Rainy Day IPA 2

The other beer that was brewed prior to the Coffee Stout was the Rainy Day IPA. I originally brewed this recipe back in June of 2009. The name came about because it happened to be raining on brew day. Rainy Day IPA 2 was brewed on January 18, 2010, transferred to secondary fermenter on February 2, and bottled on February 14. This should be ready to drink middle to end of March and in its prime the 1^st ofApril. I’ve noticed that with IPA’s the sooner you drink them the better as over time the alpha acids from the hops break down and the beers lose their flavor.

This version of Rainy Day should have a much greater hop presence as I used almost double the amount of hops used. I still focused on floral/citrus hops, but I tweaked the recipe to use Amarillo, Cascade, and Simcoe hops since I had them already. I also added the hops in .5 oz increments every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes of the boil. I also kept the bitterness down at 35 IBU’s to barely fit the guidelines. IBU stands for International Bittering Units, which is a measurement of the bitterness in the beer. As you have probably figured out, the bitterness in the beer comes from the hops used. Hops contain alpha acids, a bittering compound that is extracted from the hops through boiling them. Certain hops are better suited for bittering as they have higher alpha acid content and it becomes more efficient to use a smaller amount of higher alpha acid hops to achieve your desired bitterness. Hops used later in the boiling stage or during fermentation will add flavor and aroma to the beer. Adding hops while the beer is fermenting/conditioning is a process called “dry hopping”. For this beer, I saved about .5 oz of each hop variety and dry hopped in the secondary fermenter for 12 days. After bottling this beer last night, I tried an uncarbonated sample and it had a nice orange/tangerine/lemon flavor to it. After measuring the final gravity this beer is a little over 6.1% ABV.