How To Brew Tropics Hazy IPA

This is Tropics. This has been sent to me from Berkeley Yeast. They sent it overnight across country so that I would have the freshest sample of this yeast.

And word on the street is, it makes an incredible hazy IPA. I think it’s about time I found out.

My name is Martin Keen and my challenge today is clear, that is, I need to brew some delicious wort in order to feed that yeast a real feast.

And to that end, I have my bag of grains here freshly milled for me yesterday by Atlantic Brew Supply.

Now there are some extra steps as always with hazy IPA’s I don’t always have to take with some of the other beers, but to start off things, wow. They just start as usual – mashing in here at 152 Fahrenheit, 67 Celsius.

And I’m going to be mashing at that temperature for about an hour. There’s quite a lot of conversion that needs to happen here. This isn’t a massively big beer, but it’s no shrinking violet session beer either. So we’re going to keep, just keep an eye on the gravity as the mash continues.

All right. Now, before we get into what this yeast really is all about, let’s talk about what’s in the mash.

So in the grist for this one, well, original gravity looking at around 1.066, around 6.7% ABV somewhere around that range.

In terms of ingredients, well, hazy IPA’s you want to give a nice malt base to these things with a really soft mouth feel as well. Um, what I’m going to use is 51% of just 2-row as my base malt.

And then to that I’m going to add at 15% each carafoam, flaked barley, and white wheat malt. And then to round things out at 4%, I’ll be adding in aromatic malt.

Berkeley Yeast

Now about that yeast. So first off, is this video sponsored by Berkeley yeast? No, they sent me a free sample, but that’s all.

Now what makes this year such a good fit for hazy IPA’s? Well, the Berkeley yeast website has a pretty good example. They show how a pineapple is made up of millions of molecules, but only a few of those are what gives the taste we associate with pineapple.

Those pineapple tasting molecules made by genes and the yeast strain that Berkeley yeast user actually makes those same pineapple tasting molecules.

Through some experimentation, a yeast strain is developed that creates just the right amount of pineapple tasting molecules and therefore just the right amount of pineapple flavor.

Now the yeast strain I’m using is called Tropics. It’s a London ale yeast and releases tropical files from hops and barley, but not pineapple. We should expect to get strong guava and passionfruit notes. Berkeley yeast says it will fill your nostrils with tropical fruit aroma. We’ll see.

Hops Schedule

Adding cascade hops into the Whirlpool is said to accentuate that aroma. So that’s what I’ll be doing.

The hops in today’s brew, I’m using three; Calypso, Cascade and Galaxy, but in the boil, I’m only using one, just this packet of Calypso. Overall, the beers can have an IBU around 53. This’ll get me to about 34 IBU. Just a 30 minute boil today with this going in at the start of that boil.

Boil is done. Um, I hooked up my plate chiller and just coolled down to 180 Fahrenheit. And that’s my whirlpool temperature. And I’m going to stay at this whirlpool temperature for 20 minutes and add some more hops. I am going to be adding some more Calypso.

Then I’m going to be adding some cascades. Remembering that cascade goes very well with this Tropics yeast. And one of my favorites, fruity hops; galaxy. So these are going to go in and stay in for 20 minutes.

Final Gravity Reading

Looks like I am at 1.063, for original gravity, pretty close to what I was shooting for. The wort still just a touch warm. So I’m going to hook this up to the glycol chiller and knock it down a few degrees before I add the yeast.

Wort is down to 70 Fahrenheit or 21 Celsius after a good session on the glycol chiller which you might be able to hear running down there. Now it’s time to add this guy in the Tropics.

Uh, I don’t know actually how much yeast is in here. Only that I let Berkeley yeast know that I was brewing three gallon batch and, uh, this is how much they gave me. So I’m going to pour this all in.

Now there is one more stage to go here. I’m going to dry hop. So when the fermentation activity starts to die down, but just before it stops, that’s when I’m going to add in my final hop charge two, three days from now, we’ll see how long this yeast takes to activate. And then we can give it a try.

Tasting

I’m going to enjoy seeing your drink that. Sorry. Oh, that’s great. Okay. So it’s tasting time. I have Caleb with me. Welcome, Thanks for having me back. You think it’s safe to say we’re both quite excited. I can smell it from here. Amazing. Crazy. Yeah. So amazing.

Just from the airlock alone, just from sniffing that I’ve been getting tropical fruit. So, um, yeah, it smells like a, like a fresh cut, like passionfruit, uh, tropical all over everywhere. Wow. I mean it does, it smells like fruit juice. Yes. It smells like fruit juice.

Yeah. I made a lot of Neipa’s and this is, this is really something different. This is the fruitiest, non-fruit beers, I think I’ve ever smelled. Right.

Yeah. I’m definitely getting a lot of that just tropical passion fruit just really sticks out to me. Yeah. I think, uh, reading the description of the yeast is supposed to have like passion fruit and guava, you know, characteristics. I can, you know, I can see where they get guava, but uh, definitely passionate fruit.

It’s absolutely super strong. You can definitely get it in the taste too. And then just sort of balance with that, I think you’ve got the bitterness of the beer as well. It’s definitely got a good, solid bitterness. I like the balance of the bitterness.

The mouth feels really nice too. It just, it coats your mouth, uh, in, you really do get a lot of the, um, hop flavor and aroma as it’s kinda you open your mouth and you smell and taste that. Yeah. Well, yeah, this has come out so well, thank you for doing the tasting. Oh man. Thanks for inviting. Absolutely.

This is so worth tasting and I, I want some of this yeast myself. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Berkeley yeast for sending this, sending it fresh. Cross-country overnight, uh, you know, the results speak for themselves. It’s amazing. There we go.

Uh, so, well, we’ll fill those up and I’ll, I’ll enjoy that later. Sounds good.

Karl S

Lead marketer, brewer, dad, and husband. Pretty much an all-round awesome guy. I’ve been homebrewing for +20 yrs, an aspiring pro-brewer and micro brewery owner!