How to Brew - Pool Water Session IPA Recipe

Temperatures are on the rise and pool season is just around the corner! Our dreams of relaxing by the pool with a cold beer have inspired us to share this delicious IPA recipe with you, along with an innovative "green" brewing technique that our sales manager Nick has incorporated into his home brewing routine. Instead of wasting tap water by running it through his immersion chiller to cool wort, he conserves water by connecting the immersion chiller to a submersible pump and circulating re-purposed water from his pool to quickly bring down the temperature. Follow our session IPA recipe for a refreshing beverage to enjoy during the hot summer months.

Prep:

To start, fill a brew kettle with 3.75g of water and heat it to our strike temperature (the temperature we add our grain) using a floor burner. You want to heat the water to 162° F to achieve your target mash temperature of 150° F. While the water is heating up, use a grain mill to crush your grain into grist for the mash and prep your mash tun.

Mash:

When the water reaches 162° F, transfer it to the mash tun using the ball valve on your brew kettle and 1/2" tubing. Now is the time to dough in (add all the milled grain). When doughing in, pour the grain slowly into the mash tun and stir vigorously to prevent dough balls from forming, as that will limit your extraction of sugars. Once all the grain is mixed in properly, check to ensure temperature is around 150° F, then close the lid and set a timer to 60 minutes. Every 15 minutes, give the mash a nice stir to ensure equal temperatures throughout the grain bed.

Sparge:

Immediately after setting your 60 minute timer on your mash, you should get your sparge water started. Fill the kettle with 5 gallons of water and begin heating it to 170° F. For ease, we do a batch sparge at the end of the mash. Drain your mashtun of liquid (wort) into a clean vessel. This could be a bucket or another cooler or pot, just not the kettle you plan on boiling in. Pour the sparge water into the mashtun and give it a good stir. Let sit 10-15 minutes and then drain it along with the wort into your boil kettle.

Boil:

Heat the wort to a boil. Be careful when nearing boiling because of hot break - a brief period of foaming that can easily cause a huge mess. Stirring the wort and approaching the boil slowly is the easiest way to prevent boil over from hot break. Once the boil is reached, start a timer for 60 minutes and add 0.5oz of Centennial. When there are 15 minutes left on the timer, place your immersion chiller in the boil to sanitize it and add 0.5oz of both mosaic and citra. At the 5-minute mark add another 0.5oz of both mosaic and citra.

Post-boil:

This is where the pool water comes in. We want to get our wort cooled as quickly as possible to our pitching temperature of 68° F and immersion chillers are far superior to ice baths for that. Connect one end of a garden hose to a submersible pump in the pool and the other end to your immersion chiller. Use a second hose to drain the water out of the chiller back into the pool. Turn on the pump and watch the temperature of your wort drop rapidly.

When the proper temperature is reached, transfer the wort to your primary fermenting vessel and pitch yeast. Ferment at 68° F for four or five days before ramping the temperature up to 71° F over the next few days. The dry hop addition of 1oz of mosaic and 1oz of citra can be added when the temperature ramp starts or after temperature has reached 71° F, just make sure to leave the hops in the beer for at least 3 days. The final step before conditioning is to cold crash for 48 or more hours after final gravity is stable. Cold crashing is the process of quickly lowering the temperature of the beer before carbonation to get the yeast, proteins, and other solids to fall out of suspension, which results in a clearer beer while removing or at least reducing chill haze. We recommend cold crashing as cold as possible without freezing the beer, so 35 degrees is a good temperature to aim for.

Now you're ready to bottle it or keg it, which is a process for another post.

Session IPA Recipe

Poolwater Session IPA
Brew Method	Brew In A Bag
Style Name	American Pale Ale
Boil Time	60 min
Batch Size	5 gallons (fermenter volume)
Boil Size	6 gallons
Boil Gravity	1.047
Efficiency	Est. 70%

STATS:
Original Gravity	1.056
Final Gravity	1.013
ABV (standard)	5.67%
IBU (tinseth)	54.4
SRM (morey)	7.13

GRAINS:
10 lbs. - Rahr Standard 2 Row
8 oz. - Caramel/crystal 60L
8 oz. - Carapils

YEAST
White labs California Ale WLP001 Alternatives: WLP090, Safale US-05

HOPS
0.5 oz - Centennial
Type	Pellet
AA	9.5 - 11.5
Use	Boil for 60 min
0.5 oz - Mosaic
Type	Pellet
AA	11.5 - 13.5
Use	Boil for 15 min
0.5 oz - Citra
Type	Pellet
AA	11 - 13
Use	Boil for 15 min
0.5 oz - Mosaic
Type	Pellet
AA	11.5 - 13.5
Use	Boil for 5 min
0.5 oz - Citra
Type	Pellet
AA	11 - 13
Use	Boil for 5 min
1 oz - Mosaic
Type	Pellet
AA	11.5 - 13.5
Use	Ferment 3 days
1 oz - Citra
Type	Pellet
AA	11 - 13
Use	Ferment 3 days

EQUIPMENT
Brew Pot	(1) 8 Gallon Brew Pot (1) 10 Gallon Cooler Mash Tun
Brew Pot Accessory	1/2" MPT to 1/2" Hose Barb Fitting 3' length of High Temp 1/2" Tubing for transferring wort Dial Thermometer for Brew Pots
Burner	Anvil Forge
Bucket	6.5 Gallon Brew Bucket
Pump	Submersible Pump
Sparging Bag	Drawstring Bag for 6.5 Gallon Buckets
Stirring Spoon	24" Stainless Steel Spoon
Wort Chiller	50' Immersion Wort Chiller
Fermenter	7 Gallon Wide Mouth Glass Carboy
Gloves	Brewing Gloves