Russian River Simcoe 25 West Coast IPA

Mill the grains and mash at 150°F (66°C) for 30 minutes or as long as it takes to pass the iodine test.

Sparge the grains with 168°F (76°C) water, topping up as necessary to get about 7 gallons (26.5 liters) of wort, depending on your evaporation rate.

Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule.

After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Stir or recirculate to create a vortex, cooling the wort (if possible) to 180°F-190°F (82°C-88°C); add whirlpool hops and allow 10 minutes to steep and settle.

Chill to 60°F (16°C), aerate the wort, pitch yeast, and add nutrient (preferably including zinc). Also add first dry hops (see Brewer’s Note below).

Ferment at 62°F (17°C) for the first three days, then raise to 68°F (20°C).

Once primary fermentation is complete, wait an extra day, then dump/remove hops (or rack to secondary), and add second dry hops. After 2 more days, dump/remove hops.

Once the gravity has stabilized after any hop creep and the beer has passed VDK (see below), crash, package, and carbonate to about 2.7 volumes of CO2.

BREWER’S NOTES
Hop products: I used only flowable advanced hop products for the first dry hop—specifically, YCH Simcoe DynaBoost and YCH 803 Simcoe (an essential oil), in addition to the Abstrax Quantum. DynaBoost and 803 generally aren’t available to homebrewers, so I included the T-90 pellet equivalents in the recipe. YCH’s recommended conversion rate is 1:10, so at this scale you’d want about 0.5 oz (14 g) of DynaBoost. The Abstrax Quantum is available in 5 ml quantities.
Dip hop: With the DynaBoost, I use a version of Kelsey McNair’s method at North Park in San Diego. I take a small amount of hot wort from the whirlpool (for example, with a pitcher), mix in the DynaBoost with a handheld blender, then add the mix directly to the fermentor. I also add other hop products to the tank at this time, but not in the hot-wort solution.
Dumping hops: If you’re using a conical, you can continue to dump the hop/yeast trub from the cone. If you can’t dump the cone, relax, don’t worry, and have a homebrew.
pH: The dry hop load on this beer is very high, and that means the pH will rise significantly. If you can, before dry hopping, add phosphoric acid to adjust the pH to 4.3—that will help beer clear the hop creep–driven diacetyl more quickly. (I also recommend adding ALDC enzyme.)
Hop creep: On the day of the second dry hop (this is post-fermentation), take a gravity reading of the beer and note it in your brew log. Three days later, take another gravity reading and note it, and continue to do this each day—it will drop some due to the secondary fermentation driven by hop creep. Once you go two days in a row where your gravity hasn’t dropped, and the beer has passed VDK (see “Hunting for Diacetyl,” beerandbrewing.com), you can begin to crash the beer.