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.

English-ish IPA

After a bit of a break from brewing I realized that while I had some interesting and enjoyable beers on tap (a hoppy saison, a smoked helles, and a few sours) I didn't have anything crushable. With COVID-19 still affecting both my accessibility and desirability to visit bars and breweries I was missing having English style ales that I would often enjoy from Bay Area producers like Freewheel and Barebottle. Combining those factors with a desire to use up ingredients on hand before buying new ones, I set out to make an English-ish ale, and used the Georges and Co. Pale Ale from 1889 (which I had previously made as part of a parti-gyle with a Strong Ale) as the basis. The resulting recipe uses some distinctly non-English ingredients (Cali yeast, Viking Xtra Pale 2-Row, and Dark Munich) but hopefully somewhat approximates an English historic pale ale/modern IPA and produces a drinkable, if fairly bitter, beer with a defining English hop character.

7-31-20

Brew day. Collected 8 gallons of water and added K-Meta along with a gram each of CaCl, Gypsum, CaCO3, and NaCl. Following a 1 hour mash a short batch sparge was done with most of the remaining water. The last 1 gallon of runnings were collected separately and boiled for nearly an hour to a moderately thick and significantly darker caramel that was then added back to the rest of the batch. The half pound of Fuggle hops were split between half at the 60 minute mark (following a prior 30 minutes of boiling) and the remaining 4 ounces split evenly and added at 30 and 0 minutes.

After chilling to 75F and racking to a 6 gallon plastic carboy it ended up a little below target gravity at 1.060 (still trying to dial in the mill settings) and below target volume with only about 4.5 gallons (probably due to caramelizing the last runnings). I boiled 4 ounces of Sugar in the Raw turbinado in 1.5 quarts of water, cooled and added to the carboy to bring it closer to the goal volume, without diluting the gravity too much further. Yeast was pitched directly rather than following the recommended rehydration instructions. I plan to keep this at room temperature around upper 60s/low 70s.

8-1-20

Vigorous signs of fermentation less than 12 hours after pitching. Some of the strongest airlock bubbling I've ever seen. Sitting at room temperature in the upper 60s it's on the upper end of the temperature range for the yeast but not too hot, this one just seems to be a ripper.

8-5-20

Fermentation activity slowed down, appears to be almost done fermenting already. Added 1 oz EKG. Plan to sample in a few days and keg if ready. Might add additional keg hops and will probably naturally carbonate in the keg for a more authentic English experience.

8-7-20

Fermentation appears complete but taste is a little overly bitter and mineraly. Added 8 ounces of turbinado and 2 ounces of honey boiled in 2 quarts of water. Plan is to give this a day or two to ferment before kegging and allowing to naturally condition. Vigorous fermentation showing again less than an hour after adding the sugars.

8-9-20

About 36 hours after adding the sugar water. Tasting much better and already back down to 1.006. Flavor is tea like with solid but not extreme bitterness and some light caramel and sugar sweetness. Transferred to keg and placed in keezer set to 45F. No CO2 connected, if it doesn’t seem to be naturally carbonating in a day or two I’ll hook it up but wanted to try making this a “real ale”, at least to begin with. My biggest fear about not adding CO2 is that it does not continue to ferment and gets oxidized, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I decided not to add any EKG to the keg since I’m happy with the flavor at this point but if I end up needing to connect CO2 in a few days I might add some then, especially if there are any signs of oxidation that I might be able to cover up with hops.

8-11-20

Doesn’t seem to have been much more fermentation after kegging so I’m very gently pushing this one out with just a few PSI of CO2. Very similar to my previous batch with a little more bitterness. Easy drinking with moderate earthy, herbal, and tea like hop flavors blending with light caramel and bready malts. A touch drier and more minerally than I would have liked, using an English yeast and English malts probably would have given less attenuation and more body but it’s completely fine as is.

8-25-20

This one has been on tap for a few weeks. I ended up adding a little bit (~5psi) of CO2 to make it pourable, it seems like the second sugar addition was too fermented out by the time it was kegged to condition naturally. It’s been tasting pretty good and I find myself grabbing a pint or two a few times a week.

Tasting notes:

Appearance- gold with poor clarity, though it’s no hazy IPA. I had intended to use Irish moss but forgot, which combined with the early kegging and no keg finings didn’t give clarity much of a chance. Small white head fades quickly, between the low carbonation and high sugar levels in the beer I’m not too surprised. I plan to use some torrified wheat in future English ales to partially help with that.

