North Carolina IPA Tasting

I’ve brewed more IPAs than any other style (so long as you don’t consider “sour beer” to be a style). My standard recipe template is yellow to pale-gold, with a malt bill that gets out of the way of an aroma-drenched hop bill. Sometimes it’s nice to be kicked out of my rut though, so I played along with the Riverbend Malt House Homegrown IPA kit. It included some of their darker grains (similar to Munich and Chocolate), but no crystal malt, so it avoids being sticky sweet.

The hops ended up being all-Chinook after I tossed the less-than-great smelling whole Cascades from Echoview Farms (they have some pelletized Nugget hops available now on their website).

North Carolina IPA

Appearance – The amber-golden body is towards the hazy end of the IPA spectrum, but still appealing. A few weeks in the keg has really cleared this one up. The white head is luscious, creamy, dense, and long-lasting.

Smell – Bright, but not overwhelming, resiny hop aroma. Grapefruit and pine mostly. The grainy malt comes through well, more East Coast than West Coast (unsurprisingly). The US-05 adds its slightly peachy edge, especially as the beer warms. A bit restrained as far as my IPAs go, but probably hoppier than half of the commercial IPAs I try.

Taste – Well balanced. Malty without being sweet. Hoppy without being harshly bitter. The hop flavor is well saturated, thanks to the bonus 5.5 oz of Chinook I added on the hot-side, but the North Carolina hops carry the aroma nicely. Clean otherwise, no issues with the fermentation or sanitation.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, not quite as crisp as my standard IPAs, but that certainly isn’t a bad thing in a beer like this that has more malt character. Medium-low carbonation, judging from the pour rate I think the dry hop sock is partially covering the dip-tube. I won’t do anything about it unless it gets worse.

Drinkability & Notes – I’m pleased with the way this batch turned out, but that took a bit more effort on my part than a kit recipe ought to. I’ll give both products a tentative recommendation, but I'd be hesitant if you couldn't inspect them before purchase.

North Carolina Malt and Hop IPA

When I teach classes of new homebrewers (last two are tomorrow), one of the reasons I invoke to justify my claim of it's hobby supremacy, is that you can buy the same ingredients (malts, hops, and yeast) that are used by the best commercial breweries. This is unlike wine, where the highest quality grapes aren't commonly available to home winemakers.

Is that enough though? When I add fruit to a beer, rather than an aseptic puree like many craft breweries, I go to my local farmer’s market for fresh fruit. Using ingredients often not available in the quantity required by a large production brewery. Why not do the same for malts and hops?

For one thing, in many places local malts and hops aren’t options. Luckily, I’ve brewed with locally grow wheat, but malting requires greater infrastructure. A distillery in Virginia malts and smokes their own grain, which we added to a DC Homebrewers Anniversary Stout with pleasant results. I brewed a dubbel with a couple malts from Valley Malt in Massachusetts, with delicious results. I‘ve never used local hops other than homegrown, and that has always been with mediocre results.

When I was contacted a few weeks ago by Echoview Farms in North Carolina which offered to ship me a few ounces of hops, and a sack of malt from Riverbend Malt House, I was intrigued. I wasn’t ecstatic that they sent me ingredients with a set recipe, rather than a selection of base and specialty malts, but I still gave it my best shot. It seemed like an easy way to get back into homebrewing after my summer in San Diego.

When I opened the sack of mixed malts, I was a bit confused about whether the grain had already been milled or not. Some of the husks appeared cracked, while others were still intact. Rather than risk poor efficiency, I (re)milled. It was a shame that all of the malt was mixed together because it made it difficult to taste and evaluate the individual grains. Which ones would I order again?

Despite being for an IPA, the recipe contained a grand total of 4 oz of hops, including none proposed for dry hopping. Compare that to my last IPA, 5 oz of dry hops alone. When I opened up the package of Chinook, they smelled great. Sadly the same couldn’t be said for the Cascade. They were shipped in a large Mylar bag, which didn’t seem to be vacuum-packed or flushed with non-reactive gas. Probably no thanks to the three delivery attempts by UPS looking for a signature at the same time each day, the Cascade smelled like overripe hot chile peppers by the time I picked them up. They also seemed to contain excessive moisture.

