Kveik Double IPA 1.0

Not being that big a fan of hop-forward beers, I have never brewed a Double IPA before.  As with the Pale Ale I made yesterday, I wanted to take another shot at using the hopping knowledge imparted at HomeBrewCon along with some of the leftover Kveik yeast from the Pale Ale to produce a Double IPA.

The recipe below is based on a combination of a gold-medal winning recipe from the AHA web site, the items I had on hand, and the Lallemand Voss Kveik yeast left over from the batch yesterday.

Ingredients

9 pounds Weyerman Pilsner Malt

2.25 pounds Viking Pale Ale Malt

1.5 pounds Flaked Oats

4 ounces Honey Malt

1 16-ounce can of Lyle's Golden Syrup

8 ounces Vienna Malt

0.75 ounces Summit hops pellets @ 17.5% AA (60 min.)

1 ounce El Dorado hops pellets @ 12.8% AA (10 min.)

1 ounce Southern Passion hops pellets @ 12.0% AA (10 min.)

1 ounce Citra hops pellets @ 12.6% AA (whirlpool 20 min.)

1 ounce Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets @ 10.1% AA (whirlpool 20 min.)

1 ounce Citra hops pellets @ 12.8% AA (dry hop)

1 ounce Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets @ 10.1% AA (dry hop)

1 ounce Southern Passion hops pellets @ 12.0% AA (dry hop)

0.64 ounces Simcoe hops pellets @ 13.6% AA (dry hop)

1/2 of a packet of Lallemand dry Voss Kveik yeast

1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient

6.4 gallons RO water treated for a hoppy beer (Ca: 95, Mg: 30, Na: 25, Cl: 50, SO4: 300, HCO: 42)

Note:  If' you're used to "regular" yeast, you'll notice some differences here with the Kveik.  I pitched only about half the package, and I could have pitched even less. Kveik yeasts deliver more flavor and aroma when extremely underpitched.  I am also adding more yeast nutrient than normal, as Kveik yeast strains need more than most normal yeast.  Last, but not yeast, I'm fermenting at 95F because the yeast likes very hot temperatures.

Brewfather estimates characteristics of the beer to be:

• Batch Size: 5 gallons (4.5 gallons actual)
• Original Gravity: 1.085 SG (1.073 SG actual)
• Pre-Boil Gravity:  1.070 SG (17 Brix actual)
• Final Gravity: 1.016 SG (1.008 SG actual)
• ABV:  9.7% (8.9% actual on Kveik batch, 10.0% actual on US-05 and mango batch)
• SRM: 5.2
• IBU: 85
• BU/GU: 1.00

Mash schedule is simple.  Start at 149F and hold for 60 minutes, then mash out at 168F.  Sparge with two gallons of the RO water.

Boil schedule:

• 60 minutes:  Summit hops
• 10 minutes:  El Dorado, Southern Passion, Yeast Nutrient
• 0 minutes: Cool down to 176F then gradually add hops pellets a few at a time while stirring the wort as often as possible.  After 20 minutes, chill the wort to 90F and pump into the fermenter

Fermentation Plan:

• Kveik seems to prefer being pitched at 86F, so pitch at that temp and ramp up gradually to 95F or slightly above and hold there until 90% fermentation is reached.
• At 90% fermentation (roughly 4-6 points above FG) add the dry hops.  Prepare to bottle the beer 2 days after adding the dry hops, or 3 days after FG is reached (whichever comes last).
• If bottle conditioning, I'd aim for low carbonation as there may be some "hop creep" once bottled that will increase the carbonation to medium or high (but this is up to you).

Post-Brew Notes and Observations

06/26/2020:  FIltered and measured 4 gallons and 48 ounces of RO water for the mash.  This turned out to be too thick a mash to properly wet all the grains, so I added more (but forgot to measure) until the grains had a layer about a quarter-inch thick above them. I stirred them very well and then placed the filter lid on top of the Grainfather basket.  I turned on the pump and adjusted the flow until wort was just starting to trickle over the overflow pipe.  

