Tasting Day: Mad Hopper IPA #1

Recipe and Brewday here.

Technically it has been over two and a half months since I brewed the Mad Hopper IPA #1 and I first tasted it a few weeks ago. 

I then had another bottle a few days ago and I have to say that the IPA’s characteristics have changed since I last tasted it. It seems to have matured a bit, the piney, citrus aromas stand out and it is very well carbonated.

The beer pours with a cloudy amber hue and immediately forms a thick white head. The head sticks around for a bit initially and then settles into a half finger thick head foam. What I will state (and may even end up overstating it) is the aromas. The aroma was very noticeable when I popped open the bottle and when I poured the beer. It is a very pleasant citrus, grassy and piney aroma that didn’t overwhelm me. In fact, the aroma makes for a very pleasant drinking IPA but this is not a session IPA either. The amber color is largely from the caramelization of the malt extract since it was boiled for an hour.

This is a medium bodied beer and it tends to linger on the palate longer than most of my current beers which are light bodied. The bitterness is on the lower side for IPAs but then as a home brewer, I think I have the liberty to keep it that way. The head stuck around for some time as I slowly finished the beer but there was no lacing throughout the beer.

I plan on brewing more of these IPAs but the recipe will change based on what hops I have at home. All in all, this is a very comfortable, aromatic, hoppy beer that can be liked by most hop heads.

Brew Day: Watermelon Wheat

The folks who mass produce beer (or horse piss) may never understand craft beer and its drinkers. There is a world far beyond diluted, pale yellow, consistently boring lagers that the big brewers know about but don’t venture into it. With their large brewing equipment it should be easy to go craft, but the one single aspect of higher brewing cost holds them back.

Perhaps not in India, but in other parts of the world, big brewers regularly air their ads that feature bubbly yellow liquids in glasses, in the hands of consumers and regularly talk about the innovative brewing they continue to do. Innovation indeed!!

I was once a so called ‘horse piss’ drinker, but the switch to craft beer was simply a better choice. And the choices are endless: IPAs, blonde ales, barley wines, stouts, pale ales, wheat beers, rye beers etc.

So when there’s very little innovation in mass produced beer, they simply cannot draw craft beer drinkers back to their watered down beers. The reason I said this much about the big brewers and their 'innovation' is because of a twitter post by Anheuser-Busch that seem to insult craft beer, or in this case 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat. If you can’t beat them, harry them. Of course, this wasn’t taken lying down by craft beer drinkers and they responded. Anheuser-Busch may have actually given publicity to 21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat.

This is one post that made me think of brewing a watermelon wheat since I had some wheat at home. The issue I faced was with the amount of watermelon to be added to the beer in the secondary. I spoke to another brewer who made a watermelon Hefeweizen and he stated that about 100ml of watermelon puree per liter of beer gives the finished product a faint amount of watermelon flavor. I haven’t tasted his watermelon Hefe and therefore I do not know what it tastes like but I decided to go ahead with the same calculations.

The bitterness and gravity of the beer is intentionally low to allow the watermelon to shine, although slightly and not overwhelm the beer. With the addition of the watermelon puree, the SRM is expected to change a bit and move to a slightly darker shade of yellow but it wont shift to red, reddish or orange. I will post my findings once I bottle the beer.

Watermelon Wheat (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 12

SRM: 3.5

OG: 1.048

Grains and Sugars

910 grams Pilsner
730 grams Wheat Malt

Hops

2 grams Aurora @ 45 min.

Other Additions

Add 800 ml of fresh watermelon puree to the beer in secondary after a week of fermentation for 3 days.

Yeast

Fermentis WB-06 Wheat Beer Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 65.5°C for 60 minutes

Sparged at 80°C for 30 minutes

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Brew Day: Wheat Stout

I have professed my love for simple wheat beers but I am hopeless in getting to make an all grain Hefeweizen. I have WB-06 yeast at home, but some of my wheat beers have turned out to be awful. I can drink them but I just couldn’t share them with anyone. While those beers were simple wheat ales, and with a Summer Wheat Ale bottled up, I have jotted down a stout recipe with 50% wheat in the mash.

While we’re on the topic of stouts, the later bottles of the Foreign Extra Stout that I brewed had a certain pronounced roasted flavor to it. This flavor may be very welcome in a stout and there are people who appreciate a hearty roasted flavor, it did make the drinking difficult for me. I later googled to find that Black Patent Malt or Black Malt contributes quite a bit to this dark, roasted characteristic. I’m not stating that this is bad; I’m just stating a personal opinion and the opinion is that I would prefer to have a stout without a heavy roasted note to it.

With the grains available with me, I could have easily made an all-grain, low ABV stout with Pale Ale malt, but decided to lower the quantity of Pale Ale in the grain bill and add wheat to the mash along with a few dark grains minus the Black Malt. I haven’t had a wheat stout before so I do not how this would turn out until I drink it a few weeks later. The only wheat beer that I have had that was slightly different from the regular Hefes and Wits was the Wheat IPA at Toit. And it was good. Perfect bitterness, moderate to heavy hop aroma and a thick, chilled, slightly opaque beer.

