Sydnie IPA

The labels from the first 2 Sydnie IPAs

As I've mentioned before in 2009 my mom bought me a Mr Beer for my birthday.  After sitting on it for a few weeks I ordered the American Devil IPA kit as I wanted my first beer to be an IPA.  It was with that in mind in that I brewed my first beer in my house in January of 2010.  I called this beer Sydnie IPA after my still incubating offspring and as legends go it turned out really bad.  Somewhere along the way it got an infection (probably from the water I found in the back of my fridge) and was never really drinkable.  Despite the disappointment of the first try I really loved the process and continued forward.  For those saying it was probably because I used Mr Beer I disagree as I went on to make dozens of success beers using Mr Beer products. 

Later that year after getting 20 odd beers successfully under my belt I decided to give Sydnie IPA a second go and again I was left with a less than stellar brew.  Was the name cursed?  I had made a bunch of really tasty beers since my first outing. I'd followed the directions to a tee and had again failed. Again I put the disappointment behind me and continued forward honing my brewing techniques. While I made several IPAs and worked on a few IPLs over the last couple of years but none of them carried the name Sydnie IPA.

That was until October of 2012.

On October 21st I did a brew demo for Addison Homebrew Provisions.  Leading up to the demo I created a poll on the forum asking people what they wanted to see made.  I had five ideas in mind each would included a presentation topic to discuss during the downtime between steps. 

• IPL – Discussion Topic: Lagering 
• IPA – Discussion Topic: Hop Additions 
• Imperial Stout– Discussion Topic: Brewing BIG Beers 
• Vanilla Porter – Discussion Topic: Flavor Additions 
• Split Batch – Discussion Topic: Creating Two Beers from One Wort 

In the end IPA won with 24% of the vote. 

My buddy Daniel from BeancurdTurtle Brewing pouring
some of his outstanding beer during the demo

When it was clear that IPA was going to win I started looking for a recipe. Like a lot of brewers I tend to have a lot of beer recipes floating around my brewing software.  Some of these are scribbles of recipes, a few are recipes I've come up while others are ones that I'd found online. They all fall into the "someday" I'll get around to brewing them.  One in particular stood out - Sydnie IPA... 

I'd always known that one day I would make another go at a beer called Sydnie IPA it was too sentimental of a name for me to never use again.  I also knew that I would need a new recipe for it, just start completely fresh carrying over just the name.  The recipe I'd been toying with was based on an old Melrose IPA homebrew recipe that Julian Shrago had posted back in 2007.  I'd made a few modifications along the way (converting it to extract for the demo and including a little carared for color).  Mostly I was evaluating the hop bill for a new IPL style recipe I'm working on.

The demo went off pretty well,  a few oh my gosh (as Sydnie would say) moments but overall it went really well.  

One of the few benefits that not posting for over 6 weeks has afforded me is time.  Normally I would post about only the brew aspect of the beer and never really report on how it came out. In the case enough time has passed between brewing and posting for me to report on how the beer turned out.  It turned out really great, probably the best IPA I've brewed.  The hop bill worked really well and is a lock to make it into my forthcoming IPL. Curse = Smashed

Cheers

- SNB

Sydnie IPA (Extract Brew Demo)
American IPA
Type: Extract
Date: 10/21/2012
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Brewer: Scott Bennett
Boil Size: 6.5 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Equipment: Brew Pot (7 gal) l)
End of Boil Volume 5.25 gal

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.063 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.015 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.3 %
Bitterness: 71.6 IBUs
Est Color: 8.3 SRM

Ingredients

Grain
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Carared (20.0 SRM)

Malt
7.00 lb Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)

Hops
0.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90 %] - First Wort 60.0 min
0.50 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz Simcoe [12.30 %] - Boil 20.0 min
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.90 %] - Boil 5.0 min

Dry Hops
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 19.0 Days
1.00 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 19.0 Days

Yeast
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)

Other
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins)

Pictures

Greatest shot of a messy table ever
(hey this is why it's a free site)

My riveted audience

Boiling beer shot #100

Picture of wort chilling, slightly
more fun than watching paint dry

World famous "Beer Blogger"
Greg Nagel demanding beer