Description

To celebrate the launch of Lallemand Verdant IPA yeast James Heffron Head Brewer at Verdant shared their recipe for Even Sharks Need Water.

The aim for the beer was and still is to be pretty full on flavour and aroma wise, not shying away from the aggressive nature of Galaxy. It’s a pretty brash hop, harsh bittering qualities coupled with mega high dry hop polyphenols makes for a very ‘green’ experience early doors. Skilful use of the hop and a bit of patience helps bring the tropical and creamy nature to the fore.

This recipe kit does not include yeast, please remember to add your chosen yeast to your basket.

 

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Ingredients Included

Crisp Extra Pale (Lager) Malt (3300 grams)
Simpsons Finest Pale Ale Golden Promise®™ (800 grams)
TMM Jumbo Oat Flakes  (450 grams)
Weyermann® Carapils® (450 grams)
Crisp Pale Wheat Malt (220 grams)
TMM Rolled Wheat Flakes (220 grams)

Oat Husks (200 grams) optional

Magnum Pellets (3 grams)
Galaxy™ Pellets (150 grams)
Citra Pellets (240 grams)
LALBREW® VERDANT IPA Dried Yeast 11g (Not included)

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Method

Beer Style (main): American Ales
Beer Style (sub): Juicy or Hazy India Pale Ale
Batch Size: 19L
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.015
ABV %: 6.5%
IBU: 7.3

THE MASH
Temperature °C: 67c
Length (mins): 45mins
Out temp °C:
Out time (mins):

THE BOIL
Boil time (mins): 60

Additions and timing:

3g Magnum (12% AA) @ First Wort Hops

Yeast-Vit @ 15minutes (not included)

80 degree 30 min whirlpool/hopstand = 30g Galaxy & 60g Citra

Secondary additions and timing:

Post ferment dry hop = 120g Galaxy T90’s & 180g Citra T90’s (16gpl dry hop)

Dry hop rouse and crash to zero. Keep hop contact time to less than 72 hours if possible.

Yeast: Lallemand Verdant IPA (not included)
Fermentation temperature/steps: 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.

Comments:

To celebrate the launch of Lallemand Verdant IPA yeast James Heffron Head Brewer at Verdant shared their recipe for Even Sharks Need Water.

Even Sharks Need Water

I think we first brewed this beer in early 2016 on a 200L kit! We had just managed to get hold of some rare as rocking horse shit Galaxy hops and it was a no brainer to pair it up with Citra in a NEIPA. The aim for the beer was and still is to be pretty full on flavour and aroma wise, not shying away from the aggressive nature of Galaxy. It’s a pretty brash hop, harsh bittering qualities coupled with mega high dry hop polyphenols makes for a very ‘green’ experience early doors. Skilful use of the hop and a bit of patience helps bring the tropical and creamy nature to the fore. In my experience different hop varieties make for differing amounts of haze or ‘murk’ in the finished beer. With sharks we use the top 2 murk producing varieties out there! Expect an opaque light yellow creamy/yoghurt affair that has a soft smooth body leading to an assertive finish. Aromas should leap out, flavours should fully saturate and if brewed well it should have a lovely fluffy white head on it that lasts.

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.