For now this would be a slightly lower in strength than the Foreign Extra Stout. I had initially planned on brewing just 8 liters but then I bumped it up to 10 liters as I wanted to make an Eis Stout with 2 liters of the beer and then age it a couple of months. I will have a separate post for those interested in making Eis beers.

Wheat Stout (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 10 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 38

SRM: 35

OG: 1.056

Grains and Sugars

1 kg Pale Ale
1 kg Wheat Malt
150 grams Crystal 120
150 grams Roasted Barley
150 grams Chocolate malt

Hops

15 grams Northern Brewer @ 45 min.

Yeast

Fermentis WB-06 Wheat Beer Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 65.5°C for 60 minutes

Sparged at 80°C for 30 minutes

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Tasting Day: Super Simple Cream Ale

Recipe and Brewday here.

After close to 4 weeks of carbonation, I opened a bottle of Cream Ale.

The hiss as I opened the bottle instantly told me that the beer had carbonated well. Even though I poured very slowly, a finger and half thick foamy white head formed instantly and this took time to settle down to a quarter-inch thick head. I swirled the glass around and the head formed again with a quarter-inch thick white foam.

The clean golden yellow, or sunshine yellow beer reminded me of the Palest Pale Ale I brewed a few months back. This, being a simple Cream Ale, was supposed to have no stand out aromas but I got a distinct lemon or citrus aroma which wasn’t expected because only one hop addition was carried out in total, that too for bitterness. On inhaling deeper, I could smell a faint sour note.

When bottling this, I was left with a half glass of beer that I drank. At the time, what I smelt was very different than what I tasted and it was no surprise today either. As is the case with most beers I brew, I took a fairly long sip. It was light bodied and I noticed almost instantly that there was a faint tartness to it but the beer was crisp and therefore very refreshing too. At 4% ABV, the beer was very drinkable and I finished off a bottle in no time.

My only gripe with this beer, and it is a small gripe, is the bitterness. While I targeted under 20 IBUs, the bitterness sticks out slightly more than I wanted. Maybe next time I’ll keep it lower.

Brew Day: Summer Wheat Ale

I brewed a wheat ale some time back, the Honey Orange Wheat, but added orange peels and honey to it and ended up with a very flavourful wheat beer with overwhelming orange (kinnow) notes.

Its been a while but of late I had the urge to brew another wheat beer for some time now and I waited around for some of my grains to come in. There’s nothing interesting or specific about this wheat beer that would make it stand out other than the fact that it was not intended to be fermented with a wheat yeast. I planned to use S-04 from some of the harvested yeast from my previous beer. Which meant that it would be an American Wheat ale. Simple, unpretentious and a good drink on a summer’s day when you want to have a wheat beer.

I stuck to the basics: Pale Ale malt and Wheat, two simple ingredients and nothing else. If this fermented out completely I would end up with 5% ABV or slightly higher. I wanted the wheat to stand out and kept the IBUs close to the early 20s with a single bittering addition of Columbus.

Overall, my intention was to make an American Wheat ale that’s perfect for the summer.

Summer Wheat Ale (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 21

SRM: 5

OG: 1.055

Grains and Sugars

1 kg Pale Ale malt

850 grams Wheat malt

Hops

6 grams Columbus @ 45

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 66°C for 60 minutes.

Batch sparged at 80°C.

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Notes
Because this is a light bodied, simple wheat beer, it gives a chance to lay around with  secondary to see if I can infuse flavours into it with some of the available fruit.

Brew Day: Super Simple Cream Ale

Over many months of brewing, I have developed a certain liking for simple beers. Recipes that don’t involve a lot of ingredients and don’t use complex methods are what I am comfortable with. Of course, I brew a stout or a barley wine in between but there is a certain joy to brewing a simple beer, with low gravity and less bitterness. 

And a beer that fits this bill perfectly is a lawn mover beer that would be light in body, less hoppy and more importantly cold, refreshing and definitely thirst-quenching. Subsequently, the grain bill will be simple, a small amount of hops would be used for low bitterness and the carbonation would be moderate. A lot of beers fit into this category like a Kolsch, Cream Ale or even a Hefeweizen.

With the grains I had at home, I worked out a recipe so I could hit 1.040 OG and then ferment it out completely so I could hit an ABV of 4% or higher but less than 5%. I also added some flaked rice to the mash which would provide starches for conversion and add a light color to the final beer. Northern Brewer was added for a full 45 minute boil with no further hop additions.

Super Simple Cream Ale (Tasting notes here)

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: All Grain

IBU: 19

SRM: 3.5

OG: 1.040

Grains and Sugars

1.2 kg Pilsner

200 grams Flaked Rice

Hops

6 grams Northern Brewer @ 45

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 66°C for 60 minutes.

Batch sparged at 80°C.

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Tasting Day: Foreign Extra Stout

Recipe and Brewday here.

I give my beers more than enough time to carbonate and sometimes even more after I've bottled them. I sometimes do this when I know I've made a high gravity beer and therefore give it some time to mellow out.

The Foreign Extra Stout is one such beer. Its been six weeks since I bottled it and I decided to have a tasting.

