker in the brewery. We break the cleaning tasks into multiple small chores rather than a whole day. We may spend one night cleaning beer lines, and another night racking over a beer to kegs. Teaching can make you feel like a zombie. After a long day it's easy to just crash on the couch and drown yourself in beer when you know you should be taking steps to brew more. We are trying to focus more on our overall health, so we have the energy to do brew tasks on the weekdays and free up more weekend time to brew. Some time saving tips:
EQUIPMENTWhile we saved time with our cleaning regime, we still realized we were brewing more frequently than we wanted to be brewing. That may sound strange since we are talking about our love of brewing. But, we found we were brewing the same beers over and over with little time to experiment on new creations. The result was we upped our brewing system. We now have the capacity for a variety of brewing needs. We can brew 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 gallon batches. Most frequently, we brew either 10 or 20 gallons. We upgraded to a one barrel brewhouse (i.e., 50 gallon pots). When we upgraded, we decided to keep our older setup. So, we have 6 brew kettles instead of 3.
Mike and I rarely get rid of our equipment. Instead, we multipurpose everything. Our original cooler mash tun and HLTs we still use. In fact, we use them for cleanup…they work great for PBW and Star Sans buckets on brew days. The only items we have gotten rid of are glass carboys. I sold our old glass carboys to a co-worker who was getting into brewing. We repurpose things because we live in a 1950s house with 888 square feet. Thank goodness we have a two car garage and a storage shed to house things! Calendars & Time managementWe keep a shared calendar on Google for brew days and competition dates. We plan out which brews will go to each competition and plan out when we need to brew, bottle or can, and ship each competition beer. Once we have these on the calendar for the year, we then revolve our brew days around the schedule. If you aren’t familiar with Google Calendar, it makes our lives so much easier! I color code our tasks and set them for specific timelines. For example, if you want to clean your beer lines every two weeks, you can set a task reminder in Google Calendar and put it on repeat. Mike and I share our Two Jacks Brewing Company gmail account, so we just push the account to our phone and get easy reminders. Every Tuesday I devote time to writing this blog. I just block off time during my duty free lunch and begin the blog. I finish the blog after work, insert pictures, and post at home on Tuesday evening. I don’t answer the phone and ignore all work related emails and phone calls during my lunch break. On my work calendar, it is blocked off as “busy” during every Tuesday lunch. While the blog takes a lot of time to put together, I find that I look forward to having some time to myself to focus on it. The writing motivates me to keep up with the brewery and appreciate the hard work we put into our brewing. Recipe writing is something I continually do. I sometimes think of a recipe or Mike and I come up with a recipe while at dinner or beer tasting. We actually write a lot of beer recipes while talking in the car. I have access to Beersmith on my phone, so I will immediately write down some of the ideas into a recipe that I finish up while watching TV, when I can’t sleep, or during my work lunch break. I like to research and read about the history of beers, brewing processes, new hops, and so on. After researching, I often create a new recipe based on the information I find. Currently, I have about 20 recipes sitting in Beersmith that I recently created and haven’t brewed. We may never use all of the recipes, but I know that I have access to some new recipes that I spent time thinking over. This allows Mike and I to look over new recipes when we can’t decide what to brew next and just have a “go with your current mood” attitude and pick one. This is how our Haleiwa Island Lager was created. Mike and I went to sushi and said, “I wonder what a hopped up rice lager would taste like.” I took notes on it that night and then wrote the Haleiwa recipe after researching how to brew with rice. Social media posts I try to update around the same times every day. Typically, I will post something before work, during my lunch break, or at night. Sometimes I find I spend too much time on social media, so I try to shut down my phone or have a Sunday phone free day. I like having Instagram and Facebook posts to commemorate our experience with the brewery and to gain new brewing techniques from other brewers. My favorite part of FB is when memories pop up. These help us remember how far we have come and gives us motivation to keep evolving as homebrewers. I also love seeing other brewers’ setups. Hearing what other brewers are doing and seeing them win medals in competitions has given us the confidence to enter into contests and try to become the best brewers we can. The brewing community is really about learning and growing and sharing your accomplishments. There are also a lot of products we have seen and gotten feedback on by following other brewers. Less time cleaning and maintaining the brewery equals more time we get to enjoy together. Basically, the answer to “How do you find time to brew?” is we make time and decided that we wanted to prioritize brewing. It helps that both Mike and I love brewing and enjoy spending our time doing this together. You may need to be even more diligent with your planning out of time and calendaring if your partner doesn't also brew. However, communicating your brewing schedule and priorities will make your brewing more efficient, even if you only brew once every few months. Just fit the brewing into your lifestyle. We have some work weeks where we just can’t brew because of other commitments. That’s totally fine. We just prioritize the other weeks instead. Just keep brewing!
