El Jefe - India Dark Ale

I wanted to do something with all the Conan yeast sitting at the bottom of my fermenter. It seemed like such a waste to dump it. I first looked at attempting a Heady Topper clone. After looking at the thread on this subject on HBT, I decided to pass. That thread is over 200 pages and is a bit crazy if you ask me.

Instead I pulled out Mitch Steele's IPA book for something. While Heady Topper is not in this book, there is another recipe in that book from Alchemist.  El Jefe is a curious brew that I was drawn to when I first got the book, but never got around to brewing. It is not a Standard IPA, but it is not a Black IPA either. Kimmich instead calls this a dark India ale as the SRM comes in around 17. Besides the Conan yeast I was also drawn to the recipe because it is hopped entirely with simcoe, and it is a dead simple recipe.

While many brewers are adding a malt derived coloring agent in styles like black IPAs, it seems Kimmich just went for what tasted right, and left out the Sinamar coloring because in the end the beer doesn't have to be black. Again I like the simplicity of it all.

The brew day went off exceptionally well other than a slightly higher OG than I was shooting for.

Here is the recipe I used to brew this beer:

February = Big beers and Small beers

The brew labs have been very busy the past two weeks!

This past weekend was all about big beers and barrels. On Sunday we brewed up an imperial style american brown ale.  It was my third beer using giga yeast, and I just have to say that I have been pretty impressed with it so far. When I make a starter in my 2000ml flask it wants to escape. So the bad part is I probably should buy a bigger flask. The good part is I get a ton of yeast. I swear it is like i'm pitching three packs of white labs or wyeast into my starter. My fermenter had airlock activity only two hours after pitching! Sundays American brown will eventually go into our 10 gallon rum barrel.


After the brew day was done we worked on moving around some other previously brewed beer. We have had a Baltic Porter sitting in the barrel about 4 weeks. Due to the logistics on getting another beer into the barrel, we ended up leaving the baltic in the barrel for much longer than planned. We even figured the beer might be a lost cause. However a quick tasting showed promise. Yes the rum was pretty big, but not as overpowering as we thought. We emptied the barrel in to two corny kegs that each had about 1 gallon of the un-barrel aged Baltic. The quick taste after blending was fantastic!

As soon as we had the barrel emptied we filled it back up with an imperial coconut brown ale. I am hoping the coconut flavor survives the rum. Being this is the second fill of the barrel, I think that it will still show up. Lastly we had a about 1.5 gallons of the barrel aged baltic and a half gallon of the coconut left over so we blended those and added them to a small 2 gallon keg.




The previous weekend we spent the entire day, 9 hours, working on some small beers that we brewed for a collaboration my brew club is doing with Epic Brewing. Since we have a pretty big club we split it into a number of groups. Each group will get to submit one beer to be tasted by Epic. They will then choose one to brew at their new gastropub, The Annex. Due to Utah law these beers have to be 4% ABV or less.





My group ended up brewing a shit load of beer. Here is what came out of the extra long brew day, all 5 gallon batches:

1) Pale Ale - Citra/Amarillo +Citra hopback. Fermented with Brux Trois
2) Pale Ale - Calypso/Summit +30 minute hop stand. Fermented with Brux Trois
3) White IPA - Fermented with Wit yeast
4) White IPA - Fermented with Brux Trois
5) Wit - Lime/Coconut
6) Wit - Lavender/Rose hips
7) Wit - Lemongrass/Crystalized Ginger

The fermentation of these beers is done and we will be doing some additional additions for some of them. Stay tuned for more updates on these beers.