Single Hop #5: Calypso and Lancaster Brewers SMASH Experiment

My next batch is going be part of my homebrew club’s next experiment.  I’m also going to go ahead and count it as number five in my single hop series.  The club bought a bunch of newer varieties of hops and came up with a recipe.  Everyone was given the opportunity to pick one of the varieties of hops and brew the recipe with them.  I ended up with Calypso hops.

The recipe is a SMASH beer, with a single type of malt and one variety of hop.  The malt is Briess 2 Row Pale Malt.  This is a pretty basic base malt.  It is definitely not without character and flavor, but it isn’t something that is normally given center stage.  Despite being the only malt here, that is still the case.  While we’re calling this a SMASH experiment, the real goal is to test out these different hops and the single malt is just an attempt give them as much room as possible to shine.

As with seemingly all new American beers, I’d call this beer, by default, an IPA.  It is on the lower end of the gravity scale for that style, but otherwise it fits in pretty neatly.  The hop schedule is the same for each version, which makes me nervous for mine.

These Calypso hops are listed at 15.4% Alpha Acid.  With the schedule called for in the recipe, that calculates to a crushing 114 IBUs.  While realistically, I won’t get nearly that much efficiency, this is still going to be a very bitter beer for the approximately 5% ABV provided by the malts.

These hops are described online as having aroma similar to pears and apples.  It was bred through some other experimental hops and Nugget.  I will admit to not knowing much about the hop breeding process, but yes, Nugget.  That is about all I got out of reading a few paragraphs about the breeding of this hop.  Nugget was in there somewhere.  Nugget is definitely not known for fruity, pear and apple like flavors and aromas, so those other, unreleased hops must have contributed most of the final character.

I am planning to brew this beer tomorrow, March 4.  The club will be sampling all of the different versions at our meeting on April 29.  I don’t have much else to say about this beer until then.  Once my version is ready, I’ll try to post tasting notes for it before the meeting, before I am influenced by the other versions.  Then, of course I’ll have a big post about all the different versions.  The recipe, in the form of a phone pic of the handout, is below.

Green Painted Gold Brettanomyces Fermented Saison Brew Day

For my second Brett beer, I decided to make a saison. Mainly because saison is just about the widest beer style there is and I wanted to play around with a lot of different ideas here. I wanted something pale in color, slightly acidic with citrus notes and a nice hoppy character on top of spicy, smokey, barnyard-y Brett. I’m sure you can find a beer that fits that description and is marketed as a saison.

I do want to make some true sour beer soon, but this time I wanted to cheat for a few reasons. First of all, I’m just impatient. Second, I put this beer on the cake from my first Brett beer and I plan to continue to utilizing this yeast for at least a couple more batches. So to get some acidity, I made close to 15% of the grist Acidulated Malt.

Acidulated Malt, or Acid Malt, originated in Germany as a way to adjust mash pH without breaking the Reinheitsgrebot. The malt is made with lactic acid. Because the acid comes as part of the malt, it doesn’t interfere with the famous German purity law.

For it’s original purpose, only a couple percent of the grist should be Acid Malt. Much later, someone came to the realization that using a larger portion of the specialty malt could lower the pH of the wort enough to imitate a sour fermentation. This still isn’t a very common practice as far as I can tell. I had trouble finding very solid information about how much to use and how much it would change the finished beer’s character. Ten percent seemed to be a common idea to get some noticeable acidity so I decided to push it a bit further to fifteen. By the time I finalized the recipe, it ended up being slightly lower than that, but I hope it will give a nice tang.

The rest of the grist is fairly straight forward, even if it is pretty varied. There are no other “specialty” malts, technically, but to fit with the tradition of farmhouse brewers who originated this broad style, I included several grains. The base malt is German Pilsner, accounting for fifty five percent of the grist. Rye Malt makes up twenty percent. There is a small amount of Flaked Wheat and the fermentables are rounded out with a pound of sugar.