Cheers! 2JBC
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No matter what anyone says, putting your beer out to be judged by the public is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking! Anyone who brews understands the amount of work, blood, sweat, and tears that go into creating something from the heart. We are proud that each of the 5 beers we represented at The Craft LB Homebrew Invitational were our own recipes. We designed each from scratch and created beers we enjoy to drink. Based on the fact that we went through almost 5 full kegs of beer (about 22 gallons) on Saturday, we presented our beers as we wanted them to be presented--crisp, clean, and crushable! We can't lie, watching people you have never met drink your beer and smile was something special. Seeing them come back and sample other beers or drink the same beer 5 separate times is indescribable. Mike and I liken the experience to the rush you get playing Division I caliber sports or leaving the stage after your band plays. It was AWESOME! If you are on the fence about putting your beers into a competition, DO IT! The feedback you get, the confidence you gain, and the truly remarkable people you meet is worth every second of the hard work (and money...22 gallons of beer isn't free to brew!). Both Mike and I have to say the absolute support we felt from other brewers was fantastic and the cherry on top! We watched brewers share equipment, pour other beers when a brewer needed that emergency restroom break, and help unfreeze jockey box lines. Everyone wanted each brewer's beer to be the best version of it it could be. We realized that the world can seem cruel around us, but homebrewers are an amazing community of supportive people! We wished we had more time to just hang out and get to know people more! With that being said, we wanted this blog to focus on how we prepared for the event, what equipment we found helpful, and what we would do differently.  PREPARING FOR THE EVENTSo, here’s a list of our advice from the first event:
Some products and companies we recommendThis is a list of some items that really helped us prepare for the event. We do not have sponsors and do not make any money off of our blog or Instagram. We are simply sharing what we used and what we found helpful.  The metal sign we used on the front of our jockey box is from Shutterfly. We remove the sign for storage and to protect the cover. The sign will last for year's to come and can also be hung on the wall of the brewery when not being used on the jockey box. We used Cool Brew Jackets to house our kegs. Each insulated jacket holds a 5 gallon corny keg and fills with ice. These kept our beer at the temperature we wanted for pouring. Since we only had one jockey box, we used picnic taps on the other kegs. In the future, we will be adding an additional 4 tap jockey box. These bags kept our area organized and kept our beer at a fairly consistent temperature. When we got home, our kegs were still cold. We brought 8 kegs to the event and had 3 kegs of leftover beer to put back in our keezer to enjoy later. You can also see our milk crate C02 storage. Did we bring extra C02? Yes. We figured we would have extra in case we had a random issue with a bottle or if someone else ran out of C02.  We purchased our foam signs from Vista Print. We use Vista Print throughout the year for various events, and they always have great deals and good products. We initially made our signage before we knew how much space we would be given. However, we already have a fix in place for next year. We like to purchase things that we can reuse. Each of the signs can be used as artwork in our brewery to commemorate the event which is a bonus. The Two Jacks Banner we had over the black tablecloth actually came as a free bonus product when we purchased our custom tablecloth. Unfortunately, we were unable to use our table cloth at this event. However, it will be utilized in the near future at our friends' wedding. We purchased our tablecloth and banner from Totally Promotional. A bonus is you get to approve the proof before printing and the quality is great. The fabric cleaned up easily after the event.  