Mar 14, 2013

Cascade IPA Tasting

benhelms Tasting Andrew & Tyler, Cascade, IPA, pho, tasting 0 Comment

I created this beer as a simple experiment. I wanted to find out how good my year-old grains were, as well as find out how bigger/tasty my this trash bag full of hops my friend Tyler gave me was.

Turns out: both were delicious.

———-

Appearance: Deep orange-auburn color. Quite clear. Decent head retention-thick at first dissipates slowly throughout. (Remembering that I didn’t stir the priming sugar very well. Could be that I won’t have very consistent carbonation or I just need to let these continue bottle conditioning for a bit.)

Aroma: Light and floral. Sweet fruits; vague cherry notes as it begins to warm. Not a hop bomb on the nose at least. Sweet and citrusy. Mainly grapefruit.

Flavor: Lotta classic hop flavors with a very fruity edge. Orange, lemon, grapefruit with some grassy notes in there that move into a pleasant pine-y flavor. “A very light, smooth evergreen flavor.” -SWMBO. Surprisingly complex hop profile for a single-hop beer. Very bitter, but not overwhelmingly so. Almost tart in the bitterness profile. Slightly astringent aftertaste, possibly due too high fermentation temps.

Mouthfeel: Light and dry. Very smooth. Not carbonated enough. (Again, could just be the lack of stirring around the priming sugar in the bottling bucket enough.)

Overall: A crisp, dark, refreshing IPA. Happy with how this turned out, especially since I had not idea what to expect with these hops and very old malts. Not exactly my most favorite IPA ever, but I’d be more than happy to pay $5 for this at a brewpub. I’ll stick most of these in the fridge and see how well they age. The astringency might mellow out after awhile.

Feb 19, 2013

Cascade IPA

benhelms Recipe, Uncategorized ale, BIAB, Cascade, double IPA, IPA, Recipe 0 Comment

Every so often, after brewing a few dozen batches, I have all these tiny bags of hops, grains, and other fun ingredients lying around. They’re always in such small amounts that I can never really use them without supplementing them with another a bunch of other ingredients to make them useful. So about once a year I either make up a recipe, or do some type of franken-brew that isn’t exactly a clone of any commercial beer, and sometimes doesn’t even fit into those handy-dandy BJCP guidelines.

Exhibit A: Banana Bread Beer

Exhibit B: Blueberry Pale Ale (eventually became Blueberry Lambic)

Exhibit C: Orange You Glad You Lived in Villa Orange Pale Ale

And yes, it’s that time of year again.

I got a big ol’ bag of American 2-row for Christmas and it’s burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. And I finally got a mill, which means I can store grain a little longer (because I don’t have to crush when I buy it). But before I jump into those new adventures, I figured I’d try to clean up those small bags of malts I had lying around. I had some honey malt, a bit of Belgian aromatic malt, some special b, and an old ~5 lb bag of 2-row I found that had been in my possession for…far too long (along with a buncha random fractional amounts of hops).

Was the malt stale? Definitely. Did it have any diastatic power left in it? Hopefully. Would it taste great? We’ll see!

Also, a friend of mine–who I have known for many, many years–dropped a bomb on me a few months ago: his mother works–no, RUNS–a hop farm in Salem, Oregon. Are you serious? We’ve even brewed batches together, and he never bothered to tell me that. Anyway, I made him swear the next time he was there that he’d pick some up for me. You know, if at all possible. He came back with a few bags of hops. I love that man.

I’ve been in possession of a bunch (haven’t weighed them yet…about a pound?) of cascade hops–in leaf form, for a few months, and I honestly had no idea what to do with them. I knew they were probably a bit stale too, but who knows how much power those little lupulin glands had in them still? There’s only one way to find out…

So I did some Googling, and plenty of Hopville-ing and BrewPal-ing and finally came up with a recipe for an all-Cascade IPA. I hope, at least. In all honesty, I have no idea what it’ll truly end up being, with all of the expired, stale ingredients. It’ll be a fun test to see how long hops and grain last in my house though. (Again: hopefully.) It should end up somewhere between a 9% ABV, 100 IBU double IPA, and a 6%, 65 IBU single IPA. (Let’s just hope it’s not a 5%, 120 IBU hop bomb. Heck, even a 3.5%, 70 IBU session IPA would be weird…but unique, I suppose.)

I figured if anyone’s gonna experiment with these crazy, dry, old hops and grains, it’s gotta be a blogging homebrewer who does mostly 1-to-3 gallon brew-in-a-bag batches, right?

Right.

And a few months ago, when I had the extra cash, I bought a few fun yeasts to experiment with. One of them was Wyeast’s 1187 Ringwood yeast (or as I keep forgetting the name of and referring to as: Ringworm or Wormwood). High flocculation, low-medium attenuation. Should be a clean yeast, with a slightly fruity aroma that accentuates the hops profile. Just hope I can get this to attenuate a little more with some added head towards the end of primary fermentation. Would love to get this above the supposed 72% attenuation (a 1.022 beer probably wouldn’t be the tastiest).

