Lazy Hazy Summer Session IPA

Hey everyone, it’s Rachel from Claw Hammer Supply. Today is the first day of summer, so to celebrate, we’re going to be brewing a lazy, hazy summer session IPA.

It’s going to be low in ABV, medium in bitterness, and packed with juicy, hoppy flavor.

Typically, we don’t show adjusting water chemistry in these videos, but today we will. We’re adding 7.5 grams of calcium chloride per 8 gallons of water and 3.6 grams of gypsum (calcium sulfate), and 0.6 grams of Epsom salt (just a sprinkle).

Now that we’ve balanced out our water chemistry, we’re ready to brew.

For this brew, we’re primarily using a Pilsner malt, which you can see here, and will be grinding that up in a minute. In addition to that, we’re also using some flaked oats and barley. These three will add a nice body of flavor without adding alcohol.

We still want a session beer, because most of the time you don’t want to be drinking a lot.

We’re now mashing in at 160 degrees for 60 minutes. It’s my first solo brewing experience, but I think it’s going to be great. We’re just going to break up the chunks and get all the air bubbles out.

We’re mashing at such a high temp to make the beer a little sweeter. The low end of the spectrum would be around 140.

We’ve finished our 60-minute mash and we’re going to let the grains drain for about 10 minutes while we bring the heat up to boil. Our grains are well-drained, so we’re going to remove the basket and put it at an angle.

I’m just going to take out the basket and put it at an angle, so I put this hop basket to create a little bit of space here when I add the lid. It creates a steam vent so that the boil doesn’t go over the edges. Alright, so we are weighing out our first hop addition.

We’re going to do a quarter ounce of El Dorado hops. I got them on the first try. There’s a lot of hops in that freezer, so El Dorado is a great dual-purpose hop.

We’re using El Dorado as our 60-minute bittering addition, but we’re also going to be using it as a late addition to add in some bright tropical fruit flavors like watermelon.

Our wort is now up to a boil. As you can see, we’re going to add our quarter ounce of El Dorado hops. Alright, so we have about ten minutes left of our 60-minute boil.

We’ll just flip on our pump and recirculate that for a few minutes to sanitize. We’re done with our 60-minute boil now, and what we’re going to do is turn off the heat element because we want to get the wort down to 180 degrees for our final whirlpool hop addition.

I’m also going to turn on the pump during this time. Now we’re going to get some cool water flowing through our hose and you can see here the temperatures are actually dropping fairly quickly.

Alright, so we have reached 180 degrees and so now we’re going to do a final whirlpool hop addition. We’re going to do two ounces each of El Dorado and mosaic hops.

Here we go, rock and rolling. And now we’re going to just turn the pump back on for 20 minutes. Alright, so our 20-minute whirlpool is finished. We are now going to turn on the hose and pull our wort down to pitch.

Alright, so we’re going to take our starting gravity here so we’ll know what we’re working with, 1046 or 10:47, so that’s what you can expect. We have our sanitized fermenter here. I’m just going to turn off the pump and pump back on.

Definitely a summer brew, it smells honestly like pineapple juice. I’m really excited. Now it’s time to put your yeast. Again, we’re using the London III yeast from White Labs. There we go.

This is the most awkward part of the whole thing, so we’re just going to agitate and aerate for about a minute. Alright, we’re good. So now I’m going to put our airlock in. As you just witnessed, I broke the airlock because I shoved it in too hard. Just don’t do that, kids.

You don’t have to push it that hard. I pushed it too hard. I mishandled it, and now I broke it. So, we have another one we’re using. That’s probably sufficient.

Today was a very interesting brew day. I feel like I learned a lot. This is the first brew that I did completely by myself. We had a couple of little setbacks, but nothing too bad.

So, I’m going to taste this wort and see where it’s at. It smells just like pineapple juice, and it kind of looks like it too. So, it’s going to be good. It’s super sweet, super fruity. There’s like guava, pineapple, watermelon. I can definitely taste it. And I think it’s going to make a really nice light tropical beer. Cheers!

Hello again. It’s been a couple of days since we cursed our wort that is now beer. And now we’re going to dry hop a little bit. We’re going to use two ounces of El Dorado hops. Alright, money.

Take off the lid here. This is our hop bag. It’s basically the size of a body bag. But we’re just going to put some hops in it. Dry hopping your beer is a really good way to just add to the hoppy aroma of your beer.

It’s a great thing to do for IPAs. It will give us a little more of that citrus pineapple flavor that we were going for. And so now we’re going to dry hop for three days or so and then take this bag out and continue the fermenting process.

Hopefully end up with a really yummy IPA.

So we’re back here after a couple of days. We’ve been dry hopping our IPA. And now we’re getting ready to take the bag out, so that we can finish fermenting and then keg it in a couple of days. My hands are sanitized.

I’m just letting the hops drain out a little bit. I’m not going to squeeze them too much. I’m just going to let it drain. So now we’re just going to sanitize the lid, put it back on, pop in a new airlock, and then we’re going to ferment for a couple more days before we keg this baby up.

It’s definitely way hoppier since we dry hopped it. I’m smelling a lot of pineapple, pineapple and hops. I think it’s going to be super refreshing and crispy and delicious.

Alright, so my hands are star sanitized and I’m going to take a final gravity reading. And I’m just using a turkey baster to pull some of the beer out for the hydrometer.

Alright, see, we’re at our final gravity is 1020. And the reason it’s finished higher is because we mashed at a higher temperature at 160, and that’s going to create a little bit more of a body in our beer and a little more mouthfeel.

So, that’s right where we want it. I’m just going to pop my lid off. We have our auto siphon here. So exciting. My beer’s getting kegged. Five gallons, and now we’re just going to put it in the keg. I did it!

We’re at our Fourth of July party. This is my lazy, hazy summer session IPA. It’s super hoppy right now.

So, this is the first taste. It’s still super tropical fruity, pineapple-y, refreshing.