Pliny the Elder is an American style Imperial IPA commercial beer that has proven very popular amongst the homebrew community.
It all started when Vinnie Cilurzo (head brewer at Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, CA) first passed out handouts containing a homebrew scale recipe of Pliny the Elder at the 2004 National Homebrew Competition.
The malt bill is fairly simple and results in a slightly orange colour. Some sugar is added to produce a dryer beer which supposedly the customers of Russian River Brewery preferred. Like most IIPA's however this beer is all about the hops. Hop aroma and flavour are at a level that is hard to describe. Less bitter than you think, with a fresh hop aroma of floral, citrus, and pine.
The beer has undergone some minor tweaks over the years, so you'll see variations posted all over the internet. The recipe below is based on something close to the original, scaled for our system. Today the brewery supposedly no longer uses mash hops (most brewers believe it doesn't add much to the flavour and it's rumoured that the cows that were fed the spent grains did not like it).
Pliny the Elder was a Roman naturalist, scholar, historian, traveler, officer, and writer. Although not considered his most important work, Pliny and his contemporaries created the botanical name for hops, hence the naming for the beer. You're not likely to find a hoppier commercial beer than Pliny the Elder.
It's a definite must-brew for any hop-head. I've brewed it a few times now.
Because of the huge hop profile, it's best consumed reasonably fresh. One of the benefits of brewing it yourself.
One thing to consider that there are 4 oz of hops in the mash, 21 oz of hops in the boil kettle and then another 16 oz for dry hopping. That's 41 oz of hops for 10 gallons of beer! Be prepared to lose a considerable amount of beer in both the boil kettle and the fermenter to hop absorption. Below are a few pictures of the boil kettle after draining. The hop material is over 2" thick in spots. The Hop Stopper had no issues filtering this extreme amount of hops:
Brew up a batch and let me know how you like it!
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Notes:
Add 500mg potassium metabisulphite to 20 gallons water to remove chlorine/chloramine (as required).
Water treated with brewing salts to: Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=49, S04=279
(Basically Randy Mosher's ideal Pale Ale numbers with slightly less Sulphate).
1.25 qt/lb mash thickness. Single infusion mash at 150F for 90 mins. Mashout to 168F.
60-90 min fly sparge with ~6 pH water. Collect 14.9 gallons in boil kettle.
Boil for 90 minutes. Lid on at flameout, start chilling immediately.
Cool wort to 66F and aerate well. Ferment at 66-68F until complete. Dry hop for 14 days.
Rack to brite tank (secondary), crash chill to near freezing (if possible), add 1 tsp of unflavoured gelatine dissolved in a cup of hot distilled water per 5 gallons of beer, and let clear for 2-3 days.
Package as you would normally. I keg and carbonate on the low side (around 2 to 2.2 volumes of C02) to minimize carbonic bite and let the hop/malt flavour come through.
If you prefer to use liquid yeast, either of these is an excellent choice as they are the same clean fermenting Chico strain as US-05:
Joined: 28 Nov 2011 Posts: 131 Location: West Sussex, UK
Drinking: All out of home brew!
Working on: A firkin of Old Flatulent - vanilla for the Henry Addington
Link Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 7:47 am Post subject:
I've got a batch of this dry hopping in the conical..is it acceptable to squeeze every last precious drop of liquid out of the hops when I remove them? _________________ "You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa
Joined: 28 Nov 2011 Posts: 131 Location: West Sussex, UK
Drinking: All out of home brew!
Working on: A firkin of Old Flatulent - vanilla for the Henry Addington
Link Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 2:50 pm Post subject:
What's your logic for not squeezing the hops, Kal?....is there stuff in there that we don't want that we would get if we squoze it? _________________ "You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa
Joined: 28 Nov 2011 Posts: 131 Location: West Sussex, UK
Drinking: All out of home brew!
Working on: A firkin of Old Flatulent - vanilla for the Henry Addington
Link Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:08 pm Post subject:
..and mine are all whole hops so unless I take some remedial action a significant amount of the precious stuff is going to be extracted with the hops... _________________ "You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa
Joined: 12 Dec 2010 Posts: 2781 Location: Ottawa, Canada
Drinking: Torpedo Extra IPA, Fullers ESB, English Pub Ale, Janet's Brown Ale, Czech Pils, Hopslam, Ruthless Rye IPA
Working on: Electric Hop Stand APA, Belgian Wit
Link Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:51 pm Post subject:
Squeezing would get a bunch of trub and other junk in there. You may get more vegetal matter too depending on how hard you sqeeze. I just don't think it's worth it. Best to leave behind as munch junk as possible from one racking to another (IMHO).
Joined: 07 Oct 2011 Posts: 187 Location: Los Angeles, Ca
Link Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 7:31 am Post subject:
squeezing the hop sack can add a tannic, vegetal aroma to your beer which i dont think you want. It will also let out some of the hop particulate, which you could avoid when racking, but for me personally i want to keep that nice floral aroma and avoid vegetal aromas when dry hopping. It would be a shame to ruin a batch of beer just to gain back a pint or two. You can of course just pick the grain sack up and out of the liquid and just hold it there for a while to let it drain without squeezing, but ive never done that so i cant speak for the results. _________________ Holter
Joined: 28 Nov 2011 Posts: 131 Location: West Sussex, UK
Drinking: All out of home brew!
