Wayfinder Relapse IPA

“Wayfinder is a lager-centric brewery, with half of its beers being clean lagers and half hoppy IPAS,” says Kevin Davey, brewmaster. “It seemed like a good time to make something that was a fusion of the two: clean and refreshing but hop-fresh with a quick turnaround. Drier, crisper, more drinkable—wester than West Coast.

“On paper, Relapse is aggressively hopped with some classic C-hops,” Davey says. “The grist is more like an American malt liquor: pilsner and rice. When choosing a clean yeast, we considered Chico—but that would have stuck a third strain in our profile and given me a ton of headaches. Plus, everyone makes West Coasts with Chico. So, we decided to use our house lager strain but ferment warm, at 65°F [18°C].”

ALL-GRAIN Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)

Brewhouse efficiency: 72% OG: 1.061

FG: 1.008

IBUS: 70+

ABV: 7% MALT/GRAIN BILL

8.4 lb (3.8 kg) Rahr Premium Pilsner or

Great Western Superior Pilsen

3.6 lb (1.6 kg) rice flakes or rice flour

HOPS SCHEDULE

0.18 oz (5 g) Magnum [12% AA] at

90 minutes

1.7 ml isomerized hop extract [60% AA]

at 90 minutes (for 35 IBUS)

0.6 oz (17 g) each Mosaic [12.25% AA]

and Centennial [12% AA] at 10 minutes 0.6 oz (17 g) each Mosaic [12.25% AA] and Centennial [12% AA] at whirlpool for 20 minutes

2.8 oz (79 g) each Chinook and Cascade

at dry hop

1.4 oz (40 g) Amarillo at dry hop

YEAST

2 packets of Fermentis Saflager W-34/70

DIRECTIONS

For the cereal mash: Mix the rice flakes with 13 oz (813 g) of crushed malt and 9 quarts (8.5 liters) of 131°F (55°C) water. Once there are no clumps, cereal mash to 167°F (75°C) and rest 15 minutes for gelatinization, stirring the whole time. Continue stirring and bring to a boil; boil this decoction for 30 minutes.

While the cereal mash is boiling, mash in with the malt at 97°F (36°C) and rest there. Once the decoction is finished, carefully add it to the main mash, stirring rapidly, which should bring the whole mash to about 140–144°F (60–62°C). Raise the temperature to 144°F (62°C), if necessary,

and rest 30 minutes. Raise the temperature to 154°F (68°C) and rest 30 minutes. Raise the temperature to 162°F (72°C) and rest for 15 minutes. Do an iodine test (see “On the Road to Conversion,” beerand brewing.com) to ensure that starches have converted, then raise the temperature to 172°F (78°C) and mash out. Sparge and lauter as necessary to get about 6.8 gallons (26 liters) of wort—or more, depending on your evaporation rate.

Boil 90 minutes, adding hops according to schedule. Whirlpool and add the whirlpool hop additions when the wort temperature has dropped to about 190°F (88°C); continue whirlpooling for 20 minutes. Chill the wort to 48°F (9°C), aerate well, and pitch rehydrated yeast. Ferment at 65°F (18°C). When fermentation reaches about 1.012, move the wort to a pressure vessel (such as a keg; must have pressure relief and a safety valve), dry hop, and add 15 psi—via spunding valve, if possible. Once the beer reaches terminal gravity, crash to 30°F (-1°C), remove the yeast and hops, and condition 1 week before filtering and packaging.

BREWER’S NOTES

The pilsner malt should be American— high free-amino nitrogen, high diastatic power; German pilsner malts don’t work as well with adjuncts. For the rice, you could also experiment with skipping the cereal mash and using rice syrup instead of flakes. For the yeast, Kölsch or Chico strains could also work for a “cold IPA.”

We carbonate via spunding (see “Gearhead: The Force Behind the Fizz,” beerand brewing.com), and I like that for IPAS; it seems like carb stones can strip away aromatics. So, we dry hop on spunding day, when kräusening with fresh-fermenting Czech pils. It works great: The added fermentation scrubs the oxygen from the dry hops, we get some biotransformation, and it completely carbonates the beer. them to be saturating. I don’t want them to be cloying in any regard. So, the adjuncts help, and the decoction helps with that.

“We’re trying to build in flavor but also keep the drinkability,” he says. “Sometimes people take the approach of building up flavor by adding more items, more items, more items. Like, okay, it can have chocolate, it can have roast, it can have coriander seed, or something like this. My idea is, let’s try to make it even cleaner and allow the hops to shine a little bit more. So that’s our approach—to kind of go the other way.”

Davey sees his cold IPAS as hybrids, not so different from the top-fermented lager beers of the Rhein region—altbier and kölsch—or steam beers, or even the clean lager-like fermentation you can get from the Chico strain.

“This is something that I think is more common in brewing, that maybe a lot of homebrewers don’t see as often,” Davey says. “A lot of lager yeasts are used at warm temperatures to make ales that you might not know of. There are a lot of ale yeasts out there that are fermented cold to make lagers that you might not have heard of. In particular, when people ferment Chico yeast very cold, it makes a lager style.”

For some brewers—who might see lagers as brewed with lager yeast and ales brewed with ale yeast, period—that concept may ask some Yoda-like unlearning of what they have learned. But Davey is less concerned with the scriptures than what produces the best results.

“Really, what drives us here is scientific reasoning,” he says. “We kind of preach to the rest of the people here that we’re not so much of a recipe-driven brewery; we’re more of a process-driven brewery.”

Orthodox or no, Wayfinder remains a lager geek’s dream.

“Yeah, totally! I mean, that’s what I am,” Davey says. “I’m just trying to make it a reality for the rest of the world.”