The farmers who brewed the original saisons used any ingredients they had. Being farmers, they often had multiple grains, thus the rye and wheat. Those grains were in different conditions, malted and raw, thus the flaked wheat. The sugar will help further dry the beer out (though the Brett will do a pretty good job of that anyway). Yes, the rye will bring a little bit of spiciness to blend with the Brett’s fermentation character and the wheat will also help head retention and mouthfeel, but I really wanted to just add different things without putting too much emphasis on ratios and specific contributions of each. This beer is mostly about fermentation character and the variety of grains is there to add to the complexity, hopefully without getting in the way.

Despite all that, this isn’t necessarily a very traditional saison. Those beers were meant to be refreshing for the workers on the farm so the alcohol content was very low (the crude equipment and limited understanding of the brewing process could have also added to this). It has become normal now for saisons to be much stronger than their ancestors. This one should be somewhere close to 7% ABV, which is pretty standard now, but much higher than historical versions.

Also, while it is true that saisons were the hoppiest of the traditional Belgian styles, they were not this hoppy. They would have likely been hopped with traditional German and Czech Noble hops. I used two new hop varieties, but picked them due to their relation to the traditional hops. Saphir is a (relatively) new German hop variety.

I don’t know much about it and I’ve never used it but from what I understand, it has some of that traditional spicy Noble hop character along with a unique tangerine like citrus character. That sounds pretty interesting and seems like it could work well with the Brett. It is also German, so it has ties to the traditional hops used in saisons.

Motueka is a new variety that I have heard a lot about and I believe I’ve had a couple beers that featured it, but I’ve never used it myself. The variety originated in New Zealand, but it was bred from Saaz hops, so again, it has ties to more traditional saison hops. They have been described as having a blend of citrus (sometimes said to be lime-like) and floral aromas.

Between the tangerine, lime and my inclusion of lemon zest towards the end of the boil, I’m hoping for a lively, citrusy beer. One of my goals here was to combine a bunch of citrusy characters while shying away from the bitter grapefruit and rind character that has become synonymous with a lot of hoppy beers. I guess I haven’t otherwise mentioned the lemon zest up to this point.

Spices were also common in the early farmhouse saisons. I originally toyed with including some coriander or peppercorns, but ultimately decided against it. I added the lemon zest instead. I zested one lemon early in the boil and added the result with fifteen minutes left.

I hope that despite the long fermentation, a good amount of hop character persists in the finished beer. If not, I may decide to dry hop. For now, I play the waiting game and try to keep the carboy warm in this cold weather to help the Brett do its thing.

I didn’t have a name picked yet on brew day. When I got the wort into the fermenter, I was surprised to see that it had a bit of a green tint. I guess I didn’t filter out the hop residue as well as I could have? Or could it have been from all the Acid Malt? Was it the light or was I just overly tired from a long day? Anyway, it doesn’t look so green now, but that got me at least a direction for the name.

It is hoppy, so green make sense, anyway. Hopefully it will ultimately be pale and yellow or golden. It includes lemon zest. This line of thought brought me to thinking about an album by one of my favorite artists, Atmosphere. Their 2008 release, “When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold” is one of my favorites. Anyway, Green Painted Gold was the result this search for a name.

I wrote the rest of this post in fits and spurts over the last few weeks, but only hours before posting this, I took my first sample of this beer. It was fantastic. I am so excited. It has been less than three weeks since brew day and I plan to give the beer a couple months before bottling, but it already has more Brett character than my first batch of Brett beer. The citrus notes come through even more, though. Lemon is the biggest character, but lime is close behind and the beer is noticeably tart from the Acid Malt. I think I have a winner here.

Now back to the waiting game.

Green Painted Gold
Style: Saison
IBU’s: 34
Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Boil Time: 90 minutes
Brew Date: 12/27/2014
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.008
ABV: 6.8 %

Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name
8.00 lbs 55.17 % Pilsner (2 Row) Ger
3.00 lbs 20.69 % Rye Malt
2.00 lbs 13.79 % Acid Malt
0.50 lbs 3.45 % Wheat, Flaked
1.00 lbs 6.90 % Sugar, Table (Sucrose)

Hops
Amount IBU’s Name Time AA %
1.00 ozs 21.63 Motueka First Wort 6.50
0.50 ozs 6.19 Motueka 15 mins 6.50
1.00 ozs 3.98 Saphir 10 mins 3.30
1.00 ozs 0.00 Saphir 0 mins 3.30
0.50 ozs 0.00 Motueka 0 mins 6.50

Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg Brettanomyces Lambicus Wyeast Labs 5526

Additions
Zest of 1Lemon 15 mins

7 O’Clock Special Bitter Tasting Notes

Original Post: 7 O’Clock Best Bitter
Style: Special/Best Bitter
Brew Date: June 18, 2013
Tasting Date: December 6, 2014
ABV: 5.5%
IBUs: 37

I don’t have fond memories of this beer. There are a few more bottles in the basement, but I’ve had no desire to drink them. Let’s find out if my poor opinion is justified.

The beer is over carbonated. It wasn’t a gusher, but it poured about three quarters of a glass of foam. As it finally died down and I filled more of the glass with liquid, it became obvious that it was thick with yeast. The color is bright orange, but the overall appearance is not nearly as appealing as it would be if it wasn’t so cloudy.

The aroma of the beer is very strong and actually pretty nice. I got some citrus notes just from pouring. Getting in closer, the aroma gets a bit earthier. I was surprised by the citrus aroma, which was distinctly American. That smell stays, but takes a back seat to the earthy English hops with notes of tobacco. There is also some oxidized, cardboard aroma evident, but considering the age of the beer, that is to be expected.

On the first sip, the tobacco-like hops come through first but there is some caramel malt sweetness as well, balanced by bitterness. The malt and the bitterness are pleasant, but I just don’t like the hop flavor.

The carbonation is crisp and sharp. Between that and the moderate, but not overwhelming bitterness, the beer cleans up pretty thoroughly.

Everything else is fine, but it really just comes down to the fact that I don’t like the hop character of this beer. I don’t know how to describe it other than tobacco, but with hints of citrus. It is sort of the worst of British and American hops combined. The earthy British flavor and the harsh American character are combined into a dirt sandwich.

The cloudy, yeasty over carbonation is the only real problem with the brewing of this beer that I can find. But I really don’t like it. The citrus and harshness makes it too American to really feel like a Bitter, the sweetness and British maltiness means it can’t be an American IPA and that tobacco flavor… well, I just don’t like that.

Day of the Red Brew Day

Originally, this was going to be called Dawn of the Red, like the Imperial Amber Ale I made last year, but I decided that the recipe is different enough to warrant this being a sequel. Day of the Red is a Red IPA. I am taking a different approach from what I would normally do with an IPA, going further into the “Red” part.

The grain bill of this beer is basically the same as an Irish Red Ale, just a little souped up to take it into IPA level gravity. The mash temperature, at 154º, is higher than I would normally do for an IPA, again more like an Irish Red Ale.

After the mash, though, comes a first wort hop with an ounce of Chinook. Then there are a few Cascade additions through out the boil and more Cascades along with Palisades at flameout. This is, of course where the IPA comes in.

I wanted to keep the hop profile more in line with the classics, after experimenting with newer hop varieties a lot over the Summer. I will rarely make an IPA without using Chinook for bittering. It is, in my experience one of the only hops that will manage to give some of its characteristic piny flavor to a beer even when boiled for long periods. Cascade is one of my favorite hop varieties and is certainly a classic for IPAs, but I rarely use it in these beers, basically because it is so common in commercial IPAs. I thought it was time to try my hand at a mostly Cascade IPA, though and I also thought the famous citrus/pine balance of this hop would work well with this maltier than normal IPA.

Palisade is a hop that I have no previous experience with. It is said to be mostly floral but with earthy tones reminiscent of British hop varieties. I couldn’t resist trying a new (to me) hop in an IPA, but I didn’t want the super fruity hops I’ve been experimenting with lately. This is supposed to be a fairly mellow hop and the British influence seemed appropriate for an Irish Red Ale inspired IPA.

Probably the strangest part of this recipe will come after primary fermentation. Along with a dry hop charge of an ounce each of Cascade and Palisade, I will also add a plank of American Oak the fermenter. I got this idea after reading about Russian River’s Blind Pig IPA, which I can’t find where I live but which also adds oak with its dry hops. One beer I was able to try recently which finally cemented the idea was a special cask of Bube’s Brewery’s wet hopped pale ale with oak added to the cask. It was delicious, I preferred it by a large margin to the regular version of the beer, which was also quite good.