This will definitely be a purchase for us in the near future. While the kegs in Cool Brew Bags were helpful, this cart would have made transporting the kegs easier and faster, especially at the end of the event when we were tired. What things would we change for next time?Honestly, very little. It’s very easy for someone else to say, “You should have put ____ beer in the competition instead.” We don’t believe in armchair quarterbacking our decisions. We had a clear purpose with what we wanted out of this event. We chose to include Judge Hopner IPA as our beer not because we felt it was our best beer. We chose it because it was the first beer recipe we created and the beer we have brewed the most consistently. At the time the competition paperwork was submitted, we had not completely dialed in our new brewing equipment and had changed our brewing process. We were certain we could make a very drinkable Judge Hopner IPA for the public, and we felt confident we would have a beer we could feel comfortable pouring for people. Would we change our beer choice? No. In your first competition, there are jitters and unknowns to work out. Do we think that Judge Hopner was the best beer we poured at the event? No. Did we get exactly the feedback we wanted and the confidence we needed to continue in competitions? Yes. Do we want to upgrade a few minor things? Yes. We are excited that we will feel way more comfortable pouring for our friends' wedding reception. Honestly, I would never be able to live with messing up the beer and cocktails for such a wonderful day! WHAT DID WE LEARN?Several takeaways. One, we really love brewing, and the event has really encouraged us to move on from some of our older beers and explore some of our other ideas. This event helped us to gain more confidence and enter multiple contests. Our goals for this year were to expand our brewing, enter competitions, and get out of our comfort zones. We are only in March of this year, and we are super stoked at the progress we are making and the direction our brewing is going. However, while we are new to many people in the homebrewing scene, this is not a new venture for us. This has been 10 years in the making. For anyone who is starting out and using kits and plastic buckets, we started there. We were not members of a homebrew club. We started a homebrew club and are fumbling our way through this. Everything we have learned has come from researching, brewing, and asking questions. The biggest takeaway from this event is that we are proud. Proud of what we have accomplished. Proud of what we have created. Proud of where we are going. And proud that we could represent the city that we love, Long Beach.
I am 4th generation Long Beach, and I come from a family that built this city (literally, my family owned a small construction company, CR Crain and Sons). In fact, my grandfather was a master mason and most of the masonry work you see (LBCC, CSULB, brickwork facades on homes, and so on are his work). My great grandmother graduated from LB High School; my grandfather graduated from LB Poly; my grandmother, father, aunt, and uncles all graduated from Wilson High School; my brother graduated from Millikan High School; and I proudly represent LB Poly High School class of 1994. Mike graduated from Millikan High School, and both Mike and I graduated from CSULB (BA degrees and teaching credentials). I started my teaching career at LBUSD, and Mike currently works at Jordan High School. We love this city and representing Long Beach at this event was wonderful. The fact that the event raised money for Rancho Los Cerritos was the cherry on top as the ranchos have always been a huge part of the city, and its' history. In fact, the opportunity to be a multigenerational Long Beach native and represent Long Beach at this event was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Knowing we would be pouring at the Rancho was the push we both needed to put ourselves out there. Once again, Long Beach has given us the push to move forward and be better brewers and people. We are glad that our city was represented so well and that so many people came from outside Long Beach to see what a truly wonderful, vibrant, and diverse community we have. We are definitely Long Beach proud. Cheers! 2JBC Normally, when we serve large groups of friends, we serve on draft from our keezers at the brewery. Recently, we purchased an SL1 Oktober Canning Machine and take cans to small gatherings or when we travel (i.e., camping, fishing, hiking, golf, etc.). However, for the Craft Beer LB Homebrew Invitational on March 19, we realized we needed to purchase a jockey box for serving a large crowd our beer on draft. Yes, we could just serve our beer from a picnic tap like we have done at many a party, but we wanted to present our beer to the crowd in the best way possible. So, we purchased a jockey box to help us control the temperature of the beer we are serving AND to present our beer in the most professional way possible. This brought us to a new problem...jockey boxes all look the same. So, what to do about it? Well, create a jockey box cover in 2JBC style of course! If you haven't guessed by our logo and color scheme, we are HUGE reggae fans. Growing up in Long Beach, both Mike and I fell in love