American IPA

I just harvested the hops from the garden, so we decided to make an IPA to see how they taste.

Our malt in the lauter tun: 10 lbs American 2-row, 1/2 lb Munich, 1/2 lb Crystal 20L. 

Here, after an hour lautering I'm recirculating the wart to clarify. 

Into the mash tun for the hour boil.

Checking the gravity, if it's too low we the beer will be weak (so we would need to add some malt extract at this point in the process) turned out perfect (1.055). 

Since I didn't have enough fresh hops to bitter the beer, we added 1 oz of Magnum hops (12%) at the beginning of the 60 minute boil.  Since these hops were dry 1 oz will go a long way.

These are the hops I harvested (~10 oz). Since they are fresh and whole  they are much weaker by weight and volume (lots of water weight). This whole gallon sized bag and the single ounce of the magnum ought to be roughly equal in bitterness.

Adding half the fresh hops with 20 minutes left in the boil, the rest were added with 5 minutes left.

After the boil we fill the primary fermentor - in our case a small 5 gallon keg (replacing the 5 gal carboy that was broken last week) - with cooled wart. 

Last, we oxygenate and pitch the yeast. 

The primary ferment is done in 2 weeks...