Design Notes:
The last time we brewed the Rainy Day IPA was our first attempt at a real "throw a lot of hops in at different times" IPA. Because we start almost all of our beers with 6 lbs of pale liquid extract and we really don't want to go with more than 3 lbs of grain in our partial mashes, our first IPA also ended up on the low side in the ABV rankings (about 5.2 %).
This version of Rainy Day we wanted to simplify the hop structure (to see how much of a difference it makes) and increase the starting gravity a bit by adding some dry malt extract (DME) to get us up into the mid-range of IPAs (6.5ish % ABV).
As before, we're going to dry hop with 1 oz of Amarillo in the secondary. We may also add the Centennial that we've got left over, we'll see. The hop nose on the first brew came out pretty well, but we can always go with more.
Overall, this brewday was one of the least stressful, and therefor most successful, brewdays yet.
Beer nerd stats below the fold...