It is always important to evaluate your ingredients. Rather than adding the suspect hops to the beer and having to choke down the result, I threw away the Cascade, and took a few ounces of 2012 harvest Chinook from the freezer to use in the boil. I repackaged the North Carolina grown Chinook for dry hopping in the keg, where they could have the largest impact on the aroma.

Despite my complaints, the beer is actually tasting pretty good as it continues to force carbonate. It has a fresh mildly grainy malt flavor, and a nice citrusy hop aroma. Full tasting notes should be up in a couple weeks.

I think brewers are accustomed to a certain level of consistency from their brewing ingredients. The question is will these small producers be able to compete both in terms of flavor, but also things like packaging, protein levels, extract yield, and consistency. For small hop farms and micro-maltsters to truly thrive they have to produce ingredients that are more than a novelty (local) product. Sure I use fresh fruit because I like to support agriculture in my area, but the results are also better than anything that comes out of a can or bottle!

North Carolina Grown IPA

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 12.12
Anticipated OG: 1.059
Anticipated SRM: 10.0
Anticipated IBU: 70.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
------
74.3% - 9.00 lbs. Pale Ale Malt (6-row)
16.5% - 2.00 lbs. Heritage Malt (6-row)
8.3% - 1.00 lbs. Appalachian Wheat Malt
1.0% - 0.12 lbs. Chocolate Malt (350 SRM)

Hops
------
1.50 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ 60 min.
2.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ -15 min.
2.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
Safale US-05 Chico

Water Profile
--------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 45 min @ 155 F

Notes
------
Brewed 10/2/13 by myself

Mash water, 2 gal filtered DC water, 2 gal distilled, 4 gypsum, and 2 g CaCl.

Mash pH = 5.4 at room temperature, measured with meter.

Sparge water, 2 gal filtered DC water, 2 gal distilled, 2 gypsum, and 4 g CaCl. 1/2 tsp of phosphoric acid to drop the pH to 6.0 at room temperature.

Collected 6.75 gallons of 1.048 runnings with a double batch sparge.

Added 1.5 tsp of phosphoric acid to the wort pre-boil to lower the 5.5 pH to 5.3. Huge hot break, lots of protein.

Ended up using Chinook hops from Pacific NW in the boil. Added 2 oz at flameout, waited 15 minutes, added another 2 oz, waited another 15 minutes before chilling.

Only able to drop the temperature to 75 F. Gave 45 seconds of pure oxygen. Pitched a rehydrated pack of US05. The post-boil pH was 5.2.

Left at 65 F to ferment. Good fermentation by the next day.

Left at that temperature for the duration.

10/15/13 Kegged with the NC Chinook. Tastes very good!

11/7/13 Tasting notes, worth the effort, balanced compared to my usual IPAs.

Modern Times Neverwhere - 100% Brett IPA

One of the "fun" test batches I brewed for Modern Times in between batches of Lomaland, Fortunate Islands, Black House, and Blazing Worlds, was a 100% Brett IPA. Yesterday afternoon, I got my first taste of the kegged and carbed commercial batch, Neverwhere! The result is a terrific blend of tropical fruit and pineapple from both the hops and fermentation. The brewers really nailed this one on the first go!

More information on this batch, and 100% Brett beers in general, is available on the Modern Times blog, coincidentally in a post I wrote. This summer I'll be contributing occasional posts when there is a topic I can speak on. It won't be as geeky as what I tend to post here, but hopefully it'll give me a chance to set the story straight on a few things (like how despite having Brett, Neverwhere isn't sour or funky, and shouldn't be aged!).

Wednesday we'll be repitchig the harvested Brett Drie into a malty pale ale hopped with Motueka, Cascade, and Triskel. I've never brewed with either Motueka or Triskel, but Alex and I went back and forth and hammered out a malt bill that should get a bready kick from a decent amount of dark wheat malt. We've got a 30 bbl tank dedicated to fermentations with Brett, so expect a steady stream of beers like this!

