Sign-up sheet! Brewing is open to all club members. Attendance at the tasting will be open to members only on the evenings of July 18th and 25th.  Joining is easy!

Below are details for the NBA’s 2013 single hop experiment. This year we are partnering with Northgate Brewing to brew enough Dead Ringer wort on their 7 bbl commercial system to satisfy our club needs. How awesome is that?? Just another perk of being a member of the NBA. Since everyone will be utilizing a single different variety of hop in their recipe, each participant will take roughly 6.5 gallons of sterilized wort home to do their own boil and hop additions. The club will come together on two different days in late July to sample the beers side by side, allowing us to get the full sense of what each individual variety of hop tastes like.

We’re very excited to be working with Northgate this year as the beers we produce will have far fewer variables. Since the pre-boiled wort will be produced in one large batch, our malt bills and water profile will be exactly the same. Together with using the same type of yeast and pitching rate, partnering with Northgate will allow us to hone in on the differences imparted by each hop when tasting the end products.

Pickup | Grab your wort at 12 noon on Sunday at Northgate Brewing, 3134 California St NE Minneapolis, MN 55418. Bring a plastic bucket with a top as the wort will be around 170 degrees when you get it. Too warm for glass. You could chill (or heck, brew) on site if you want to bring all of your gear.

Cost | $10 per batch. Bring cash. Damn cheap, thanks Northgate!

Malt bill | Dead Ringer clone mashed and sterilized by Northgate. On a 5 gallon scale, it would be 11 lbs. American 2-row and 1 lb. crystal 60. Additionally, half a pound of gypsum was added to the entire 182.75 gallon batch to help these hops shine! The best part of this experiment is that you don’t even need to worry about it. Your brew day will be significantly shortened thanks to Northgate.

Hopping schedule | Each participant will be utilizing a different variety of hop with different AA% bittering strengths. Because of this, we’re each going to build our hop schedule backwards to hit a target of 60 IBUs:

• 1 oz. dry hop (in secondary or primary post-fermentation, 7 days prior to bottling or kegging)
• 2 oz. at 5 min. left in the boil
• 1 oz. at 15 min. left in the boil
• _ oz. at the start of the 60 min. boil. Use however many oz. necessary to hit 60 IBUs on the Tinseth scale

Yeast | We’re keeping it simple for the sake of parity. One 11.5 gram dry yeast pack of Safale US-05 American Ale yeast. No starter. Pitch straight onto your wort. Many in the club attest they’ve had success with pitching in this manner and at this OG. Trust. It’ll help eliminate variables in the end products.

Post fermentation, carb it up via your desired method and be ready to share at least a growler or six pack if not more at one of the two tastings we’ll do in late July. More to come!