reggae at a young age. In fact, Mike was actually a drummer in a reggae band for some time, so what better way to pay homage to the music that we love and is a huge part of our LB background than to paint our jockey box cover in rasta colors! Materials1X6 boards for slats 2x2 board for corners plywood board for top 1x1 trim for top and bottom borders Spray Paint (we used Behr Spray paint with Primer in No More Drama-Red, Blazing Bonfire-yellow, and Luck of the Irish-green; and Rustoleum black matte for the borders and top) 1 1/4 inch Spax construction screws bar mat (optional for the top) Metal logo sign (12x12 Metal Print with matte finish from Shutterfly; the matte finish is better for outdoors) Jockey box (we purchased one with front connections because we didn't want to deal with connections and hoses on the sides of the box) ***sizes of cuts and width of the box are really dependent on a variety of factors including the size of the cooler, where the hoses connect to the jockey box, whether or not you want trim, and so on. Therefore, we left the exact cut sizes off of the list.  Below you can see the cuts we made. We cut the 1x6 boards to length for the sides (6 total boards, 3 for each side) and front of the jockey box cover (3 total boards). Then, we cut the 2x2 for the corner posts, 4 total pieces. The 1x1 trim was cut to match the length of the 1x6 boards, 4 boards for the sides and 2 boards for the front.  After cutting each board, we lightly sanded the 1x6 boards and then spray painted one yellow, one red, and one green board for the front and each of the sides. The 1x1 boards were spray painted black. This was our first time using Behr spray paint, and we really liked how even the color sprayed on.  After four coats and 24 hours to dry, the boards were ready to assemble. We attached the sides to the posts first. We assembled from the bottom up, starting with the black trim, followed by red, yellow, and then green which follows the color order in our logo. There was not enough of the 2x2 board to attach the top trim with a Spax screw, so we used a finishing nail to attach the top black trim instead.  Below is one of the side panels assembled without the top trim.  After the sides were assembled, we lined up the front boards with the side boards to ensure the stripes lined up correctly. After the sides were completed, we cut the plywood board to fit the top. We then spray painted the top black to match the top trim.  Last, we added our custom metal Two Jacks logo to the front of the Jockey Box cover. The metal logo is removable for transport and to prevent any scratching or damage.  Below is the view from the backside of the Jockey Box cover. You can see that there is plenty of room to grab the handles of the cooler to remove it. Also, there is plenty of room to check the ice, check the connections, and pour from the tap handles.  Initially, we had planned to add handles to the cover, but we think handles wouldn't look as nice. We have seen several jockey box covers that fold down when not in use; while convenient, we opted for a simple box. One, we personally didn't want any visible brackets or latches on the front or sides of the Jockey Box cover. Second, we felt that we would most likely be storing the cover with the Jockey box which meant that we could just leave the box as a display on our brewery shelving unit when not in use.
Overall, this was a simple and easy project. We like the overall look and are pleased with how the jockey box cover turned out. The Shutterfly metal sign came out great and we like the raised look of it more than we would like a custom sticker. The fact that the sign can be removed and stored to prevent any scratches is a bonus. Even with wood prices incredibly high right now, the total cost to make the cover including the wood, screws, paint, and metal logo sign was about $120. We hope this is the beginning of many outdoor festival pours. Cheers! 2JBC We have to say, it was fun to see what everyone voted for the hops additions to the recipes. We gave our Instagram followers four options for our Much Love WCIPA recipe: 1. Centennial, Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo 2. Cascade, Simcoe, Centennial 3. Galaxy, Amarillo, Cascade 4. Azacca, El Dorado, Citra, and Simcoe And the winner is....option #1! Now we need to plan out how and when to use the hops and why. HOPS BACKGROUND and USESBefore we get started building the recipe, a little background on the various hops, and their flavor and aroma profiles. CENTENNIAL HOPS. Centennial hops are a great dual-purpose hop, meaning they can be used for bittering and aroma. They are a similar hop to Cascade and impart notes of pine, citrus, and floral notes (I think the floral