Working on: A firkin of Old Flatulent - vanilla for the Henry Addington
Link Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 8:17 am Post subject:
Thanks for the tips guys...I definitely don't want any off flavours to be introduced. As my hops are free floating I'll just scoop them out with a slotted spoon and fine the remaining liquor for 2-3 days..hopefully that will preserve the lovely aroma and ensure a beer clear from any sediment.
..unless you can advise a better methodology?... _________________ "You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 Posts: 81 Location: Evergreen, CO
Link Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:18 am Post subject:
I brewed this around 3 weeks ago. OG was slightly higher and FG ended up at 1.006, so this is going to be boozy. It fermented slightly warmer than I would have liked due to the summer heat.
Today I kegged it. I have a conical and dumped trub/yeast/hops as much as possible, but not that much came out. After filling the kegs, an inspection showed the massive amount of remaining hops were too thick to pass through the butterfly valve. In the future I will sterilize a rod to poke through in the future. After filling both kegs and opening the conical I could see the sample valve was still in very thick hop residue, so I suspect keg #2 has a bunch.
I sampled it, warm and un-carbonated. It tasted absolutely fantastic. I did have one bad thing happen that risks infection -- through a strange series of events some of the blow-off water made it all the way up the tube and some potentially made it into the beer. The blow off water is star san based but is so old I suspect it would no longer be sterile. Here's to hoping a bad infection doesn't happen. Luckily this isn't one to age.
Joined: 28 Nov 2011 Posts: 131 Location: West Sussex, UK
Drinking: All out of home brew!
Working on: A firkin of Old Flatulent - vanilla for the Henry Addington
Link Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 8:06 am Post subject:
Strangely enough I brewed this 3 weeks ago..too....my 3rd batch from the Kal's rig...
OG was a little low at 1072..FG spot on at 1014
I removed the free hops on Thursday using a large sieve..avoided the temptation to squeeze them...and then pitched 80ml of Isinglasss mixed with some of the beer..so as to clear it, if poss....still have loads of floating bits in the beer so will keg today with a muslin bag over the end of the hose from my conical..at least that should filter any stray trub and veggy matter..and then it's straight into the keezer for a couple of weeks chilling...can't wait..!! _________________ "You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa
Joined: 12 Dec 2010 Posts: 2781 Location: Ottawa, Canada
Drinking: Torpedo Extra IPA, Fullers ESB, English Pub Ale, Janet's Brown Ale, Czech Pils, Hopslam, Ruthless Rye IPA
Working on: Electric Hop Stand APA, Belgian Wit
Link Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 10:52 pm Post subject:
No. Efficiency is all about how well the system converts grain starches to sugars and then extracts them. Hops do not factor in at all.
Hop extraction is based on contact time in the boil. Pellets do get a bit more per weight than whole hops. I think it's about 10-20%. Some people who use hop bags get clumping which reduces hop extraction too. I use pellets mostly and all my recipes assume pellets. I just noticed I didn't mention that anywhere but I don't remember any recipe ever mentioning that. I think most people always assume pellets. Those that use whole hops may want to increase slightly though the slight increase isn't likely going to be noticed. AA% drops over time too with hops. It's all somewhat of a crapshoot. Brew it, and then make changes are required.
Drinking: Perogi's Pale Ale, Buggz' Brown Ale, SunDog Oatmilk Stout, Shadow's Black Ale, Jami's Black Forest Stout, Biere de Garde
Working on: Milltown Maibock
Link Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 6:48 pm Post subject:
perogi wrote:
kal wrote:
Lots of extremely useful information!
Thanks boss!
EDIT: Brewing this tomorrow!
Brewed! Had some issues with my HLT probe - I think there might be a loose wire somewhere. The temps would look great and then all of the sudden it would shoot up. Had to MacGyver it and use the boil PID for the HLT and then switch them back for the boil. I overcompensated for the wort loss due to hops so I ended up pulling one of my Curtec 7055 55 liter fermentation barrels. Got one batch in a 6.5 gal carboy and about 8 gallons in the Curtec. Hoping that the Curtec's "smell" doesn't leach into the beer :-/
Joined: 21 Dec 2010 Posts: 362 Location: Webster NY
Link Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:04 am Post subject:
if your PID was jumping all over the place, you probably have a short in the wiring in the probe. i had that issue, replaced the probe wire and all is well since.
Drinking: Perogi's Pale Ale, Buggz' Brown Ale, SunDog Oatmilk Stout, Shadow's Black Ale, Jami's Black Forest Stout, Biere de Garde
Working on: Milltown Maibock
Link Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:22 pm Post subject:
silverspoons wrote:
if your PID was jumping all over the place, you probably have a short in the wiring in the probe. i had that issue, replaced the probe wire and all is well since.
Silverspoons
yeah I'm going to move the same probe from the HLT and MLT kettles to see if it still jumps around - I *think* that the issue might actually be in the wiring from the pid to the "probe plug" (the real name is escaping me now) at the bottom of the enclosure.
Hopefully it's the probe wire but I'm not holding my breath - I got them from Spike. I have more confidence in his soldering ability than mine
Joined: 21 Dec 2010 Posts: 362 Location: Webster NY
Link Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:25 pm Post subject:
they're pretty delicate. i took apart the one with the short.. it was in the end that went into the probe not the end i soldered.. i can see how a little twist can loosen a contact.
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