Viva Nevada Pale Ale or Victorious IPA

Here is the Beer Recipator recipe for the beer I made today, 10/4/2012. It's either a strong/bitter Pale Ale or a weak/mild American IPA. So I gave it two names just to cover all the bases.

Interesting things to note:

• Included 8 oz. of Victory Malt in the mash. This was inspired by the fact that I needed some more specialty malt to round out the grain bill and I happened to have exactly 8 oz. of Victory lying around from the Fullerish ESB. Oh and it's apparently not unprecedented to use Victory in an IPA.
• Pre-heated the mash tun by filling it with 3 gallons of boiling water before returning the water to the HLT and re-heating it for the actual mash-in which came later. I attribute the much smaller heat loss (only 1.6 degrees vs. 5 degrees) than I got from the Fixed Gear mash to this step. It took extra time, but with my current system, this will be the best option going forward.
• Forgot to include 1 Tbsp. 5.2 pH mash stabilizer in the mash. Oops. No biggie. This is not a dark beer with lots of chocolate or dark roasted malt, so I'm not worried.
• This was my first attempt at first wort hopping. May have gotten more bitterness out of those initial hops than the Recipator calculated when I entered them as 20 minute hops the way Brew365 suggested.
• My system leaves just less than 1 gallon behind in the boil kettle when it is not tilted during transfer to the primary fermenter. That is just about perfect for the 2.5 oz. of pellet hops in this boil. There was very little good beer left behind with the trub.
• After a few hours (3ish) in my 65 degree ferm fridge, the wort had fallen to 74F. I used my 1/2 gallon at a time aeration method (described fully in the Fixed Gear post), and pitched the wort right onto the Fixed Gear yeast cake. This (6 days in) was a little earlier than I would normally xfer a beer to secondary, but I think it will be fine. I added a whole packet of US05 just to be sure I wasn't under-pitching. I hate under-pitching  I probably over-pitched a bit in this case. I'll try to mitigate those effects by xfering to secondary after 1 week and xfering and crash cooling after 2 weeks assuming the fermentation is complete.
• Made sure to use a blow-off tube this time. The combination of my patent-pending aeration method and the ample pitch rate resulted in bubbles in the blow-off system practically instantly. Woot.
• O.G. came in @ 1.049. this is low, definitely in the Pale Ale as opposed to IPA range gravity-wise. Unfortunately, based on the flavor of the hydrometer sample, the bitterness is well into the IPA range. We'll see if/how this potential problem works itself out once fermentation is complete. Good thing I took the Beer Recipator's advice and did not follow my original plan of using .5 oz. Columbus And .5 oz. Chinook as bittering hops.
• Must strategize further how to improve mash efficiency. This time I tried grinding the grain down practically into flour and doing a double batch sparge. I started with 3 gallons of strike water, did a first batch sparge with 3 more gallons, and then did a second batch sparge with another three gallons. This resulted in about 1/3 of a gallon more liquid than I could safely boil in my 7 gallon kettle. It also apparently did not improve my mash efficiency as I had hoped. Note to self for future: the maximum boil volume of your kettle will be reached if you use 8.7 gallons of total mash+sparge water with a 12 pound grain bill. Also, 90 minute boils may be the only way to achieve the desired volume and gravity for the foreseeable future.

Fermentation Temps: 72F (1st 24 hours), 55F (2nd 24 hours), 65F (day 3 thru racking to secondary)
Racked to secondary onto 1 oz. of Citra hops on 10/24/2012.

Transferred to keg for clearing/carbonating on 10/30/2012.

Tasting notes:

Delicious! Enticing aroma--perhaps a bit subtle for an IPA. Good body. Appropriate levels of citrus/grapefruit flavors. That bready victory malt flavor hits just the right part of the palate to balance out all those hops. Maybe just a smidge fewer bittering hops next time. First-wort hopping was a big success. Hop flavor/bitterness is smoother and blends better with the malt background than previous IPA's I've brewed. Citra dry hops are only slightly noticeable on the nose. It's questionable whether their contribution was worth the effort/expense. I would hate for any vegetal or grassy flavors to come through if I left it on dry hops any longer than 7 days, but there's not as much hop aroma as I was expecting. Maybe experiment with pellet hops floating freely rather than leaf hops in a muslin bag. Maybe. It's really hard to complain about this beer--its just so good--esp. for a recipe I just made up out of what I had on hand on brew day. SLIGHTLY less bittering hops would be the only variable I would adjust next time. Definitely a keeper!