tones are the smell of citrus flowers). They tend to provide an intense citrus aroma with lots of lemon. Many recipes use them for bittering, flavor, aroma, and dry-hopping. Basically, Centennial hops are excellent when used anywhere in the brewing process. CITRA HOPS. Citra is a dual purpose hop. It has a strong citrus aroma with flavors of grapefruit, lime, and tropical fruit (mango, passion fruit, pineapple, and peach). Citra is a favorite for dry hopping as the aroma is an intense citrus bomb. However, Citra is also widely used for flavoring and aroma in the late stages of the boil and flameout. SIMCOE HOPS. Simcoe is a bit smoother than Citra and has aromas of apricot, pine, passionfruit, citrus zest, and berry. Like Centennial, they are often described as "Cascade on steroids." Simcoe is a dual purpose hop that can be used for clean bittering, imparting flavor and aroma, and earthy notes when dryhopping. AMARILLO HOPS. Amarillo also has a citrus profile with notes of lemon, orange, and grapefruit; however, it does lean a bit more towards the orange flavor profile. It is typically used as a flavor and aroma, and for dryhopping. HOP SCHEDULE for MUCH LOVE IPAWe followed one of our usual methods for adding hops. For a 60 minute boil, bittering hops added at 60 minutes, flavoring hops added between 15 and 30 minutes remaining in boil, and aroma hops added at 5 minutes and flameout. We like layering flavors of hops, so we did add hops at 10 minutes as well. For the 0 minute hops, feel free to use those as flameout hops or whirlpool them. We left this open for brewers to choose how they'd like to use the hops based on their equipment and setup (We know not everyone has whirlpool setups). Whether used at flameout or in a whirlpool (We typically whirlpool for 10 minutes and let sit for 10 minutes before cooling the wort), the aroma should impart in the beer. For dryhopping, we followed a typical 2JBC schedule. We typically dryhop after fermentation and don't like the hops sitting in the fermenter for more than 3 days. BITTERING HOPS: Simcoe, Centennial BITTERING/FLAVOR HOPS: Citra FLAVOR: Simcoe AROMA: Centennial, Citra, Simcoe, Amarillo (added 3 times to layer the aroma) DRYHOP: Simcoe, Amarillo, and Citra We're hoping for a very citrus based IPA with subtle pine notes coming from the Simcoe and Centennial YEASTWe listed White Labs #WLP001 as the yeast in the recipe. However, the yeast is really the brewer's choice. White Labs #WLP001, Fermentis Safale S-05, and Wyeast Labs #1056 are all the same strain of yeast (Chico strain). Several side by side by side taste tests have been done by endless homebrewing groups and results vary. Some brewers say one brand tastes different and others feel that the difference is imperceptible. By all means, use whichever you feel most comfortable with as all three varieties will produce a clean tasty beer. Honestly, in our 2JBC taste test, we could not find any discernible differences between all three yeast brands. WATER PROFILE & ADDITIVESWe did not create a water profile for this recipe. However, we brew with RO water at 2JBC, so we typically add the RO water into the water profile section on Beersmith to find out what additives to include to give our beer the qualities we are looking for. For this recipe, we did look over the predicted mash PH and added acid malt to get the pH into range. We like our IPAs in the pH range of 5.3-5.4 and added acid malt to set the target pH of 5.3. However, feel free to remove the acid malt and/or add in additives as you feel is necessary. You'll notice that the grain bill is a bit different from last week's due to the change in starting gravity from the addition of the acid malt; the change brings the estimated ABV to 6.7%. RECiPE NOTESWe created this recipe using Beersmith's equipment profile for all-grain brewing in a standard 5 gallon Stainless steel setup. We used a very generic setup and not the actual 2JBC setup. If you use Beersmith, we highly recommend that you type in the recipe for yourself and adjust the recipe to your beer equipment profile. Also, we highly recommend you set the AA% on your hops to include the actual values for the hops you are using as this can change the final IBUs. Recipe notes: Gravity: 1.064 Bitterness: 60.0 IBUs Color: 5.3 SRM Est FG: 1.014 Est ABV: 6.7% Bitter Ratio: 9.37 Adjusted mash pH (w/ Acid malt): 5.26 MUCH LOVE IPA RECIPE    We hope you enjoy the recipe. We are planning on brewing the Much Love IPA recipe after the CraftLB Homebrew Invitational on March 19. We'll be using the same IBUs and grain percentages with slight changes to accommodate our brewing equipment. Please let us know if you try the recipe and your thoughts. We always appreciate feedback!