Smell- light sweet and bread malt, meadow-like herbal, earthy and floral notes and a small touch of citrus. Pretty low aroma given the low carbonation.

Taste/Mouthfeel- strong tea like character with a blend of herbal, earth, and fruity flavors. Bitterness is moderate but nicely balancing. Some honey and cookie like sweetness with a little bit of oatmeal cookie flavor. Finish is bitter and tea like, but creamy and not astringent.

Overall- another enjoyable, if otherwise unremarkable, English style homebrew. The flavors really balance well with the malt, hops, and yeast giving synergistic flavors and finding a nice balance between sweet and bitter. I was a little worried about using so much hops (8 ounces in the boil) but the end result was really nice and I think a bigger dry hop may have even added more. A really middle of the road beer that is surprisingly strong at over 6% ABV. Easy drinking but with enough going on to bring me back for more, and just enough bitterness to keep it from being too crushable.

Westward On (West Coast NEIPA)

NEIPA has taken the brewing world by storm. It's all at once loved, reviled, overrated, misunderstood, poorly made, perfected, singular, and widely varying. The main rules for making an NEIPA are: it has to be hazy and it has to be hoppy. There are some secondary characteristics including fruity hops, thick mouthfeel, and sweetness/less IBUs than a traditional IPA that are generally, but not always, desired. There are also a wide range of approaches to all of these characteristics

After moving to the West Coast I was strongly considering brewing a classic West Coast style IPA: bitter, dry, aggressive, piney, dank, citrusy. As I started making the grain and hop bill for this recipe I realized I could have a lot of those things but still take the best of NEIPA (less bitterness, less caramel malt, more body) and make a beer that I would truly want to drink.

Another part of my direction in brewing this IPA (and a few other hoppy beers I have planned) is the abundance of hops I have accumulated that made it to San Francisco with me. Over the years I have bought pounds of hops at various times and rarely finished a full bag. For this beer I decided to use the last 1/2 oz of an old bag of Amarillo, and decent amounts of Citra and Nugget that I had bought full pounds of in the past couple years.

A large portion of my hop collection also came from a mix of 2 oz 2015 hop packs from Yakima Valley Hops as a prize for my win in the DC Homebrewers BBQ competition (maybe not surprisingly with an NEIPA). Since then I have only brewed a small handful of hoppy beers, and have not ventured into the world of many of these hops, so I decided to include Comet in this recipe.

With these things in mind I created and brewed my first West Coast IPA (West Coast in brewing location if not style) and I'm really excited about it. Based on recent research by Scott I opted to go light on the oats, moderately heavy on the carafoam, fairly high on the calcium chloride, and high on the mash temperature with just a touch of caramel malt and sulfate to show some classic IPA character. For bonus points I named the beer after a lyric from a Bay Area band.

Westward On IPA Recipe
Expect OG: 1.061
Actual OG: 1.064
Estimated Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficiency: 79%
Expected FG: 1.014
Actual FG: 1.013
Apparent Attenuation: 79%
ABV: 6.7%

 

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Bright golden color with moderate haze. Voluminous white head that sticks around for a while and leaves pretty lacing all the way down the glass. A pretty photogenic beer that makes me crave a sip immediately. Probably somewhere between West Coast and NEIPA in terms of haze and color, certainly not milkshake-y but only moderately translucent. Has gotten clearer with time in the cold chest freezer but probably won't get much clearer than this.

Smell: Grapefruit, candied orange peel, Christmas tree pine, fall foliage, light touches of tropical/papaya and apricot yielding a mostly classic IPA hop character. There's some slight malt with caramel/toast mixing in with the leaf character. Not as fruit forward and tropical as I like but a pleasant mix that smells like an IPA.

Taste/Mouthfeel: This one goes down easy with just some light citrus up front followed by a lot of pine, papaya, and orange peel that lingers into a fairly dry and strongly bitter finish that draws me back for more. The carbonation level feels much lower than I expected for the 15 PSI it has been sitting at and the body feels full but not as creamy as an NEIPA and with a dry but refreshing finish. There's both a little bit of a weird onion character and some astringency in the mix but not enough of either to ruin the beer in anyway.