Old Strong 2012 is the only previous experience I’ve had with oak. In that beer, I added chips to secondary. The oak chips were soaked in whiskey and the beer was aged with them for several months. This time, I got an oak spiral which I plan to sanitize with a quick stint in the oven before adding it along with the dry hops to be in contact with the beer for only about a week before packaging.

I am once again using White Labs’ 007 – Dry English Ale yeast for this batch. I have been very happy since starting to use this yeast. It gives a fairly neutral flavor in my experience, closer to a lot of American ale strains than the very estery English strains I like for bitters and milds. I am interested to see how dry this beer will be because, as the name suggests, this yeast can ferment pretty low. I usually do all I can to encourage this in my IPAs, but I want to maintain a bit more maltiness, thus the grain bill and higher mash temperature. If the yeast goes crazy though, I won’t be upset. Anyway, my recipe is below.

Day of the Red
Style: Red IPA
Brew Date: December 3, 2014
Serve Date: January, 2014
OG: 1.061
Expected FG: 1.014
Approximate ABV: 6%
IBUs: 75

Fermentables:
87% British Pale Malt
12% British Crystal 60L Malt
1% British Roasted Barley

Hops:
1 oz. Chinook @ First Wort Hop
1 oz. Cascade @ 45 min
1 oz. Cascade @ 10 min
2 oz. Cascade @ Flameout (15 min hop stand)
1 oz. Palisade @ Flameout (15 min hop stand)
1 oz. Cascade @ Dry Hop (about 5 days)
1 oz. Palisade @ Dry Hop (about 5 days)

Other:
1 Medium Roast American Oak Spiral added with dry hop

Yeast:
WLP007 – Dry English Ale Yeast

Satellite Hop Yard Update

This will be a quick one, but I promised to update on the hops I planted at the cabin. I was planning to stick it into a batch update post, but I haven’t brewed in a while and I don’t have much to update on. I finally made it up to the cabin last weekend, though. This is what I found.

If you don’t remember, I planted two Cascade rhizomes in the Spring. One is in front of the cabin under a wooden trellis that has been hanging since my parents bought the cabin without being used. The other is by the shed, where there is a fence with a birdhouse hung on an extended post. Both rhizomes showed growth. That is exciting. Both looked like something was eating the leaves. That is perplexing.

I’m not sure what would eat hop bines and I’m not completely sure that is what happening, but it looks that way. Both bines were around six inches and stripped completely of leaves. There was a bit cut (chewed?) off that actually still had leaves intact.

This is a lot less growth than I had in my first year hop yard at home, but I’m happy that both rhizomes sprouted. I haven’t done anything to keep up with these things and they both at the very least, survived. I’m anxious to see what next year will bring.

Mount Hoodie (2013) Tasting Notes and 2014 Comparison

Original Post: Mount Hoodie 2013
Style: American Amber Lager
Brew Date: Winter 2012/2013
Tasting Date: October 14, 2014
ABV: 4.8%
IBUs: 32

This is mainly meant to be tasting notes on the first batch of Mount Hoodie, but that beer is well past its prime. It should have been consumed well over a year ago. I happen to have some of the 2014 batch, which is already a bit out of date as well, so I’m going to try to compare them. In my memory, the first batch was excellent fresh. One of my favorites, thus leading to the follow up. That re-brew was botched, though as you might remember and while the beer turned out okay, it was a disappointment after the great first batch.

I poured both beers and got a huge head on each. The color of both are similar, though the older batch is much clearer and as a result appears a little lighter. The color is light for an amber lager. It is barely into the orange range and the highlight definitely qualify as yellow. It may not be what most would expect from “amber” beer, but I like it quite a bit and I still think it qualifies, though I wouldn’t call it red.

Taking a sip, I don’t get a lot of aroma without looking for it. Once the beer is in my mouth, it still has some nice malt flavor, but there are no hops left. It isn’t too badly oxidized, considering its age, though there is some of that problem.