Here’s what I came up with…

Here’s that Cascade IPA recipe…

Jul 20, 2012

Double IPA Tasting

benhelms Tasting double IPA, IPA, parti-gyle, tasting 0 Comment

When I first brewed this beer with my brother, I had high hopes. One of my (and our) favorite beers is Russian River’s Pliny the Elder. It’s magnificently hoppy, bitter, and dry, but somehow remains balanced. This was our inspiration–combined with a little recipe formulation from Nathan Smith–and we set out to create a similar DIPA.

A few weeks ago, when I had my first tasting, I was overcome with joy when I realized it was drinkable. (Always a small celebration when I realize each beer doesn’t taste like dirt.) I kept hearing about people making DIPAs that were just hop bombs or two sweet and whatnot. I don’t think this guy would be in either of those categories. While it did end at 1.021, it definitely tastes much drier than that.

Also, I decided that while it was still fresh, it’d be a great time to submit the beer to my first ever homebrew competition. I researched a bunch of local fairs/festivals and landed on the Amador County Fair–only about a 3 hr drive from me.

While not the biggest county fair by any means, I figured it’d at least be a good barometer of how my DIPA stacked up against a few others, as well as a great opportunity to read some good notes from a BJCP judge about my beer.

To my surprise, I won! I know. I’m still relishing in the glorious win. Can’t wait to get those notes back too. It’s also the first time I’ve wanted to re-brew something so quickly. Should be a fun challenge to see how consistent and similar I can get the next version to taste–with the appropriate changes of course (it’d be nice to get it a big drier).

To celebrate, I popped the cap off of one of my Big DIPAs and wrote a few notes down…

See tasting notes here…

Jun 25, 2012

Galaxy IPA With Brettanomyces – Parti-Gyle

benhelms Recipe galaxy, IPA, Recipe 0 Comment

After tasting Anchorage’s Galaxy a few months back, I knew I one day wanted to make my own IPA using only galaxy hops. Seriously, it was amazing. I know that a lot of the earthiness, farmhouse aroma comes from the fact that Anchorage bottles Galaxy with Brettanomyces, but the bitterness was so smooth and the aroma was so uniquely floral and light that I wanted to work with the same hops as soon as possible.

So, I figured there wouldn’t be a better time than my first parti-gyle. The first runnings were for a huge Double IPA (1.083), and I decided to use the second runnings for a much smaller (1.038) IPA, using only Galaxy hops.

Also, because I figured it might be a pretty simple flavor profile if I just used the hops at the beginning (bittering) and at flameout (aroma), I also threw some in at 20 minutes as well as dry hopped with some more for 2 weeks.

During my inspired recipe-designing with my brother, we also decided that we should throw some Brett in there too. Why? Because who wants just another single-hopped Galaxy beer?! (Raises hand…) I know, it might be a little much for one beer, but if it tastes anything like Anchorage’s White IPA, I think I’ll be pretty dang happy.

See the recipe here…

Jun 13, 2012

Double IPA Parti-Gyle

benhelms Recipe double IPA, IPA, parti-gyle, Recipe 0 Comment

Maharaja. 90 Minute. Dreadnaught. Hop Stoopid. Pliny the Elder (and his newphew).

I’ve found that some of the most revered, respected and sought after bottles (at least in this country–and coast) are those that ascribe to BJCP style 14C. Imperial IPA (also known as the double IPA). The attributed father of such beers, Mr. Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River first brewed Pliny the Elder in the late 90s and since then it’s consistently remained near the of the highest-rated beers around the world.

While I don’t fancy myself a world-class brewer, I do try to push my comfort zones and boundaries when it comes to brewing different styles of beer. I realized that while I love IPAs, and have enjoyed most of the double IPAs I’ve tasted, I’ve never brewed one. So with my brother in town this past week, we made it a point to not only drink just about every type of beer in Portland (not an easy task in 6 days, but we did our part), we also decided to brew a big DIPA (1.083). And in an effort to be as sustainable as possible with our brewing habits, we decided to brew them up too, parti-gyle style (two beers from the same grains).

Because I’m a BIAB-er, this meant that all I needed to do was take the grains out of one kettle (post-mash) and move them into another kettle (pre-mash). While it was a bit finicky working with two separate beers at the same time–both at different stages in the process, all in my tiny kitchen–it was definitely a fun experiment and challenge.

I started with a basic PTE clone recipe, but changed a few aspects of it. Basically, I combined PTE with Nathan Smith’s North Oakland Double IPA from a great episode of Brewing TV. First off, I moved about 1/4 of the 2-row base malt (1.60 lbs) golden promise to get more of that robust, bready, malty flavor. Secondly, PTE uses just Amarillo, Centennial, CTZ, and Simcoe, so I used all of those (substituted Summit for Simcoe), plus a few of my favorites: Galaxy, Citra & Amarillo. Then threw in some Chinook in the mash for (what I’ve heard) a smooth balance to the overwhelming bitterness of this 270+ IBU beer.

This was a blast to brew and it was actually my last brew day at my current apartment in Portland. My wife and I are moving to Los Angeles in two weeks and well, I don’t think I can get away with driving that far with more than 2 fermenters going (and wouldn’t want to!).

I’ve never even thought about stoves and storage space when searching for apartments, but this time around they will both play much bigger roles in our apartment choices. So over the next month or so, I’ll be posting a lot more tastings and other non-brewing posts.

For now though, enjoy this Double IPA recipe…

See the recipe here…