Overall: Sometimes I have a hard time determining whether my beers are good or not. This is especially true of IPAs and this one certainly falls in that category. The beer looks great and I have found myself easily downing a pint (or more) while trying to determine how I feel about it. I think it's probably a pretty solid IPA that just doesn't hit the high notes of my favorite NEIPAs or my favorite hoppy beers in general. That said, it does seem to do a pretty solid job of straddling the line between East Coast and West Coast IPAs with plenty of bitterness but also some haze and body. This yeast blend, and other features of this beer, may not be ideal for really bringing out the sweet and tropical characters I am looking for but they turned out a solid IPA.

 

12/11/17 Brew day notes: Did not hit the high mash temperature I was going for, as I forgot to correct the calculator's strike temp for my system (I always hit ~5 degrees less than expected) and only mashed in at 154. I did a fairly thin mash and a hybrid fly sparge.

1/4 oz. Columbus hops were added during the sparge, with 1/2 oz. Amarillo added 30 minutes after the boil, 1 oz. Nugget added 15 minutes later, 10 minutes later I turned off the electric stove and added the Citra and left on the same burner for 5 minutes at a near boil. Whirlpool hops were added in several additions in the middle of chilling, from around 200 F to around 160 F.

Chilling in multiple ice baths for 3 hours was only able to bring temperature down to 75. Pitched 800mL starter of my current "Inglés" yeast blend and an old, but not yet expired, pack of Nottingham dry yeast.

12 hours later the beer is fermenting heavily and airlock was replaced with a blowoff tube. Surprisingly not a ton of hop aromas coming off. Beer temp down to 69 F.




12/18/17
Added dry hops. Gravity down to 1.013 (7.5 plato refractometer reading). Smells a bit solventy and harsh but taste is more of a classic Pale Ale/IPA piney hoppiness.

12/22/17
Racked to 5 gallon keg with 2 more ounces of Citra and my stainless steel filter over the out tube. Less volume than I planned (noticeably less than 5 gallons) given the 5.5 gallon recipe size and relative volume in the fermenter but a decent amount was lost to trub and hops as expected. Tastes strongly hoppy but the balance isn't quite right. Hopefully a little time on the keg hops will help.

1/5/18

Tasting notes above.

StarTropics 3.0

What makes a beer a beer? I don't mean to ask what beer is so much as what makes a particular brand of beer that brand.The bottle of beer in my hand is, at some level, chemically different than any other beer with the same label even if from the same six pack. At the professional level brewers work hard to have quality control so that every Budweiser tastes like a Budweiser and every Heady Topper tastes like a Heady Topper, but even then there is an acceptable level of variability.

When I first set out with the goal of making StarTropics I envisioned it as a cross between a red IPA and a Brettanomyces saison. The goal was to get a beer that had a gorgeous red color, tons of tropical fruit hop character, fruit and slight funk character from the brettanomyces, with a finish that was dry, slightly spicy, and refreshing. Over time the goal has been somewhat pared down, first transitioning to a 100% brettanomyces beer to reduce some of the funky and spicy character, then to dropping the brettanomyces all together. Today I am brewing a beer that has little in common with my original design: it is no longer intended to be red, or have a large amount of yeast derived characteristics. So is this still StarTropics or just a New England IPA that uses a hopping bill that I liked? Does any of this matter? Not really, but it's fun to think about the recipe creation process from all angles and sometimes the branding can be one part of what shapes a recipe.

This beer came out almost exactly how I had hoped for: light colored and fairly cloudy with huge hop aroma and flavor and only moderately high bitterness. The beer won (well tied) for crowd favorite at the DC Homebrewers annual BBQ competition where I got lots of great feedback. I likely won't change much about this recipe the next time I brew it except possibly to increase the dry hopping rate.

Doing a tasting after over a month in the keg, the cloudiness and hop aromas have faded some but still an enjoyable beer.

Appearance- Deep gold, moderately hazy, some hop particulate noticeable. Head is large and pillowy

Smell- Tropical fruit and pine lead the way giving - mango, papaya, resin, grapefruit. A little more typical American IPA and less complex than when fresh but still a nice mix.

Taste- Hop flavor - again tropical, light pine, citrus fruit - lead the way, some malt sweetness - not caramelly or malty as just a light sugar sweetness, followed by a moderate bitterness that builds slightly in the finish to fully balance and then overtake the sweetness.

Mouthfeel- Super smooth and silky medium body. Hard to tell how much the oats contribute versus yeast and other grains but the balance works great regardless. Carbonation is medium - the beer has been at 10 PSI in the mid 30s for a while now.

Overall - Even over a month old this beer is drinking very nicely. It's not the best NEIPA I've had (we can't all be Scott Janish) but it's one of the best hop dominated beers I have brewed.