It is a real shame to lose the Mount Hood hops that lend this beer its name. The lighter color comes from less of the malts that give most amber beers their defining characteristics. I like the lighter malts in this when it is showcasing hops, but now that the hops have faded, the maltier version would be welcome.

Getting back to the comparison, time to break into the newer version. There is definitely more hop presence in this. It is still less than I’d like, but I could identify Mount Hood hops in this, both in the aroma and the flavor. The aroma is lightly citrusy with some earthy spice. These aromas are echoed in the flavor, although they are cut even more by the malts. The malt flavor is very similar to older version but has held up a little better with a year less aging.

In their current states, the newer version is far superior. I don’t doubt the original was much better fresh, but I do wonder if it hasn’t also been built up in my mind. It was my first lager and the clean, crisp fermentation was new to my homebrew. I hope to brew another batch of this beer in the coming Winter. I plan to up the hops a little bit and keep the malts pretty consistent.

While I still have some of the newer beer left, I have finished the original, so I’m going to say that is a wrap on these tasting notes.

‘Merican Wit

White IPAs were all the rage when I brewed this beer. The styles already seems to have leveled off and begun falling back. At the time, I had been disappointed by most of the versions I’d tried, finding them to be too harsh and bitter to fit into the Wit beer framework. I love the blast of citrusy hops in the aroma, but the bitterness was just not pleasant to me.

I decided the logical thing to do was to take a step back from the White IPAs and instead do a Pale Ale/Wit hybrid. Lots of late hops with a lower IBU count and an ABV more in range with other Wits. Really, I mainly took a standard Wit recipe and then just added a bunch of one of my favorite hop combinations.

Citra and Centennial hops are both great, but together they work as well as any tandem team of ingredients in all of brewing. The floral notes of Centennial, with the bit of resin in Citra and the loads of grapefruit from both form a tag team to treat your whole face.

I gave a decent load, two and a half ounces between the two varieties, towards the end of the boil, but I didn’t dry hop. I was very happy with the hop flavor and aroma I got. It was hoppy, but it left room for the yeast, wheat and even a little bit of coriander.

I mentioned that I stayed fairly true to a classic Wit recipe, but I did make a couple of changes. The first one was purely to make my brew day easier. In the classic Belgian Wits, raw wheat is incorporated into the grist and usually necessitates a step mash to achieve conversion. I went with the modern cheat, Torrified Wheat. I don’t honestly know the full process of that leads to torrified wheat, but I do know that it undergoes some sort of heat treatment that makes it much easier to achieve conversion. Using this substitute, I was able to keep my normal single infusion mash process.

Belgian Wits often have coriander, which I already mentioned I used in this recipe, and bitter orange peels or zest. In place of this, I used clementine peels. I used them fresh, peeling the fruit to eat while brewing and then adding all of the skin straight to the boil. I was nervous about the presence of the pith adding too much bitterness, but I didn’t have that problem. In fact, I don’t think that the peels did much for the beer one way or the other. I know the orange peels sold at the homebrew store are normally dried. I’m not sure how much of a difference this makes, but with the extra hops, the fruit and spice additions were playing even further in the background than normal and they were not missed at all.

This was one of my favorite batches. It was briskly hoppy, suitably complex in fermentation character, yet crisp and refreshing. Though not quite in session beer range, this was a beer that I could enjoy several of. I did save a few, though. Which is not a good idea, by the way, I did it for this blog, though. These were just about gone when I started the blog and I purposely saved some to do tasting notes on. I just wish I had been able to get to it sooner.

‘Merican Wit
Style: Americanized Belgian Wit/Pale Ale
Brew Date: July 3, 2013
Serve Date: August, 2013
OG: 1.052
FG: 1.011
Approximate ABV: 5.3%
IBUs: 39

Fermentables:
54% Belgian Pilsner Malt
38% Torrified Wheat
8% Oats

Hops (approximately 2 gallon batch)
.5 oz Centennial @ 60 min
1 oz Citra @ 10 min
.5 oz Centennial @ 5 min
1 oz Citra @ Flameout

Yeast:
White Labs 0400 – Belgian Wit Ale

Moist Harvest Pale Ale Tasting Notes

Original Post: Moist
Style: American Pale Ale/Harvest Ale
Brew Date: September 9, 2014
Tasting Date: October 7, 2014
ABV: 4.7%
IBUs: 45ish

Today (Tuesday, October 7, as I write this) is two weeks to the day since I bottled Moist. Considering that it is a wet hopped harvest ale, it seems only right that I get these tasting notes done in a hurry.