Today I cleaned thirty fermentors and kegs, and tomorrow I'll be getting the pilot system operational (more on that later). The goal is to start producing wort to grow microbes destined for the sour/barrel program. I've already got Al of East Coast Yeast, Maarten of Saccharolicious, and Nick from his yet-to-be-named community supported yeast ranching venture on the hook to send me various strains to play with. On hand, we've already got several strains of Brett that both Dmitri of BKyeast and Jason of Brew Science isolated from Cantillon. Plus two isolates that Claudio of DC Yeast Lab isolated from my DCambic! Jacob managed to obtain some killer sours with one last trading hurrah, so we'll be culturing a few of those, as well as some of my favorite batches of homebrew. Might as well run down to the homebrew store and grab a couple bends from both Wyeast and White Labs too.

Three Modern Times "West" Test Batches

Last week was the Craft Brewers Conference here in DC. I didn't attend, but I had a blast hanging out with people and drinking excellent beers. A few highlights:

On Tuesday night I spoke at a hop symposium at Smith Commons with a wide variety of other brewers and homebrewers. I had a good time, but the venue (loud) didn't lend itself to the sort deep intellectual back and forth I'd hoped for. I enjoyed drinking a glass of New Belgium Felix Love (their unblended sour base beer) for my trouble though.

Thursday I had the guys from Jester King (Jeff, Ron, and Jordan) over for dinner. We drink homebrew from Nathan and I alternating with their beer (including a test bottling of a sour with 200 lbs of raspberries in a single barrel - wonderfully jammy). Those guys are really killing it, so many interesting flavor combinations. We tried beers that melded Brett with hops, smoke, spices, plus interesting wood (Spanish cedar) and barrel (gin) treatments. We even discussed brewing a three way collaborative beer with them, Right Proper, and Modern Times!

On the way to drop Jacob (Modern Times' Founder) off at the airport on Saturday we stopped for lunch at Meridian Pint. There we sampled Nathan's first two commercial batches of WildCraft soda and a few of the many local collaborative beer they had on tap. The most interesting of the beers was Barleyweisse, a recreation of a pre-prohibition sub-3% all-barley "Berliner weisse" that Mike Stein found a reference to in an obscure book about the history of brewing in Maryland (this batch was brewed with Meridian Pint's Tim Prendergast at Union Craft Brewing).

With Modern Times getting a day closer to opening every day, the "actual" brewers have taken over brewing the test batches of clean beer (I'll get to brew more sours again, thank goodness!). Jacob brought along bottles of three of their test batches for me to taste. But before I get to the notes and recipes I need to talk about the Kickstarter campaign!

Over the last year plus, hopefully you've enjoyed following my role in the Modern Times recipe development process. The grand opening is starting to feel like it's right around the corner, the recent arrival of the brewing system was the latest hurdle crossed. Jacob did a stellar job creating incentives for the campaign. The clothing looks terrific, and the League of Partygoers & Elegant People should be a great way to get involved if you are local (including first notification when bottles of sour beers go on sale at the tasting room). There are also some eccentric rewards including getting a velvet portrait commissioned of you for the tasting room, a Christmas light tour with one of the brewers, and joining me for a test-batch brew day in DC! The money will be spent to pimp the tasting room and for two things near and dear to my heart, barrels to age sour beer and lab equipment to ensure those microbes don't cause a problem for the clean beers!

Now back to the test batches. They were brewed by two of the brewers. Alex Tweet was previously at Ballast Point, where he developed some weird/delicious beers like Indra Kunindra (he also recently let me know that his first batch of homebrew was based on one of my recipes). Derek Freese was previously the brewer at Monkey Paw (and before that an avid homebrewer). I got to hang out with Derek and drink a few of his beers while at GABF last year. I came away impressed by both by his knowledge and enthusiasm for brewing, and by what a fun guy he is. Looking forward to working with them (and with the head brewer, Matt Walsh, as well). I'll do my best to keep you updated of continued progress on the recipe front as they are brewed!

