Six Pack IPA -- First Tasting

I was able to finally try the first bottle of my six pack of IPA yesterday, and was astounded by the results. I forgot to take a picture of the final beer so that you can see the color but I will definitely take and post a pic of the next one that I pop open.

The color is dark orange and pretty cloudy. The smell blew me away. Extremely hoppy, but due to the fact that I used only simcoe hops it is extremely piney, and resiney, with very little of what I would call a citrusy flavor. Usually in an IPA the citrus aroma is my favorite part so I was pretty worried that I was not going to like this one, but quite the opposite, I think I liked it more because it was so different.

Not being able to do a gravity reading before or after fermentation, I really had no idea what to expect as far as bitterness or alcohol. As it turns out I would call the final beer much more a double IPA than a regular IPA. The resiny aspect of the hops really came out but in a pleasant way. The bitterness level was extremely high, I would guess around the high 70 to low 80 IBU range, and balanced a pretty malty base very well.

In the end the beer came out better than I would have ever guessed that it would and I cant wait to make some more. Maybe a 5 gallon batch this time.

Six Pack IPA Bottled

Well, the six pack of IPA has now been bottled and is slowly undergoing its bottle fermentation in the living room right now. I hope to taste it in about two weeks, and now that I am done with this little project I have a few little observations to share. First, making 3 quarts of beer is way easier than making 5 gallons. The cleanup takes no time at all, chilling the wort is a breeze, everything is just very easy. Second, it is going to be a great way to get into wild fermentations and stuff like that. Throwing away a bad six pack of a brett beer is way easier than throwing away a full five gallon batch. Finally, I love imperial IPA's and was worried that with the hop shortage, enjoying a nice homemade Double IPA was going to be impossible. With the one gallon batch however it will be no problem. 3 ounces of hops in there will be more than enough.

All in all, it was a fun expirement that I would definitely recommend to anyone considering it.

Amarillo Pale

With the coming hop shortage, I figured I would take advantage of the hops we have in our local shop now and not wait until they were totally gone. I am not sure what the availability of Amarillo hops is going to be, but I love them so much I decided I would make a beer using only them in case they did disappear. The recipe is amazingly simple, and I have to admit that I stole most of it from The Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton. His recipe was all grain so I converted that, and am going to dry hop where he didn't, but those are really the only changes I made.

My starting gravity was about 1.063, and the sample I took was totally green from the hops. I made a 2 L starter a day before and this picture was taken just before it really took off. The smell and the taste of the wort were amazing. Just all hops and nothing else. I may have fudged some of the amounts and numbers just a little bit as I brewed this at a group brew and was having a great time socializing. For the most part the amounts though should be pretty close to accurate.

Recipe

8.5 pounds pale DME
.5 pounds cara pils
7 ounces Amarillo(9% AAU) for 10 min.
White Labs 001 Cal Ale (2 liter starter)

Steep Grains for 30 min at 150 to 155
60 min. boil
Fermenting in glass at 68 degrees

Lego Beer

Just thought this was funny.

Six Pack IPA

This is the six pack IPA from James Spencer at Basic Brewing Radio. I used the recipe that was published in BYO magazine. I was just bored one night and wanted to brew but didn't want to drag out all of the equipment when I remembered this recipe. Everything went really well and it was pretty easy to make. The only real problem I ran into was that Pro Mash did not like working with volumes less than a gallon. Also, since I do not own a refractometer, the actual gravity and IBU numbers are completely unknown to me. I can make a guess based on volume, but to tweak this recipe it looks like I am going to have to work purely on taste.

I know that the background looks pretty ghetto, but that is because I am fermenting in my basement where it is cool. At the time of this posting it had just started to ferment, and I am hoping that it will really take off today.

The recipe was pretty basic, one thing you really need is a good scale as the hop additions are all measured in gram increments. I went to the local head shop and picked up one of those little scales that hang off of your finger. It worked OK, but a nice digital Escali scale would have been a lot nicer.

So here is the recipe I used:

2 oz. Crystal Malt 60L
1 Lb Light DME
10 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 15 min.
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 5 min.
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets 0 min.
5 g. Safale US - 05 Dry Yeast
4 g. Simcoe Hop Pellets -- I will dry hop in about a week for 3 days.

I started with one gallon of water, and then just did it like normal except that everything was way smaller. The whole article is in the July-August 07 BYO and it goes into a lot more detail on the actual process.

Jaggery IPA -- Taste Test

I finally sat down and gave my Jaggery IPA, an English IPA, a real taste test today using the BJCP guidelines. What I got really didn't surprise me. I have been drinking it for a while and realized that there were some significant flaws. The biggest problem I ran into was that during fermentation my temp probe was not attached to the carboy, and the temp of the beer got up to about 80 degrees. I think I may have made it worse by kicking on the fridge and dropping it down to 68 as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, It has cleaned up quite a bit over the past month and it is at least drinkable now. Also, I used 2 pounds of Jaggery palm sugar, I am not sure how this played into the taste, but I assume it made some difference. And so, the critique;

Aroma: Mostly Alcoholic with a little bit of hop Aroma. Would expect a lot more aroma to fit style. As beer warms, the alcohol smell really takes over.

Appearance: Head retention OK, very cloudy, Mostly Orange

Flavor: Finishes pretty clean, little bit of hop aftertaste. Strong alcohol flavor on back of tongue. Some Maltiness, but the alcohol really overwhelms all else. Mostly seems to be a higher alcohol flavor. When you breathe out through your nose, you can really feel it burn on the way out.

Mouthfeel: Medium full body, Alcohol fills out the mouthfeel. A bit of hop astringency, but not much.

Overall Impression: Decent beer, way to many fusel alcohols. Needs a lot more hop flavor and aroma. Maybe next time dry hop, and use some crystal 60 to help get that malty flavor that a british IPA has.

Overall Score: 24/50