The carbonation sounds and looks good. A fairly large head died down to a thin layer of bubbles fairly quickly, but that thin layer isn’t going away. The color of the beer is a little darker than expected but it’s fairly clear considering how young it is and also the fact that it was bottled straight from primary fermentation.
I would describe the color as amber with orange highlights. The light is low in this room and it almost borders on brown sitting against the wall, but held up to the light the red/amber color comes out. It is still a bit dark for an American Pale Ale, but it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for an ESB or other English Pale Ale.

The aroma is malty and grainy with hints of spicy and slightly floral hops. Strangely, it seems like a mix of Nugget and Centennial hops. I say strangely because most of the Nugget hops were added as a first wort addition. Centennial, which are by far the most prevalent hop in the recipe are expected, but I’m a little surprised to get as much Nugget character.

Either way, hops are not the biggest attraction in the aroma. Again, it seems closer to an English Pale Ale with lots of malty aroma and a sprinkling of hops. The graininess of the wheat comes through, which wouldn’t fit in an English Pale Ale, but the overall balance matches those beers.

Taking a sip, that “creaminess” that the Red Wheat is known for comes out immediately. I wasn’t sure what to expect from that description of the malt, but as soon as I taste it, it all becomes clear. I’m still struggling to describe the flavor beyond “creamy,” but that really does seem to sum it up. And that is the dominant malt flavor. There is a little bit of Crystal Malt sweetness, but it definitely plays the background.
The bitterness, which I was worried could be a bit too high, based on a very loose idea of how much Alpha Acid may be in these homegrown hops, is actually perfect. That creamy wheat flavor takes a good amount of bitterness to balance it out and the 45-ish IBUs here are up to the task.

Now, the main attraction: those freshly harvested, home grown, wet hops. Their presence is felt, but it is far from overwhelming. The Centennial hops are obvious, but still slightly subtle. The Nugget hops, as mentioned, are also identifiable. The rest may be helping to round out the flavor, but they are not in the foreground.

Those spicy hop flavors, whose spiciness is obvious but unidentifiably vague come out and I recognize them as Nugget. There are citrusy, floral notes from the Centennials. The floral part almost reminds me of Wildflower Honey, which is of course, from a variety of flowers rather than one specific variety. It is, again, obvious but not immediately identifiable as one specific variety. There is a good chance that the other hops are adding to this vagueness, but Centennial is the only one that is copious enough to stand out.

The citrus is more subtle. When you dig for it, grapefruit is obvious comparison, but it is subtle enough to get lost. That is not a bad thing. This isn’t a mess of too many hop varieties like I worried it could be. The Nugget and Centennial stand out and work well and the other hops add an unexpected complexity without muddling things too much.

This is not a very hoppy beer, but it is a pretty good one. I’m still not quite sure if adding all that Red Wheat was the “right” decision or not. It definitely brought a lot to the table and made this beer interesting and enjoyable. Would the hops have stood out more without it? I’m not sure. After last year’s debacle, I wanted to make sure I had a good beer and I got that. The wet hops may not be the stars but at least the beer is enjoyable. Speaking of which, it is about time to freshen my glass.

Tags: homebrew, tasting notes, beer tasting, wet hopped, wet hops, wet, moist, hop, hops, pale ale, ipa, harvest, harvest ale

Batch Update

I have five beers to update on today. Most of them have been in the works for a long time and are still not ready to drink. These things can’t be rushed, but let’s hurry up and get to them anyway.

batch088 – 2014 PROOF
I bottled PROOF on September 7. As of tomorrow, it will have been in the bottle for one month and I have yet to open any of the forty-seven bottles. This is probably a personal record. The beer had dried out slightly when I bottled it, after the final yeast addition, so I’m hopeful that it will at least get some carbonation. If not, though, it won’t be the end of the world. With the extra fermentation, this was up to 17.7% ABV. I am hoping to take a bottle with to the cabin this weekend. Which means that I need to get them labeled this week. I am hand numbering the labels, so I need them all to be intact when I get to that. I will have more on the much more involved labeling process I’m doing for this beer in a future edition of my series of label posts.