Brett IPA (Or how to dump a batch)

While I've made a number of moderately hoppy beers recently (including multiple takes on my Mosaic Grisette) I haven't had a true IPA on hand. Part of the reason is that I haven't had time to brew much and have devoted most of that to perfecting a few recipes. Part of it is just that I don't brew IPAs that often. And part of it is that I haven't been in love with IPAs recently.

While IPA has never been my favorite style I've gone through waves of hating them, loving them, and being fairly indifferent to them. Part of my issue recently is that I've found that the IPAs (and to a large extent pale ales) I've had recently tend to fall into 2 categories: overly dank and bitter or underwhelming all around.

StarTropics is a name I've used for several very distinct beers and I want to use the moniker once again because it has the 3 things I really want in this beer: super tropical-fruit aroma and taste from both hops and yeast, beautiful bright red color, and refreshing, not assaulting, bitterness.  Past attempts at this beer have missed the mark, with one being a Brett saison that became way too heavy on the Brett and the other being a "Brett" Trois based IPA that felt too malty and surprisingly tame in terms of fruit character. This time around I needed to do another radical overhaul.

I liked my previous 100% Brettanomyces beer, but I wasn't sure BKYeast's C2 strain was ideal for an IPA. Having read a lot of Bear-Flavored and Mad Fermentationist posts about Brett C for 100% beers I decided it had the descriptors I was looking for with fast fermentation and bright fruit characteristics.

In order to keep this beer from being as malty as the last version I decided to keep it focused on Pale Ale malt with just a touch of Golden Naked oats for a light sweet, nutty complexity. The color is coming almost entirely from 3 oz. of Carafa III, which I hope will be the right amount to provide a bright red look without too much roast character.

2/5/2016
Friday post-work brew day provided for some challenges. The cold weather made it take longer than usual to hit my strike temperature, and then my mash-in temperature was 4 degrees low. Added another couple gallons of hotter water to bring up to 151 after about 15 minutes. Had a smaller sparge due to the mash water correction and ended up getting my first stuck sparge. A number of things (stirring, adding more water, opening valve wider) didn't help but shoving the top of the dip tube to one side seemed to clear it and was able to run off enough to reach 6 gallons of reddish brown wort. Added the hopshot and bittering additions were added as First Wort with no other additions added until post boil, with the first addition added at flame-out and another added less than 10 minutes later once the wort had cooled to 160. After a 20 minute hop stand at 160 the wort was cooled down the rest of the way to 75.

2/6/2016

Unfortunately a two day starter didn't seem to be enough to get the yeast to the levels required and after 24 hours I pitched a slurry of Brett L + C2.

3/5/2016
I didn't want to admit it for a lot of reasons but...this one is my first full batch dumper. The Brett ended up creating a LOT of plastic flavor that outshines the otherwise pleasant hop characteristics. I am assuming that this is likely due to not having enough yeast at initial pitch and the long lag time experienced by the Brett C. I feel like this is a recipe that had some promise if done correctly but I failed to deliver and need to start over. Once again this recipe teaches me a lesson but fails to produce adequate beer.

4/2/2016
Gave this one a month to cleanup, but I needed the carboy so it got fed to the compost. Disappointing but at least I got the impression that this hop bill worked.

Short Leash (aka #6) Rebrew

I first brewed a Belgian session IPA (a la Raging Bitch but toned down) in my first year of brewing as a birthday gift to my father. He liked it so much that he has regularly asked if I plan to re-brew it ever since. Today I finally decided to give it a go using a similar base recipe but converted to my current all grain setup and substituting hops as needed to use what I had on hand (Nugget in place of Warrior).

Brew Day (9/26/15)
~9 Brix (~1.035 gravity) pre-boil.
Boiled for 45 minutes, cooled to 80 degrees in under than 30 minutes with my new immersion chiller. A huge improvement over my previous ice bath times of an hour plus.
11.5 Brix (1.043 gravity) post-boil.
Wort split between two 3 gallon better bottles. One carboy was moved to my chest freezer at 45 degrees with the temperature controller set to 65 to allow for slow cooling. The other carboy was left at room temperature around 68 degrees.

9/27/15
Fermentor at room temp bubbling away, the one in the chest freezer is just barely starting to get going around 55 degrees

9/28/15
Both batches fermenting vigorously, fermentation chamber up to 60 degrees.

10/11/15
Dry hop blend added to each carboy.

