Brewing with Fresh Cascades

The second 2 oz. hop application, top, and
the 1 oz. aroma batch.

A few weeks back I wrote about our afternoon of picking the hops neighbor Bill had grown in his backyard.  (The post is here if you'd like to check it out:  http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2014/08/sunday-hops-picking-in-luray.html).  Last Friday I broke some of them out to brew an IPA with.

I've adapted the recipe from a Black IPA kit I got (I have one batch that was completed faithfully to the kit recipe just going into bottles - with the exception that I dry hopped it with some of Bill's last year crop).  In this case, I used a 5-to-1 substitution ratio of the fresh hops to the dry hops the recipe called for - I used Dan's ratios to calculate the rate for that, since he told me that drying them reduces them to around 20 percent.

The aroma hops went in at the end of the boil.

I went with two bittering dosages of 2 oz. each, one at the start of the 60-minute boil and the second at 30-minutes.  Plus I put in a final 1 oz. for arome at five minutes before the end of the boil.  I plan to dry hop with a package of Cascade pellets, since that doesn't increase IBUs and this will probably be on solid ground in that department.

The beer will be in primary for another week, then I will transfer it to secondary for two weeks.  I'll also let it bottle condition for two weeks before drinking it.