Black House Point Loma #1 (PL1)

In one day they brewed three variations on this recipe. This was picked as the clear winner by the executive tasting panel, so it is the one Jacob brought out.

OG = 1.060
FG = 1.018
IBUs = 33

Batch Size: 5.25 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 73.00 %

56.0% - 7 lbs US Pale Malt (2 Row) 
12.0% - 1 lbs 8.0 oz Flaked Oats
8.0% - 1 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt 
6.0% - 12.0 oz Caramel/Crystal 60
6.0% - 12.0 oz Carastan
4.0% - 8.0 oz Biscuit Malt
4.0% - 8.0 oz Debittered Black Malt
4.0% - 8.0 oz Roasted Barley
Mash 153 F

Magnum @ 60 min

WY1056

1.75 oz of crushed coffee steeped for 24 hours before bottling.

Tasting Notes

Appearance – Stout-ish, decent head retention.

Smell – More coffee and chocolate than my most recent version. Could go back to 2 oz of coffee for 24 hours for more “wow!”

Taste – Thinner, more complex maltiness. Needs more sweetness, and also more hop bitterness.

Mouthfeel – Thinner, slight tannic. More oats (16-17%), and a higher mash temperature next time.

Drinkability & Notes – Great nose, flavor and body a bit lacking.

Blazing World PL1

With the fourth attempt overall at this recipe I think we've finally hit upon a winning hop combo. Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe have been there all along, but we tried them with three hops, Palisade most recently, without nailing it. It seems that Mosaic did what the others couldn't!

OG = 1.068
FG = ?
IBUs = 157.5

Batch Size: 6.50 gal
Boil Time: 90 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %

83.1% - 13.75lb Pale Malt
15.1% - 2.5lb Munich Malt
1.1% - 2.9 oz Roasted Barley
0.7% - 1.9 oz Carafa III
Mash 149 F

1.50 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 90 min.
5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 90 min.
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ 25 min.
3.00 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Hop Stand
1.00 oz. Mosaic @ Hop Stand
2.00 oz. Mosaic @ Hop Back
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Hop Back
3.00 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.50 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Mosaic @ Dry Hop

WY1056

Tasting Notes

Appearance – Could be lighter, although just slightly. Might just be a clarity issue.

Smell – Big Nelson nose. Fruit, dank. Big “wow!”

Taste – Could be slightly drier, crisper. Saturated, very Nelson heavy. Not just fruit some pine as well.

Mouthfeel – Fuller, sweeter. For the next batch we'll either add a small amount of sugar, or reduce the Munich and mash cooler.

Drinkability & Notes – Really damn close to perfect other than the body/sweetness which should be a simple fix.

Red Rye IPA PL1

Jacob was able to procure a lot of 2012 harvest Simcoe so he wanted to see how the malt bill from this recipe would handle the switch from Cacade/Sterling to all Simcoe. The other half of this batch saw an accelerated 24 hour dry hopping on a Stirhog Black Maxx Stir Plate. Apparently the aroma was fine, but the vigorous agitation extracted some unpleasant polyphenols or tannins from the hops.

OG = 1.065
FG =?
IBUs = 91.6

Batch Size: 6.50 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %

73.8 % - 12.5 lbs American Pale Malt
17.7 % - 3 lbs Rye Malt
4.4 % - 12.0 oz Carared
3.0 % - 8.0 oz Crystal Rye
1.1 % - 2.9 oz Chocolate Rye Malt
Mash 152 F

1.00 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 60 min.
5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.
3.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole% AA) @ Hop Stand
3.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole% AA) @ Hop Back
4.50 oz. Simcoe (Whole% AA) @ Dry Hop

WY1056

Tasting Notes

Appearance – Not as bright/red as previous batch, this one is a bit duller/browner. May just be a clarity issue.

Smell – Big pine/tropical Simcoe, not much else. Bright, fresh, not green or grassy. Very nice.