10/17/15
I didn't notice a large difference between the two batches and didn't have any 3 gallon kegs available so I decided to blend them together into a single 5 gallon keg.  PSI set to 30 for 2 days, then will drop to 10.

11/8/2015
Tasting Notes

Appearance: Pours with a large head that lasts for a long time leaving thick foam on the sides of the glass as it slowly falls.  Color is a nice shade of copper with just a touch of cloudiness and some nice carbonation bubbles.  All around a pretty good looking IPA.

Smell: Floral and slightly grassy hop character mix with sweet and stone fruit-y yeast and malt characters. There's also little bit of bread and just a touch of phenolic spice. Could use a more pungent and more interesting hop aroma.

Taste: Dry and mildly spicy on the tongue with just moderate hop flavor but fairly high bitterness on the end. The overall impression is decidedly more bitter and spicy than the fruity and pungent flavors I was aiming for.

Mouthfeel: It took a while for this one to carbonate correctly but it's now at a solid level. The beer is unsurprisingly dry, but with the high bitterness it is a little too attenuated.

Overall: Like a lot of my recent IPA's this one falls in the drinkable but not very good category.  The hop flavor and aroma are disappointing and I think the yeast would have done better at a higher temperature in order to bring out more fruity esters and make it feel more "Belgian" instead of just being dry and spicy.  I am happy with the color and malt profile.

It's hard for me to tell exactly what's been wrong with my past few hoppy beers. I probably need to evaluate every aspect: the ingredients including the type, quality, and age of hops being used and the processes including how and when hops are added in the boil, steep, and dry-hop. For example: I haven't been weighting my dry-hop bags, could that be limiting the ability for the flavor to come out or increasing the oxidation rate?

For this batch I'm going to add an ounce of Amarillo hops to the keg to try and improve it, though I doubt it will get above drinkable.

C Hops, Drink Hops

My father's favorite beers tend to gravitate toward a few common characteristics: fairly hoppy, fairly bitter, citrusy, lightly piney, with a moderate level of caramel malt backbone to keep it all in line.  In other words: the classic American IPA.  His favorite beers include Evolution's Lot #3 which is loaded with C hops and some Amarillo.  It's been a while since I've brewed a more classic American IPA and I decided to get something on tap for the summer that my Dad would be proud of.  Loaded with C hops and with just a bit of light caramel malt and oats this beer is intended to be hop forward, fairly bitter, and super citrusy, without all the exotic/tropical/fruity characters the newfangled hops bring to the table.  With my StarTropics IPA on tap this should be a welcome alternative.  I'm also aiming to make this beer super dry and crisp by mashing at just 149F, which should also offer an alternative (and advantage) over the under attenuated, overly malty StarTropics IPA currently on tap.

Updates

I managed to break my hydrometer the day of kegging, so I didn't get an FG for this beer. It was kegged with 1 oz of each of the C hops used in the recipe and has now been on tap about a month.

Appearance - pale gold, a touch lighter than the standard IPA though not extremely so. Somewhat hazy (likely from the keg hops) with a small but persistent white head.

Smell- the smell is by far my favorite par of this beer with a huge citrusy nose evoking lemon, lime, and resin with a little bit of dank, earthy and herbal mixed in. I get just a little stone fruit, though others have really pointed this out.

Taste- upfront there is some citrus but this is quickly brushed aside in favor of the dank, pine, and bitterness that last through a smooth but highly bitter finish. Again, I don't get much fruitiness though others have mentioned apricot and peach (without even knowing the yeast was Conan).

Mouthfeel- dry and moderately carbonated. The dryness likely adds to the bitterness and extent that the piney characteristics of the beer dominate.

Overall- this is a beer that I have a hard time with. It isn't all that similar to most commercial IPAs and is flawed in the one note, overly dominant hop character. Yet some people who have tried it have had nothing but good things to say and I occasionally find myself craving it (maybe if only for the amazing smell). I've also had very mixed feedback on how to improve it: more complex/less fermentative malt bill, less bitterness, less Columbus/Chinook hops. I think maybe a combination of all of the above with an increase in oats (or use of golden naked instead of quick oats), and a slight reduction in the Chinook and Columbus to let the Cascade and Centennial citrus character show more, would really make this beer exciting. As is, it's a passable but far from exciting IPA, that drinks fine on this hot rainy day.

