StarTropics ‘22

My dog enjoying play time during the brew day

Yet another rebrew of a recipe that I’ve enjoyed in the past. As with my last brew (Breakfast Stout) I attempted to aim for my favorite of the versions I had previously made but there’s no guarantee I’ll get the same results. This hazy/New England style IPA recipe has changed a lot over time but for this attempt I’m going back to the version that was co-crowd favorite at the DCHB BBQ at 3 Stars brewing many years ago. While I did make a blog post about that beer and have what seems to be the recipe (it was only labeled as StarTropics and I've lost most of my recipes over the years) I don’t have a lot of my notes, including the water profile, mash temperature, and the temperatures for the hop rest. I’m also not sure these were the exact hop additions used, including the ratios being different than I remember and the 60 minute hop addition seeming fairly large. With the hoppy saison I recently brewed already tasting more hoppy and bitter than expected I decided to lean towards a less hoppy recipe for this one and cut the 60 minute hop addition (in this case a first wort hop addition) from 1.5 oz to .5 and used the Comet I have on hand in place of Nugget. I considered cutting the boil hops entirely but did not want to stray too far from the previous recipe and didn't particularly care for the last no boil hop NEIPA I brewed.

Due to the lack of notes from that recipe I decided to take detailed brew day notes this time in case this batch also turns out particularly well (or to have a reference if there’s things to improve upon).

Tasting Notes:

This beer never fully turned around (detailed process notes below) but I'll do a full set of tasting notes anyway.

Appearance: Nice golden hue and substantial, but not offensive to my tastes, levels of haze. Finally pours with a small head though it recedes to a small ring fairly quickly. Looks the part of a hazy IPA in most ways.

Smell: Sweet overripe fruit (melon, papaya) and earthy, hay-like, sweet malt dominate with a light touch of citrus peel and pine.

Taste: Subtle fruity and dank characters lead with a big sweet malt middle finishing with a piney and herbal bitter ending. Touches of lemongrass, pine, earth, and melon throughout but none of the big, bold, tropical fruit character I would expect from the hops used. Adding the acid and calcium chloride seems to have knocked out most of the rough edges but may have also tampered down on the desirable hop characteristics.

Mouthfeel: Relatively low carbonation but moderate body, there's a lingering effect in the mouth that I believe is due to the calcium chloride but may also be from the oats or hops. While it could still probably use a little more carbonation it's not unenjoyable at this level.

Overall: A relatively disappointing beer. Far from the worst I've made but the hops just don't pop with the fruity, juicy, tropical character that they should and instead the overall impression feels a bit green and lackluster. Next time I will likely cut out the sugar and golden naked oats and use all 2-row rather than Maris Otter to keep the malt bill more straightforward (though I might add some wheat), shift to using more of the hops in the boil and late hop stand and filter more of the hops during the transfer to the carboy in order to reduce the grassy/green/polyphenol characteristics, and probably adjust the water chemistry to use less calcium chloride or at least less in proportion to the amount of gypsum. In the end I don't hate this beer and have no plans to dump it but it doesn't excite me like the best versions of my StarTropics recipes have.

3/18/22
Weighed and milled grain in preparation for brewing today. Collected 4 gallons and added 2g CaCl and 1g Gypsum for the mash water. I had planned to use twice as much of each but ran out of gypsum. I also collected another separate 4 gallons for the sparge and added a quarter campden tablet to each.

All grains for the mash bill mixed together

3/19/22
Brewday

Mashed in with 3 gallons of 180F strike water hitting my target 155F.

Hop smells from freshly opened 2021 hop pellet bags from Hops Direct:

Comet: Light pineapple and mango, some other tropical and citrus aromas. Light grassy and earthy aromas.

Citra: more pungent papaya and mango. More lemongrass than grass/earth.

Azacca: again similar with some light pineapple and red papaya. Lighter earth/grass than comet but not really the lemongrass of Citra.

Galaxy: very different. Still some pineapple and tropical fruit smells and lemongrass but with a pungent pine/dank/funk character

All 4 smell enjoyable and carry similar tropical fruit notes. After walking out of the room the hops were in then re-entering I was hit with a huge blast of tropical fruit hop aroma, hopefully some of this makes it into the beer.

After 55 minutes I added about 1 gallon of water at 180F to the mash, stirred and then let sit for 5 more minutes. After vorlauf first runnings were run into kettle with 8 oz Batey’s turbinado sugar and 0.5 oz Comet hops. Stirred occasionally to well mix sugar during run off. Added last 4+ gallons of sparge water to mash and let sit for a 5 minute batch sparge before running off. After about 15 minutes of running off the kettle had reached 6.5 gallons and was put back on the burner to boil.

Preboil gravity of 1.042. As with my last batch this is a touch lower than estimated but shouldn’t be too far off by the end of the boil (estimated 1.050 instead of the expected 1.055). 45 minutes into the boil I added the immersion wort chiller. 15 minutes later I cut the flame and began chilling.

Overshot chilling slightly at got down to 170F before realizing. Cut chiller and added first 3 oz hop dose. Let sit for about 25 minutes before returning. Temperature had fallen to 150F so I added the second hop dose and started the chiller again. Stopped chiller after about 5 minutes and let sit at 120 for another 10 minutes. After chilling to just under 80F wort was transferred to a 6 gallon carboy and a pack of Wyeast London Ale III pitched. OG measured as 1.052, just a touch below expected. I'll need to either tighten my mill or just slightly lower my efficiency expectations going forward. No filter was used when transferring from the kettle so this one has a lot of hop particulate, hopefully this only helps provide additional character and doesn't cause any issues.

3/20/22
Showing active signs of fermentation about 24 hours after pitching. Turbulent and brightly green in appearance, there is plenty of hops moving around in this one.

3/21/22
Still bubbling with a big krausen nearly taking up all the head space. May need to remove the bung temporarily if it gets any bigger. Inspecting the recipe further after brew day I recognized that the recipe shows only a 45 minute boil, so maybe the 1.5 oz of hops were used in the past batch but not boiled for a full hour, if so this beer should be lower in bitterness than that batch.

3/22/22
Bubbling has slowed, may be in part due to the ambient temperature cooling off some. Still a large krausen though not as voluminous as yesterday.

3/24/22
Gravity at 1.017 so it should still have a little ways to go. Taste is a bit harsh and more bitter than expected but not terrible. Hoping the harshness is just due to the amount of yeast and hop particulate in the sample at this point and fades with another week or so of fermenting and some conditioning. Added the first dry hop dose directly to the carboy.

3/28/22
Gravity down to 1.012 which is the expected FG. Taste is alright but more piney and astringent than desired without the level of tropical fruit character intended. I might keg this one sooner than expected to get it off the hop material, although I do plan to add keg hops.

3/29/22
Added 1g CaCl boiled in 100mL of water and 2mL 88% lactic acid. The acid addition was inspired by this post from Scott Janish showing a possible reduction in the grassy and astringent bitterness character when pH is reduced. I'm hoping these additions improve the beer but I intentionally went fairly low on each as I can always add more during or after kegging.

3/30/22
Transferred to keg in 31F keezer with last 3 oz. dose of hops in a stainless steel tube. Taste is a bit muted and overly harsh but not terrible. Hopefully some time at cold temperatures will help it clean up and the keg hops can add some brightness but I don’t think this one is going to fully turn around.

4/2/22
Was able to serve this at a housewarming party. Probably the least popular of the 4 beers on tap and definitely a bit undercarbonated. Not bad but not a particularly good hazy. We'll see what a little more time and carbonation does for it.

4/12/22

Tasting date, tasting notes above.