Cheers! 2JBC 2022 has given 2JBC much to celebrate. We are preparing for our first ever Homebrew Competition on March 19 at the Craft LB Homebrew Invitational, we have finally (fingers crossed) dialed in our new 1 barrel brewhouse, and we are celebrating 1000 followers on Instagram! We are so excited and thrilled to see what is next! I mean, it’s homebrewing, so anything goes, right? While we are both excited and nervous for March 19th–I mean, what could wrong when you are pouring beer in a garden with no access to water or electricity?--we wanted to take the time to celebrate all of these accomplishments. We have been enjoying learning more about brewing, meeting more brewers, and developing new techniques to improve our beers. While we love that our friends and family enjoy our beers, there is nothing like the camaraderie of other brewers. Only a homebrewer truly understands the thrill of opening up a bag of hops, waiting for a shipment to arrive, geeking out over a pH meter, or that Umami taste in a beer that you created and shaped. To celebrate with other homebrewers, we wanted to create a collaborative beer with you. We will develop the beer recipe with input from our followers and share each step of the creation with you on our blog. Based on the results of our first question, the overwhelming winner was a West Coast IPA. In fact, second place was a West Coast DIPA, followed by a Pilsner. Because of this, the final result will be a beer we call Much Love IPA and will share with all of you. You are free to brew the beer, critique the recipe, make changes, update it, and share it with others. However, we only ask that you give credit where credit is due and share that Much Love IPA was created and shared by 2JBC. History of IPAsAll IPAs are not created equal and have their own unique flare. After everything I have looked over and read, it appears that the various IPA styles are very indicative of the areas in which they are produced and the tastes of the people who live there. The original IPA stemmed from the need to ship beer overseas from England to British soldiers in India. It was too hot in India to brew beer, so beer had to survive a six month journey over the seas to reach British soldiers. To survive the journey, the beer was made with high alcohol and lots of hops so that the flavors remained when the beer arrived. And the IPA was born. The first American IPA was from the Ballantine Company and was brewed until they went out of business in the 1970s. From there, Anchor Brewing Company brewed Liberty Ale with the newly grown Cascade hop and the rest is history. West Coast IPAs are most likely born out of the proximity to hop farms that produce Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Columbus. Blind Pig IPA was the first super hoppy IPA which led to other brewers to follow including Stone, Green Flash, Ballast Point, and Pizza Port. Besides the different hop varieties available, American IPAs tend to have different grains than the original British IPAs. British malts tend to be a bit more malty or bready than American malts. The bready flavor of the British malt lends itself to a more balanced bitter in the IPA while American IPAs tend to have a more mild 2-Row base that is paler in color and a bit drier on the palate. The result is the bitterness of the hops really shines through. Now, the NEIPA is what we think of as a hazy IPA while an East Coast IPA is a balance between the British and West Coast style of IPAs (think Dogfish IPAs). Breakdown of IPA stylesOf course, there are more styles than I have listed (i.e., Sour IPA, Black IPA, Milkshake IPAs, etc.), but the four below are a good starting point to understanding IPA flavors.
Building a WCIPA RecipeSo how do we build a West Coast IPA? We start with the grains. Why? Because a West Coast IPA tends to have lots of early boil bittering hops that are really pronounced and the star of the beer. WCIPAs also are heavily dry hopped and have lots of aroma hops to complete the flavor. To achieve the background needed to accentuate the hops, the base beer needs to be clean and crisp. For this, the majority of the grain bill should be 2-Row malt. To give the beer a bit more color, a bit of Crystal Malt (in small quantities) can be added. This also helps to give a bit more fermentable sugars to drive up the ABV. A bit of Carapils adds a nice mouthfeel, fuller body, and better head retention. The Grain Bill We'd love to hear your feedback on the grain bill. Since this is really the foundation for the Much Love IPA, we'd love to hear feedback! Check our Instagram Story and Feed to share your ideas for hop selections as next week we add in the hops!
Cheers! 2JBC |
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May 2024
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