The slow hiss as I opened the bottled indicated a well carbonated beer. As I poured the stout, a big thick, strong, tan head formed and I had to stop pouring to allow it to settle down. After a few minutes, the head receded slightly and I continued pouring slowly till I had a full glass.

I took a sniff of the beer before placing it to take a snap and it immediately gave away dark, burnt notes. I waited for a few minutes and then took in a more deeper breath and this time it was better. The dark notes still floated around, but it gave way to some caramel (probably from the Crystal 120 and Crystal 80) and then some of those chocolate and coffee aromas. The chocolate and coffee aromas were late on the nose but it was very much there.

Around the mouth of the glass, there were faint shades of dark rubies and this was the only color I could make out other than the strong pitch black that ran through the beer.

Later, I sipped some of the stout. My first thoughts were that this beer was satisfying. It didnt have a creamy head like a stout on nitro, but the beer was strong, slightly boozy, with bitterness that stood out almost at par with the other characteristics of the beer.

While brewing, just before the hot break, I leaned into the boil kettle and took a whiff and that was the same aroma that filled my nose each time I took a sip. The malt backbone existed but it was toned down and not as strong as I wanted for a beer of this nature.

Subsequent sips brought all the flavours together and I must say that the stout turned out to be a beer I finished quickly.

Tasting Day: Mild Pale Ale

Recipe and Brewday here.

After a long, hard day, I settled down in the evening with a bottle of Mild Pale Ale. I think this beer was ready after 4 weeks of carbonation.

A quick pour and I had a finger and a half thick head which persisted for a while but still stuck around even after I finished the bottle. On the nose, a slight citrus, lemony note played around but the aroma wasn't as strong as say, even a session IPA.

My first sip was very revealing: sour beer. Yes, I tasted sour beer. I'm not sure if this is because of the Cascade or the use of S-33, but it was definitely sour.

Would I call the beer spoilt? I would like to instantly nod in the affirmative but in the further sips I could taste a wee bit of the bitterness. It is a fairly drinkable beer because of the unexpected sourness.

The beer left patches of lacing all over the glass as I emptied it and left a wee bit of head even after I finished the beer.

I tried another bottle a few days after I tried the first one and it seems that the sourness does not exist in the second bottle. It may have either mellowed out (but does sourness mellow out?) or it may have been just the first bottle.

Tasting Day: Palest Pale Ale #2 (Half-Hearted Midas Touch Clone)

Recipe and Brewday here.

This is the second beer from the Palest Pale Ale recipe. You can read the tasting notes of the first beer here. 

I spilt the Palest Pale Ale into two, and added the must of red grapes to the second batch. This was an attempt to clone Midas Touch from DogFish Head.

Before you jump at my throat via the comments below, this is a half-hearted attempt at cloning Midas Touch. Midas Touch, from DogFish, contains saffron and honey, neither of which was added to my beer. Only grape must was added. So this could qualify as a fruit beer too.

The slight hiss as I opened the bottle told me this was a well carbonated beer. It poured a golden yellow beer which was much, much darker than the original Palest Pale Ale. It was clear and that’s down to the 4 weeks of carbonation. A thick white head formed quickly and stayed awhile before dying down altogether, which made me wonder how well carbonated it was.

On the nose, I could smell a lot of acidic notes, something which reminded me of the grapes. I kept the hop additions to a minimum and therefore I couldn’t smell any hops.

I took a fairly long sip and the full force of an acidic liquid hit me. I will state that it wasn’t a strong acidic taste (not to the extent that I could call it metallic) but it was a feel good acidic note. Bitterness arrived very, very late and only ever so slightly. It had a fairly thin body and low malt profile. Despite this being an acidic beer, it wasn’t sour. And as I kept drinking, the acidic notes mellowed out. 

The effort that went into making this beer is worthy enough to warrant another similar beer, but I will stick to a small batch next time. This was my first taste of an acidic beer and it was an eye opener for me. It is a beer I enjoyed very much, but it is not an everyday beer.

Tasting Day: Citra SMaSH Dark Ale

Recipe and Brewday here.

After 4 weeks of bottling and conditioning, I opened a bottle of the Citra SMaSH Dark Ale.

Maybe it is because this is the first time that I brewed a SMaSH with Citra but this ale really surprised me. As the cap was pried open, the slight hiss gave off strong lemon and orange notes.

A firm, stubborn head formed as I poured and the head refused to die down even after 15 minutes. I brought the glass to my nose and the Citra hop aroma was overwhelming, but in a good way. And I just dry hopped for 3 days.

I took a long sip of this beer and inhaled some of that glorious hop aroma too. At the cost of sounding repetitive, it had a very strong citrus nose, it was moderately bitter and it was very, very drinkable. A strong malt flavor held up well enough and rounded off a good beer.

I cannot say for sure but there was a bit of a tangy after taste to the beer. I will confirm that once I have another bottle of this beer.

This beer makes for a very enjoyable slow sipper that can be served around a board game with friends.

It was decided that the Cascade Pale Ale would be my house ale, but now this Citra Dark Ale will have to compete with that.