Verdant IPA Yeast – Home Brewing Competition
Do you think you can brew an IPA like Verdant?
Well lets see if you can using the new Lallemand Verdant IPA dried yeast.
To celebrate the launch of the new Verdant IPA Yeast on the 28th of July, the guys at Lallemand and Verdant Brewing Co got together, with the team at The Malt Miller and BrewCon London, to set the challenge of who can brew an IPA in the style of Verdant. The goal, to see which home brewer can brew the best IPA in the style of Verdant Brewing Co.
The competition will go live on Thursday the 16th of July at noon when the yeast will be available on our site.
The main rule, all entries have to be brewed using the Lallemand Verdant IPA Yeast, and we’re going to give you a pack of this for free when the competition goes live.
There will be 200 packets of free yeast, one pack for each entry, and each person is only allowed one entry, so only one pack of yeast.
To claim your free pack just go to this link here on Thursday and add it to your basket, and use Coupon Code: VerdantComp when you get to payment to ensure you get the yeast for free!
Please don’t forget to use the code as otherwise you will be charged for the yeast and we’re sure you’d rather have it for free.
Your 6 digit order number (top right of your packing slip or in your order history) then becomes your competition entry number that you have to label your 3 x 330ml bottles of IPA with. Your order number is vital to ensure that we can track and notify the winners and to keep the entries secret from the judges.
Between now and the launch on Thursday get your brewing hats on, clear your brew schedules, start preparing your recipe, add ingredients to your basket so you are then just ready to add the yeast on Thursday and ensure that you are entered into the ultimate competition with the chance to win a brew day at Verdant Brewing Co.
Final beers then need to reach Verdant Brewing Co. for judging by 13th of August.
So lets try and give you some help and guidance on what makes a Verdant Brewing Co. beer and what is expected from your entry….
To do this James Heffron (Head Brewer at Verdant) has kindly given us his recipe for Even Sharks Need Water and awesome advice of their brewing techniques at Verdant:
With regards to a suitable water profile for ESNW I would encourage home brewers to experiment. Get a good accurate water report for your area specifically focussing on ppm’s for Calcium, Chloride, Magnesium, Sodium, Sulphate and Bicarbonate. Down in Cornwall we have predominantly soft water ranging from ‘moderately soft’ to ‘very soft’. This basically means ppm’s for all the cations and anions are very low, it also means we have a great base line water source for building style profiles. I know some brewers who utilise reverse osmosis techniques to almost entirely demineralise their water, but I like the fact that all we do is run it through a sediment filter and then a carbon filter. This removes any rust or debris from old mains water pipes and also the volatile low level chlorine used to kill bacteria. Working with the water in your area, in my opinion, is one of the most exciting parts of brewing that’s similar to the concept of ‘terroir’ in farming. With sharks we push Chloride up to around 230ppm, we leave Sulphate at base mains level (10ppm), we elevate Sodium to around 50ppm. The Sodium Chloride is added to the boil and the Calcium Chloride to the mash. By doing this we create a very soft mouthfeel but without elevating Calcium levels above 100ppm. You don’t need to try and emulate this profile though, in fact I would suggest not too if your base line is too far off initially. It’s far more important to work with what you’ve got and tweak from there.
Other tips for success with a NEIPA would be to monitor you PH’s. Mash should be 5.2-5.3 at 20 degrees C. Pre-boil 5-5.1, post boil 4.9-5.05, sparge 5.5-6, post ferment 4.3, post dry hop 4.5-4.8. Oxygen will ruin your beer faster than anything else. Trying to mitigate this at home-brew level is going to be tricky. I would suggest closed transfer under pressure to separate purged vessel for dry hopping, force carbonating and not bottle conditioning. Do not hunt for biotransformation, wait for the ferment to finish, make sure it passes a forced diacetyl test, soft crash to 15 and then dry hop. You will avoid hop creep this way. Hop creep is something we don’t like at Verdant, it makes for an over attenuated beer that that has far more diacetyl to clear up.
Regarding our yeast, pitch at 18 and let rise to 19 and hold. Free rise to 22 for D rest once gravity is at about 1.030. The dry yeast version rages! Expect a massive krausen and potentially higher than anticipated attenuation on generation 1.
If you wish to brew this recipe as your entry feel free to do this, we have put it together as a Recipe Kit that you can just add to your basket. The kit does not include the yeast, please ensure you add this to the order too.
Even though we’ve given you this the competition though is not to brew the best clone of Even Sharks Need Water, just to be clear.
All entries must submit 3 x 330ml bottles of their brew correctly labelled with their 6 digit order number from The Malt Miller from claiming their free packet of yeast.
No other identify marks or writing should be present on the bottle.
Your 3 bottled competition entries should be packed and sent to:
Verdant Brewing Co
F.A.O. Simon Pipola
30 Parkengue Kernick Industrial Estate
Penryn
TR10 9EP
Final judging of the best 25 beers will then be done by the brewers at Verdant Brewing on the 28th of August.
The winners will be announced following final judging.
Prizes will be awarded according to the judges decisions.
The judges decision is final and prizes are not transferable.
First Prize
Brew Day at Verdant Brewing in Cornwall (to be arranged with Lallemand once COVID19 restrictions are removed)
Years supply of Lallemand Yeast
£100 voucher for The Malt Miller
BrewCon London ticket
Verdant Beers
Second Prize
Lallemand yeast and goodies
£75.00 voucher for the Malt Miller
BrewCon London Ticket
Third Prize
Lallemand goodies
£50.00 voucher for The Malt Miller
BrewCon London ticket
