This third batch was intended to be a clone of the Kern River Brewing Company Citra DIPA. Moving up to the next level, this batch did not use an extract kit. This would be our first attempt at an all grain recipe. But we did not have a mash tun. I was delighted to descover after reading some posts and watching a few videos, it is possible to brew without a tun. The technique is called “Brew in a bag” technique, aka. BIAB.
The advantage of a BIAB mash is that you don’t need a separate mash tun. After reaching the mash strike temperature, a large bag is dropped into the hot water kettle. The bag contains all the recipe milled grains. You simply let the grains soak at the strike temperature for the specified mash time before pulling out the bag. You are then ready for the boil.
Ingredients required for Citra DIPA:
| Ingredient | Recipe | Actual | Units |
| 2-row pale malt | 13.75 | 13.75 | lbs. |
| Briess Carapils Malt | 0.75 | 0.75 | lbs. |
| Briess Carmel Malt | 0.75 | 0.75 | lbs. |
| Briess Bonlander Munich Malt | 0.75 | 0.75 | lbs. |
| Gambrinus Honey Malt | 0.38 | 0.38 | lbs. |
| Briess Raw White Wheat Malt | 0.38 | 0.38 | lbs. |
| Nugget Hops 13% | 0.88 | 0.88 | oz. |
| Citra Hops 12% | 6.48 | 6.48 | oz. |
| Amarillo Hops 8.5% | 1.45 | 1.45 | oz. |
| Whitlfloc Tablet | 1 | 1 | tablet |
| Yeast | 1 | 1 | bag |
| Yeast starter | 1 | 0.8 | Liter |
| Priming sugar | 7/8 | 7/8 | Cup |
And the directions followed to brew the beer:
| Step | Description |
| 1 | Started to heat 5 gallons in 15 gallon kettle to 160F |
| 2 | Added grain to 160 F water in bag, heat removed |
| 3 | Had additional 3 gallons or so on stove heated to about 175F |
| 4 | Added hot water to mash to maintain 149F strike water as temp dropped |
| 5 | Stirred every 10 minutes or so during 60 minute mash |
| 6 | Sparged, extracting around 4 gallons each time, pouring back quickly through kettle bag |
| 7 | Removed bag of grain, squeezing out as much wort as possible. |
| 8 | Boiled for 60 minutes, adding nugget hops at beginning of boil. Add 0.88 citra at 30,15,10,5 min. remaining in boil. Add whirlfloc tablet at 15 minutes to go. |
| 10 | Put kettle in tub with blue cubes. 3.0 hours before reaching 70F |
| 11 | Transferred to fermentor, pulled gravity sample and pitched 800mL yeast starter. IG reading questionable at 1.08 |
| 12 | After two weeks, transferred liquid to bucket, cleaned hops from fermentor, and transferred back to fermentor. |
| 13 | Added Dry hops for 12 days. day 0 1.16 oz citra day 0 0.53 oz amarillo day 3 0.71 oz citra day 6 0.92 oz amarillo day 9 1.09 oz citra |
| 14 | Boiled priming sugar, cooled, and added to transferred liquid. |
| 15 | Transferred to 1.5 sanitized 22 oz bottles, remainder kegged. |
The beer was somewhat a disappointment to me at first. While it was not green, it did not have the full body taste of a double IPA. Started drinking it after two weeks conditioning with the sugar primer and co2 carbination. It probably needed another 1.5 weeks as it got better with age.