Imperial IPA Tasting

When I first racked my Imperial IPA to the keg I felt that, despite 6 oz. of dry hops and 6 oz. of hops divided between the late boil and the hop steep, the beer still underwhelmed in hop flavor so I decided to add 4 oz. of keg hops split between the 4 varieties (Amarillo, Cascade, Chinook, and Nugget) already used in the brew.

When I next attempted to taste this beer about a week later I found that the keg (new to me but very much a "used" keg) was leaking gas and that the beer was only marginally carbonated, the results were so underwhelming that I decided not to review and wait until either I was able to fix the issue or could rack to an empty keg.  With my oatmeal stout finally kicking I had a spare keg that could hold pressure and racked from the old keg (and off of the keg hop) into the "new" keg that had housed the stout.  While one day in this keg isn't going to be enough to fix the carbonation issues, and the extended time spent in a semi-closed environment (both due to oxygen and the sheer amount of time) may have already ruined some of the hop aromatics of this beer, but I decided to do a tasting now that I could come back and re-review should this beer turn around.

A- Cloudy copper with a small but sticky white head.  This beer was not nearly as cloudy previously, but did seem to have some noticeable hop particles.  I probably should have added some gelatin while I was moving it to the new keg.

Not a good photo of a not very good beer.  Yes, my desk is very crowded right now.

S- Pine, caramel, dank, pineapple, all fairly light in presence for the style but not unappealing.

T- Sweet and fruity up front fades quickly to a moderately strong and resinous bitterness.  The sugar seems to have given both some rummy alcohol presence and burnt marshmallow characteristics while the hop character is low for the style and pretty underwhelming.  The alcohol is just short of burning, it certainly seems much more alcoholic than the 8.7% estimated ABV would imply.

M- Alcohol presence seems to make this one feel even thinner and less carbonated than it is.  Lack of carbonation certainly doesn't help.

O- Not sure what went so wrong with this one.  The beer is not terrible as a beer, but is extremely off the mark for an imperial IPA (or an IPA of any kind for that matter) with the bitterness being a touch too low, the alcohol a touch too strong, and the hop aromatics and flavor being extremely lacking. I'm pretty disappointed in how this one stands now, one of my lesser "hoppy" beers and certainly not matching up with the better than average results I've had recently across the board.

One factor that certainly contributed to the issues: the yeast extremely overshot the expected attenuation (85% vs. the average of 69%, giving an FG of 1.012 instead of the expected 1.024). I could see a few factors contributing to this including the very large pitch of yeast, the fact that the yeast was a second generation, and the large amount of very fermentable sugar, but it was still a bit surprising and certainly seems to have made this one more alcohol forward than expected or desired.

#45 - Imperial India Pale Ale

After brewing a number of brett saisons and sours over the last year, I've dialed back the funk and overall weird factor in the last few months with an Oatmeal Stout, Bohemian Pilsner, and, today, an imperial IPA.  The beer is inspired in part by a beer that I've never had (Heady Topper) and a number of clones of that recipe (which I've also never tasted).  My recipe is, in no way, a Heady clone but instead attempts to use some of the best aspects of it (4 varieties of American hops, high levels of pale malt, sugar to dry out, around 100 ibu's) in an entirely unique way that should suit my tastes.

The malt bill is fairly simple: 14 lbs British Pale Malt (in place of the Pearl used for Heady), 1 lb Carahell (in place of any caramalt/etc), and 1 lb of Turbinado (in place of white sugar).  For the hop bill I decided to go with Nugget, Cascade, Chinook, and Amarillo.  While I originally had Palisades in the mix, I subbed them out for Chinook in order to get more of the classic pungency and pine of American hops that seems to be missing from my hoppy brett Saison which also featured large doses of Amarillo.  For the yeast I'm hoping that the lightly peach character of Wyeast West Yorkshire Ale will give a somewhat similar profile to what is often described for the Alchemist's Conan strain (which is also said to originally derive from a British ale strain).

When I first began brewing and writing this blog I didn't have much of a taste for hoppy beers with IPAs being more of a novelty that I could respect but not enjoy.  Overtime that has changed and I've become more interested in the world of hops and, with that, some of my best brews to date have been either straight to style American IPA's or interesting takes on the IPA style.

I have high hopes for this beer but it is my first time brewing an Imperial IPA (or Double IPA depending on your preference) and it is still not a style that I tend to gravitate towards, with most examples of the style having an overly bitter profile that voids any complexity from the hops and malt bill.  In the end, I'm hoping this one will be balanced enough and provide a nice alternative to on tap to the roasty Oatmeal Stout, the moderately bitter but otherwise clean (and halfway done lagering) Bohemian Pilsner, and (a just kegged) Cyser.

