Tasting Day: Pomegranate Cream Ale

Recipe and Brewday here.

After about 3 weeks in the bottle, I popped open a bottle of the Pomegranate Cream Ale.

The last time I had a pink or pinkish colored beer was at Punjabi By Nature and I ordered it based on its description. The nose smelt of vomit, which contributed to a poor drinking experience. This pink beer however has a lot going for it.

The Cream Ale has proved itself to be a very good base beer. My other choice at the time of recipe formulation was a wheat beer but I’m glad I went with the Cream Ale. The low SRM of the Cream Ale and the dark pomegranate juice is the reason why this beer appears pink. Against the background, the body of the beer may not seem pink, but it is.

On the pour, a bright white head forms slowly and it sticks around for some time. The body is light and as you can see, pink. In fact, it is lighter in body than the Cream Ale. The use of a secondary fermenter has also provided a remarkably clear beer when compared to the Cream Ale, which remained hazy throughout.

The first sip was revealing: truly tart beer, and an inviting tartness at that. The pomegranate tartness is pronounced, but it isn’t overwhelming. I was hoping for a bit of sweetness too, but I guess all of the natural fruit sugars may have fermented out completely. 

I smelt a sour note on the nose, but this isn’t really a sour beer. I think the tartness provides a slightly different sour note and not a real sour note like a Berliner Weisse.

The light body, easy drinking and that slight tartness makes this a good summer beer.

I would rate this beer as a marginally good beer. It isn’t a particularly good one where I would speak volumes of it but as I said earlier, a marginally good beer. However, it is miles ahead of the Watermelon Wheat Ale I brewed earlier with no dank, vegetal notes and unpretentious drinkability.

The thing I’m glad about is that fact that the Cream Ale has proved itself to be a worthy base beer and I’ll continue to use it for other fruit beers or beers where I have additions in the secondary. Like a Mango Ale during the mango season.

Tasting Day: Simcoe SMaSH IPA

Recipe and Brewday here.

It has been a busy, busy November for me and in anticipation of this busy period, I brewed a few beers so I could come home and have some of them. I think that idea worked because work keeps me busy, but I don’t have to worry about running out of beer any time soon.

Last week, after close to 4 weeks of carbonation, I opened a bottle of the Simcoe SMaSH IPA. In as few words as possible, this beer is a mix of good and bad beer characteristics.

As I opened the bottle, a fair bit of hiss and smoke came out indicating a good carbonation. I did not have to pour aggressively and a two finger thick head quickly formed and remained for some time after which it ended up at the side of the glass. The color, being an extract beer, was expected to be around 25 SRM and it is spot on with its orangish-brownish, murky opaque look.

On the nose, there is a heavenly aroma of pines and earthy notes that make me want to smell this beer more than drink it. Needless to say, it was very, very good on the nose. In fact, I will say that the nose was the best part of this beer.

If there’s one aspect of this beer that trounces all others, it’s the bitterness. At a palate-shattering 62 IBUs, this beer coated my entire mouth for a while and made it seem like I was chewing through hops. The other problem with such high IBUs for me was that it took a while for me to truly taste food during the drinking session. The bitterness played around with my taste buds and I sipped water between sips of beer, and even rinsed my mouth quite a few times.

In a way, this beer is quite good, but the bitterness doesn’t allow any of those good characteristics to shine. It’s a beer I’ll make again, but I will certainly be more careful with the calculations.

Brew Day: Orange Peel Pale Ale

This was a beer I planned to brew during a long time back, but the brew day unfortunately got pushed due to work.

Even though many, many wise people have stated that packaged fruit juice in India is just coloured, artificially flavoured plain water, there are times when I reach for a Tropicana or a Real fruit juice. I usually keep away from packaged juices and prefer the freshly squeezed one but depending on the time of the day and workload, sometimes that orange flavoured drink has an impact. Maybe it works differently for different people but this is how it works for me.

Some brewers prefer adding fruit juices or extracts to their beer. I prefer adding the actual fruit or sometimes, fresh fruit puree. In this case, it was going to be orange peel. I had quite a large amount of oranges sitting at home and I decided on a simple extract brew. Unlike an earlier beer where I added orange peels to the secondary and had to deal with a strong, overwhelming orange flavour in the beer, this time I decided to add a large amount of orange peel for a long boil, say around 30 minutes, rather than a standard 15 or 5 minute boil.

The only problem with this approach is that I feared the orange aroma would be lost during fermentation. It would decrease from the initial few days of fermentation and may vanish completely by the end of fermentation. I could be completely wrong here but there was only one way to get orange flavour in the beer and keep it there during fermentation: add a truckload of orange peels during the boil. Yes, a truckload, like around 200 grams of orange peel for an 8 litre batch.

I took a whiff of the fermenter last week and there was a strong aroma of malt and a very pronounced orange note to it. I took another whiff of the fermenter yesterday and the orange aroma is not quite as much as I expected. I was right in guessing that fermentation would drive away the orange aroma. I will have to taste this beer before confirming if I need to add even more orange peel to the boil.

Orange Peel Pale Ale

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: Extract

IBU: 20

SRM: 16

OG: 1.046

Grains and Sugars
1 kg Dry Malt Extract
 - 500 grams added at the start of boil
 - 500 grams at flame out

Hops
4 grams Horizon @ 45 min

Other Additions

Add 200 grams of orange peel at 30 minutes to the boil.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules
Boiled for 45 minutes.