Taste – Could be stickier, nice hop character, solid bitterness. Malt comes through more than in the nose.

Mouthfeel – Good carbonation but it could be a little fuller.

Drinkability & Notes – Happy with the direction this is headed. I just worry that the Simcoe overwhelms the malt. We just need to figure out how “IPA” we want this one to be.

American IPA - Hop Bills and Analysis

Over the last few years I’ve slowly been building a list of the hop varieties added to some of my favorite IPAs and Double IPAs. The list was stuck at the bottom of one of my favorite IPA recipes, but it has grown to the point where I think it deserves its own post.

The information for the list below came from a wide variety of sources. Many breweries post their hop bills on their websites, in other cases books, magazine articles, and podcasts have provided recipes or ingredients directly from a brewery. I’ve also gotten some good information in the form of emails from breweries that other homebrewers have posted to forums. However, while I trusted that all of the information below was accurate at the time, hop choices often change with supply, demand, and taste. Just because a brewery used a certain hops in their beer before, doesn’t mean they still do today.

Below the section listing the hops in each beer, I have tallied the number of beers that contain each hop. Out of 192 total hop choices made (4.27 hop varieties per beer on average), 133 (69.3%) of those were for just seven varieties (Centennial, Simcoe, CTZ, Cascade, Amarillo, Chinook, and Citra). The most popular hop, Centennial, was featured in 60% of the recipes! Only two of the 45 beers don't include at least one of these top seven varieties (i.e., Alpine Nelson, and Hill Farmstead Galaxy) - DC Brau On the Wings of Armageddon is brewed with the Falconer's Flight hop blend which I'm sure contains at least one of those top seven varieties.

The main takeaway for me was the wide variety of hop combinations that can make terrific beers. I find it amazing that none of the 45 beers below share the exact same combination of hops! Although considering that even just taking those top 7 varieties, and assuming you can brew a beer with between 1-4 varieties, there are 1,099 possible combinations; that doesn't even include the differences between using the same varieties at different points in the process or in different ratios! Often it is the hopping technique, and quality of the hops that really deserves the credit for producing a great IPA rahter than the specific combination.

I'll keep updating this list. Happy to take any suggestions, but my goal is to only add what I think are great beers. I don’t want this to be a list of the hops in every IPA!

Alpine Duet - Simcoe and Amarillo

Alpine Hoppy Birthday - Pacific Jade, Centennial, Amarillo, Columbus, Nelson Sauvin, Citra, and Simcoe.

Alpine Nelson - Nelson Sauvin and Southern Cross

Alpine Pure Hoppiness - Hallertau, Hersbrucker, Tomahawk, Cascade and Centennial

Avery Maharaja - Columbus, Centennial, and Simcoe

Ballast Point Sculpin - Mash hops: Simcoe, Boil: CTZ, Chinook, Cascade, Northern Brewer, Centennial, Galena, Amarillo, Dry Hop: Amarillo and Simcoe. For a 5 gallon batch dry hop with about 3 oz of each.

Bear Republic Racer 5 - Chinook, Cascade, Columbus, and Centennial

Bell's Hopslam - (2007) Hersbrucker, Centennial, Glacier, Vanguard, and Crystal in the kettle, and then dry hopped with Simcoe. In 2009 there is a mention of Amarillo in addition to Simcoe in the dry hop.

Bell's Two Hearted - Centennial

Boulevard Double Wide - Zeus, Bravo, Chinook, Centennial, Cascade

Brew Kettle White Rajah - Citra, Centennial, and Summit

Captain Lawrence Captain's Reserve - Columbus, Chinook, and Cascade (a commenter below suggest that Simcoe is added as well)

Cigar City Jai Alai - Kettle hops: Ahtanum, Columbus, Cascade, Amarillo, and Centennial. Dry hopped with Simcoe.

Coast The Boy King - Citra, Chinook, Nugget, Cascade, Centennial and Columbus.