12-16-2015

After rapid and forceful fermentation for the first 48 hours the airlock is now mostly still. Loosening the bucket revealed a a thick, gelatinous krausen that looks a bit like a thin dough. Pulled a small sample: cloudy, with thick haze, not sure if it is just active yeast or some proteins. Smell is extremely hoppy with taste being biting bitterness and alcohol. A little worried about this one in a few ways at this point but I am hoping another week and some dry hopping will calm it down.

12-21-2014

Pulled a sample, flavor is much improved, piney, citrusy, and fairly bitter. Gravity all the way down to 1.012. Added dry hops (1 oz Cascade, 1 oz Chinook, 2 oz Amarillo, 2 oz Nugget). Planning to keg in the next 3-5 days.

#33 - Belgian Session IPA Version 2

One of my first very successful beers was a Belgian Session IPA.  Today I decided to play on a similar riff but with different hops and a tweaked malt profile.  This includes Belgian Pilsner malt (in order to test get a sense of it's character) and Baird's Carastan and Simpson's Golden Naked Oats (both of which I found were excellent in a previous IPA).  Another twist is that I will be making a green tea tincture alongside the beer which, if it tastes good, will be blended with some fraction of the beer.  Part of the goal of today's brewing session was to build up enough Wyeast 3787 to be able to make a few batches of much stronger beers (dubbel, tripel, quad) in the next few months.  The hop choices were inspired by recent tastes of Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin beers and a long desire to want to try out Palisades.

There were a number of difficulties due to lack of equipment and due to coming down with a cold the night before I planned to brew.  Having just moved to a new apartment, I used Arlington, VA water for the first time and am also using half a campden tablet to remove chloramine for the first time, as I am currently without a water filter.  1.75 tsp of gypsum were added to the 3 gallons of mash water being heated in my new stainless steel pot and strike temperature was brought up to 165.  In addition to not having a water filter, I had no scale to measure out my hops or grains.  While approximating half a bag of oats isn't too difficult and the difference will be minor approximating 1/32 of a pound of Palisades is much more difficult and the magnitude of error will be much more compounded since there is only a single first wort hop addition contributing the vast majority of IBU's to this beer.  On top of this I was way off on my mash/sparge water calculations and ended up with just 4 gallons of 1.058 wort.  I added one gallon of distilled water I had sitting around to bring it down to 1.048.  Initial tasting is sweet with a floral and berry character with a moderate bitterness and some citrus character also in the mix.  Should be interesting to see how this one comes out.

Brewing while I have a cold, in a new location, with new water, a new stove, a new pot, new varieties of hops and not measuring the exact weight of the hops leaves a lot of question marks for this batch, but with how cheap this beer is (under 25 bucks if you don't count the yeast), and with how much healthy yeast it will produce I am not as worried about the quality of the end result and am more worried about dialing in the new system. Getting a good beer out of it would certainly be nice though.

12-16-13

Checked on the beer today to see it had erupted. Perfumey floral beer smell and all the walls are covered in krausen and hop goop. Cleaned up and reattached the now slowly bubbling airlock.

12-18-13

Checked gravity, down to 1.009 and still fermenting.  Taste is floral with subtle citrus and a pungent, vegetal finish. Still green, not carbonated and not even done fermenting but the bitterness seems too low.

Lots of hops and candi syrup from Farmhouse brewing supplies.  The large 1 lb bag is the Palisades.

2/5/14

Tasting. Pretty happy with the way both of these came out.

7/7/14

Entered these into a competition in March where they received middling scores due to being out of style. Forgot to post the blog entry so the double tasting post was updated to include score reports and my take.

#30 - Amarillo IPA

Finding myself with 3 oz. of Amarillo hops, an open fermentor and no hoppy beers sitting around I decided it was time to brew another American IPA.  While my #28 American Saison features Amarillo and was designed to have a mild hoppiness this beer was intended to be much more bitter and hop forward without yeast character.  In order to up the bitter hop character I used a much different water chemistry profile than I had and added quite a bit of gypsum with just a touch of calcium carbonate.  The simple mash (2-row with just a touch of Vienna and Carastan) made for a fairly easy brewday, though I once again missed my target gravity.  I brought a few bottles of this beer to the beach with me and they were finished fairly quickly.  It's a very pleasant beer but not one that wouldl stand out in a crowd.

