Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:55 pm
Looks like I am a bit late on this one. You pose a damn good question/dilema so I figure it deserves some discussion. I have no idea what the recipe is but assume it is a Pliny-like double IPA recipe with the 90 boil due to a 90 minute hop addition as opposed to use of Pilsner malts requiring the 90 minute boil for DMS boil-off. As such, the hop iso-acid utitilizations will be screwed up a bit by the concentrated wort, but with such an overly hopped beer it really shouldn't matter .... calculated IBU's >200. Also, the 6 gallon batch with a 9.27 gallon pre-boil volume I would guess that you are dealing with ~2.25 gallons of evaporation during the boil and 1 gallon of liquid being lost due to the massive amount of hop material at the bottom of the boil kettle after whirlpool ... this would mean that the final liquid volume in the kettle at the end of the boil would be 7 gallons (A.K.A.
your boil kettle volume limit). The final 1 extra gallon would be lost due to the massive amount of dry hops added post fermentation.
I see a few options.
1) Brew to your system's volume limits and be content with less beer in the final product. (be sure to control your gravities by monitoring your wort gravity during the sparge ... adjust accordingly). Hops will be a bit out of whack, but that is kinda the idea with this beer.
2) split the batch and have two boils going at the same time ... or consecutively (be sure to get wort collected during the sparge up to mash out temps before setting aside otherwise the enzymes will continue to kick on and off while the unboiled wort cools.
3) Boil as much as you can in your boil kettle and have another couple of gallons boiling on your kitchen stove that you can add throughout or at the end of the boil. Adding boiling water as space becomes available will help reduce impacts to the ISo-alpha acid utilization rates.
Tip: Turn off the burner just before you add the hops, and then only add the hops a few pellets at a time. With no extra space you will have a boil over otherwise.
Now that I gave my belated advice ... what did you end up doing?
Eagle Dude
On Tap: Barrel Fermented Berlinerweisse 3.2%; American Pale Ale 6.3%, Amarillo Blond 5%
Aging: Flander's Red in a 60 gallon Merlot barrel
Fermenting: Robust Porter 6.5%
