Brewing with Hop Extract

I always seem to be in the mood for a hop overload. I decided to brew up a batch of Double IPA that was loosely based on Russian River's ever popular Pliny the Elder. The main thing I wanted to experiment with was hop extracts for the bittering addition of this brew.

A decent Double IPA has a ton of hops used throughout the brew process and these can put a serious dent in the amount of actual finished beer that one ends up with. While I wanted a lot of control over the hop flavor and aroma in my beer, I thought that the bittering component would be a perfect fit for hop extract of uncertain origin. I was able to get some IsoHop Bitterness Extract from MoreBeer. Which I swapped out for roughly 18oz of high alpha acid bittering hops in my 20 gallon batch.

The hop extract worked wonderfully and I was able to get 22 gallons of wort out of my brew pot quite easily. The finished wort going into the fermenter had a substantial bitterness to it (of course I added enough hop extract to theoretically add 175 IBUs), and was likely comfortably at the max of 100 actual IBUs.

Here is the recipe I brewed on May 21st, 2009.

Note: for a beer this big you need a lot of fresh yeast, so two weeks beforehand I brewed up a 20 gallon batch of a Golden ale (made with hibiscus and jasmine flowers & honey) that I fermented with WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast.

Finished Beer Volume: 20 gallons
Target Gravity: 1.074
Target IBU (theoretical): 189

Fermentable Ingredients

• 53.25 lb Golden Promise Malt (82.1% of extract)
• 4 lb Carapils (5.5% of extract)
• 1.25 lb Crisp Crystal 45L (1.7% of extract)
• 4.5 lb Sugar (10.7% of extract)

Mash for 60 minutes at 152ºF with 6oz of Simcoe whole hops. Recirculate until clear and collect 26 gallons of wort.

Hop additions

• 6 oz Simcoe, whole (added to mash)
  
• 2 oz Isohop, Extract (boil for 90 minutes)
  
• 4 oz Simcoe, whole (15 minutes left in boil)
  
• 4 oz Amarillo, whole (15 minutes left in boil)
• 4 oz Centennial, pellet (steep after flame-out)
  
• 11 oz Simcoe, pellet (steep after flame-out)
• 13 oz Amarillo, pellet (dry hop in secondary)
• 12 oz Centennial, pellet (dry hop in secondary)

Even without the dry hops, the fermenting beer is smelling very hoppy and quite nice.