10/04/13

Wanted to do a tasting of this IPA...unfortunately (fortunately?) it appears my dad really enjoyed it and there aren't any bottles remaining. Probably for the best with a beer this hoppy which deserves to be enjoyed fresh. Only wish I'd taken a little more notes to have a better sense of how to tweak it next time around. Also wish I had taken a picture since that's really all this post has been waiting on since brew day in July. As the saying goes, only the good die young, and this was a good beer.

#22 - IPA Tasting

If there is one hard rule about homebrew it's that the best batches are gone too soon and the worst stay around too long. This beer, fortunately, has flown by. Down to the last bottle of a 5 gallon bath after just over a month. Time for a tasting.

A- solid off white head that fades to one finger. Very clear bright orange color. Leaves beautiful lace on the way down, as seen in the second picture. Right where I wanted it.

S- luscious fruit and citrus hops with a bit of honey. Melon, lavender, rose, lemon. Lots going on in the hop forest.

T- bright warm lightly toasty malt on the from with a bitingly bitter finish. The hop flavor has already faded a bit, still a nice lemony fruity flavor there but surprisingly faded much quicker than the beautiful aroma.

M- medium in body and carbonation. Very enjoyable with a bit of creaminess from the oats counteracting the otherwise dry body.

O- one of, if not the, best beers I have made to this point. I would gladly serve this or order it from a professional brewery, a bit different than the standard but I'm glad. This is good beer.

American IPA

I brewed my first straight forward, traditional IPA this past weekend.  While I put a little bit of my own twist on it by using some Golden Naked Oats and untraditional flavoring/aroma hops of Warrior and Nugget (and planning to dryhop with some German Opal) the recipe was one of the most "to style" that I have made. I had some trouble keeping the mini mash part at a low temp. It actually was around 146-148 for a while but slowly raised to 160 after adding some heat, we'll see what that does to the body. The OG was measured at 1.068 and had a refreshingly bitter finish before fermentation. This should end up a nice dry hoppy IPA.

Updates:

12/30/12

Finally bottled with 4 oz. of sugar

1/5/13

Cracked the first one of these open.  Certainly not as bitter as I had expected, more balanced with sweetness but it seems to be a nice pale ale at this point.

Session Belgian IPA

I brewed this beer in honor of my father's birthday and styled it largely after one of his favorites: Flying Dog's Raging Bitch.  As my father is (quite) a lightweight but also enjoys to have a few beers regardless of strength I wanted to knock down the ABV on this from the normal belgian IPA strength and, due to the decrease in OG, also knocked down the BU's somewhat.

Appearance - A very clear amber with a bit of a reddish tint that almost appears violet.  A small head of about one finger fades quickly into a thin white film. Pretty good in terms of looks, wasn't going for anything in particular in this category but it seems to be my clearest beer so far.

Smell - Wow, right up front there is a ton of fruit. Some is yeast derived ( cherries, plums, apricots) and a lot is from the American hops (orange) with a bit of sweet candy malt also present.  When I first tasted this prior to carbonation I feared the dry hopping and overall hop presence may have entirely outshined the yeast, the aroma now seems to favor more towards the Belgian side than the hops.

Taste- Like the aroma the hop taste seems to have faded very quickly.  Part of the problem is the under attenuation and residual sugars which I blame likely being due to the extract.  This puts the beer far from the level of bitterness desired and adds sugars which detract from the hoppiness all around.  That said the belgian yeast components do come through with a bit of fruit and spice and the hops make their presence with the nugget definitely apparent.  A bit of bitterness at the very end alludes to the 40 IBU's estimated.

Mouthfeel - Fairly full bodied, again likely due to underattenuation, but also highly carbonated.  The carbonation does allow the bitterness and hops to coat the mouth somewhat but again the residual sugars shine a bit more than I would have hoped for.

Drinkability/Overall - This beer met some expectations (my dad does seem to enjoy it) but it did not work quite right. I blame the low attenuation (about 72%) on low fermenting temperatures (around 68) and extract which is generally not mashed at low temps.  While I do enjoy this beer quite a bit and love where the aroma is I think more flavor hop additions should have been used, and with this high amount of residual sugars a bit more bittering as well.  One of the most important things about this beer to me is how much better it got as it warmed, I pulled it straight from the fridge and everything was much stronger and simply better by the end.  I'm not a huge hophead but this is definitely one I will make again.