batch091 – Triple Valor
I bottled Triple Valor on September 30. I decided agains using a bottle priming yeast, but the couple beers that I’ve opened so far have not been fully carbonated. They are starting to carbonate, not completely flat so I’m confident that they will finish eventually. I had the same slow carbonating issue with Old SMaSHy and it eventually conditioned perfectly.

batch094 – Fruit Spectrum IPA
This beer was bottled on August 28 and most of it has subsequently been consumed. I already posted my tasting notes.

batch095 – Old SMaSHy Barley Wine
I plan to dry hop this beer later this week or early next week. Then, of course, I’ll bottle it about a week afterwards. After the issue with Triple Valor, I’m again considering adding fresh yeast, but that is complicated. This is meant to be a single malt, single hop and single yeast beer. So if I do add yeast, it will have to be more of the primary yeast, WLP007 – Dry English Ale. I hate to waste a full vial for this purpose and I have no plans to use the yeast again in the near future, so we’ll see what I decide on in a week or two.

batch096 – Yellow Cat Tart Cider (2014)
I bottled this one on September 21, three weeks after mixing it up. I haven’t opened any of them, but they tasted good when I was bottling. It is not quite as tart as the original batch, the lack of the grape juice extract, I’m guessing. It should be great and it is another one that I’m hoping to take a bottle of to make its debut at the cabin this weekend. (Did I mention Amy and I are going to the cabin this weekend?)

batch097 – Moist Harvest Pale Ale
This was bottled straight from the primary fermenter on September 23. I will confess that I already tried one and it wasn’t bad. I hope it will improve with the appropriate time to condition, but we’ll have to wait on that one, too.

Hopyard Harvest Pale Ale (2013)

 

Last year was my first season of growing hops. Everyone says not to expect to get any cones your first year. I did get a few cones on two of my five plants, though. Sure, it was only about two ounces of wet hops, but how could I not try to brew a harvest ale?

I knew it wouldn’t be enough for a full five gallon batch, but I thought maybe if I added some pellets for bittering and only brewed a two and a half gallon batch, I could get some nice aroma from a flameout addition with those hops.

I was wrong.

At the time, Amber Malt had just become available at my local homebrew shop. This malt is best known to me for its use in Dogfish Head’s 60 Minute IPA. This malt blows past toasty and verges on roasty. In small doses it can add great complexity, but it is, in my opinion, very easy to overuse. Dogfish Head obviously know how to utilize it. I didn’t.

What I’m getting at with all this is that my beer had no hop flavor and a surprisingly harsh roasted malt character, despite its relatively light color. This beer was, paradoxically, dull and tasteless as well as surprisingly harsh and unpleasant at the same time. It looked very pretty in pictures and that was its only redeeming quality.

People on Facebook were impressed by the beer I had made with the hops that I grew all on my own. I am fairly confident that this year’s harvest beer will be better. I’m not sure that it will be great, but better than this… that is almost guaranteed.

If you’re going to use Amber Malt, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you need to balance it. It is an extremely flavorful malt. It can add great complexity, but use it sparingly or be prepared to load up on hops to balance it.

I haven’t even mentioned my yeast choice yet. S-04? An English ale yeast that adds a lot of esters? Why? This is supposed to showcase the hops, but the truth is: I had an extra packet of this yeast and wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t have high hopes for this beer to begin with, so I figured why not clean out my stash?

Anyway, my recipe is below, but don’t use it. Please.

Hopyard Harvest
Style: American Pale Ale/Harvest Ale
Brew Date: September 4, 2013
Serve Date: October 12, 2013
OG: 1.043
Expected FG: 1.012
Approximate ABV: 4%
IBUs: 29

Fermentables:
92% American Pale Malt
8% Amber Malt

Hops:
.3 oz Magnum @ 60 min
1 oz Wet Centennial @ Flameout
1 oz Wet Cascade @ Flameout

Yeast:
Safale S-04