Columbus Rye IPA

I recently aquired some very fresh Columbus hops from Septembers crop. I got 1 lb of Leaf and 1lb of Pellet hops. The leaf hops were an astonishing 17.9% aa and the pellets a good 14.5% aa. I have recently come to love Columbus has a flavor hop even though it's such a high alpha. The flavor/aroma profile is earthy, spicy, pungent, with some citrus overtones. Now it's not Cascade, but there is some citrus in there especially in the aroma. For some reason I love Avery Hog Heaven, it's a single hopped Barleywine hopped only with Columbus and when it's fresh it's amazing. I recently got to try their Uberschewin which is their unfiltered Hog Heaven dry hopped with 2lbs of Columbus and it was pretty amazing. For this I wanted something a bit more drinkable with more flavor/aroma of the Columbus hops with a nice malty backbone. I used a very close recipe to my Citra IPA I made a few months back and then hopped with the Columbus.



Columbus Rye IPA

Malt:
11.75 lbs: Briess 2-Row
1.5 lbs: Weyermann Rye Mat
1 lb: Weyermann Munich
.75 lbs: American Crystal 10L
.5 lbs: American Crystall 40L
.5 lbs: Flaked Wheat

Hops:
.25 oz: Columbus 17.9aa First Wort
.25 oz: Columbus 17.9aa @ 60min
.50 oz: Columbus 17.9aa @ 35min
.50 oz: Columbus 17.9aa @ 25min
2 oz: Columbus 14.5aa @10
2.5 oz: Columbus 14.5aa @ Flame Out
4 oz: Columbus 14.5aa Dry Hop

Misc:
1 Whirlfloc Tablet

Target OG: 1.065
Target FG: 1.014
IBU: ~73

Actual OG: 1.075
Actual FG: 1.013
Apparent Attenuation:

ABV: 8.3%
ABW: 6.4%

Yeast:
White Labs California Ale (WLP001)

Hopville Recipe

Update 2.17.2011: Brewday was pretty typical, I had to adjust my water cause of all the whole leaf hops soaking up all the wort. Once it was said and done using whole leaf hops is kind of a pain in the ass. The problem was that I couldn't siphon off most of the wort into the carboy. My auto-siphon kept getting clogged with the leafs. Once I got through that the beer seemed to had turned out pretty well. It's fermenting quite vigorously right now and I hope to dry hop sometime this weekend.

Update 2.24.2011: Beer is still fermenting right now. I have no idea why or how it is, but usually mine are done by now. I took a gravity reading and at over a weeks worth of fermentation I was still above 1.020. My guess is this, I had a huge blowoff after fermentation started and a ton of yeast was ejected from the carboy. With less yeast I suspect that its taking longer to get down to gravity.

Update 2.28.2011: Beer finally finished out pretty dry at 1.013. I am shocked that it finished that low after my last update. I went ahead and added 4oz of Columbus pellets for Dry Hopping. I plan on crash cooling and kegging this week.

Update 3.3.2011: Racked over beer to keg last night. I am thinking about dropping in more dry hops in the keg, but I want to taste it 1st when it's finished carbonating 1st.