As I was prepping the hops, I realized that I could turn this into two batches of beer.  I decided to split the finished wort into two half-batches, using Kveik as planned for one batch, and using US-05 yeast with some mango flavoring for the other.  I added 2 ounces of Amoretti natural Mango flavor to the fermenter.  I ended up with 2.25 gallons in the Kveik fermenter and 2.25 in the US-05 fermenter.  

There was a considerable amount of trub in the fermenters after the wort was pumped into them, so I am debating making this one of the rare cases where I do a secondary fermentation and cold crash.  The beer is also fairly hazy at this point, so gelatin finings might be warranted too.  We'll see, of course.

I came up about a half-gallon short on the wort and 12 points low on gravity. I'm beginning to think that this is either a grain crush problem or perhaps a problem the scale. Maybe my scale isn't accurately weighing the malt and I'm ending up with less than I think I am.  I'll need to check those next.

06/27/2020:  Fermentation started around 11pm yesterday and is continuing today.  As of this writing, the gravity has dropped from 1.073 to 1.016, which is 63% attenuation and 6.6% ABV.  Brewfather says this is 75% of the way to complete.  Fermentation temp ramped up to 92F and has been holding there since.

The portion pitched with US-05 is moving far more slowly.  It's down from 1.080 SG (the 7 points coming from the mango) to 1.057 SG, representing 27% attentuation and 3.4% ABV, which Brewfather says is 32% finished.  Fermentation temp has been holding at 70F so far.

This shows the difference between Kveik and normal yeasts.  Kveik is probably going to finish fermentation today, while US-05 might reach the half-way mark.

At 11pm, the Kveik batch was 88% fermented.  I mixed up the dry hops as best I could, then split the mixture in half, adding half in a muslin bag into the Kveik fermenter, saving the rest to add to the US-05 batch when it reaches a similar level of fermenation.  As of this writing, it's at the 44% mark.

06/28/2020:  The chart below shows the gravity and temperature over time of the Kveik version of this beer.  As you can see, fermentation was pretty much finished about 36 hours after pitching.  I didn't use my temperature control rig with this batch, just an Inkbird controller, a fermwrap heater, and some insulation, so the temperature has bounced around a bit.  I also decided to lower it once fermentation seemed to be well underway just to conserve energy.  The yeast seemed fine with this, judging from the data:

If you want an interesting comparison, the US-05 batch was pitched maybe 10 minutes later than the Kveik batch was.  It's been in the coolest part of my basement, without temperature control.  Here's what US-05 managed to do in the same time as Lallemand Voss Kveik:

As you can see, while the US-05 has moved through quite a lot of the sugar in the beer, it's still pretty far behind there the Kveik yeast has gone in the same timeframe.  To be fair, the gravity of the US-05 batch was about 7 points higher than the Kveik batch due to the addition of mango in the US-05 batch.  Still, they are about 9 points apart as I write this and have been far more apart than that for the past day or so.  I suspect the US-05 batch will have attenuated enough that it will be time to dry hop it tonight before I go to bed.  I would imagine we'll see some further gravity reductions to hop-creep when the dry hops go in.

06/29/2020:  The Kveik batch is reading 1.011/1.012 SG today, down from 1.013 yesterday.  I'll need to keep an eye on this to decide when to bottle it.  I don't want the dry hops in there too long, and I can't really remove it without either transferring the wort out or removing the lid - both of which would increase oxygen exposure.

07/03/2020:  Bottled both the Kveik and US-05/Mango versions today.  I am pleased with both of them but the mango version seemed much better to both my wife and I.  We'll see if that holds true after carbonation.  The Kveik version finished at 1.008 SG (8.9% ABV).  The US-05 version finished at 1.008 SG also, which because of the mango added to it, means an ABV of 10%.