DC Brau On the Wings of Armageddon - Falconer's Flight (blend)

Fat Head's Head Hunter - Columbus, Simcoe, Centennial pellet with Simcoe & Mosaic leaf in hopback (Previously: Simcoe, Columbus, and Cascade)

Firestone Walker Double Jack - Bittering: Warrior, Columbus; Late Kettle: Cascade, and Centennial;
Dry Hops: Amarillo, Cascade, and Centennial

Firestone Walker Union Jack - Bittering: Magnum; Late Kettle: Cascade, Centennial; Dry Hops: Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Chinook, and Simcoe

Flying Fish Exit 16 - Firdst wort: Citra, Boil: Columbus, 5 min: Centennial: 3 min: Simcoe. Whirlpool: Citra. First Dry Hop: 50% Chinook, 50% Citra, Second Dry Hop: 75% Citra, 25% Columbus

Great Lakes Commodore Perry - Simcoe, Willamette, and Cascade

Green Flash Le Freak - Kettle: Summit and Nugget. Amarillo dry hop during fermentation

Green Flash West Coast IPA - Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, and Cascade

Hill Farmstead Abner - Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior (prev. Chinook, Citra, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior)

Hill Farmstead Ephraim - Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, Simcoe, and Warrior

Hill Farmstead Double Galaxy - Galaxy

Hill Farmstead Susan - Citra, Simcoe, and Riwaka

Ithaca Flower Power - Kettle: Simcoe, Cascade, Ahtanum, and Centennial. Dry-Hop: Simcoe, Amarillo, and Chinook

Kern River Citra Double IPA - Nugget to bitter, Citra in the kettle, and Citra and Amarillo dry hop

Lagunitas Sucks - Chinook, Simcoe, Apollo, Summit, Nugget, and HBC342

Port Hop 15 - Kettle: Challenger, Golding, Chinook, Tettnang, Magnum, Phoenix, Sterling, Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe, Columbus, Galena, Amarillo, Saaz, and Aurora. Dry hop: Simcoe and Centennial.

Russian River Pliny the Elder - Kettle hop extract, Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, and Amarillo.  Dry Hop Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, and Amarillo.

Russian River Pliny the Younger - Bittered with extract, Amarillo extract mid-boil, Amarillo and Simcoe (plus others?) in the boil.
Dry Hop Schedule
DH 1 Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 2 Amarillo, Centennial for one week and remove
DH 3 Simcoe for one week and remove
DH 4 Simcoe, Amarillo Dry Hop in Keg

Smuttynose Big A IPA - 2008: Nugget, Cascade, Centennial, Crystal, Chinook, Sterling.

Smuttynose "Finestkind" - Bittering: Magnum; Flavoring: Simcoe, Centennial, Santiam; Dry hops:  Amarillo

Societe The Pupil - Nelson Sauvin and Citra

Southern Tier Unearthly IPA - Kettle Hops: Chinook and Cascade, Hop Back: Styrian Golding, Dry Hopped: Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook

Stone 10th Anniversary - Bittering: Summit. Whirlpool: Chinook and Crystal. Dry hop: Simcoe and Crystal.

Stone IPA - Chinook, Columbus, and Centennial

Stone Ruination - Bittering: Columbus. Whirlpool: Centennial. Dry hop: Centennial

Surly 16 Grit/Abrasive - Warrior, Citra (Previously CTZ bittering extract, Amarillo, and Columbus. Before that, kettle hopped with CTZ extract, Amarillo and Glacier hops. Twice dry-hopped with Glacier and Amarillo).

Surly Furious - Warrior, Ahtanum, Simcoe, and Amarillo

Tröegs Nugget Nectar - Nugget, Warrior, Tomahawk, Simcoe, Palisade. Hop back: Nugget

Three Floyds Dreadnaught - Warrior, Simcoe, Centennial, and Cascade

Three Floyds Zombie Dust - Citra

Town Hall Masala Mama - Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, and Mt. Hood

Count of the hops used:
Centennial 27
Simcoe 24
CTZ (Columbus, Tomhawk, or Zeus) 20
Cascade 19
Amarillo 16
Chinook 16
Citra 11
Warrior 7
Nugget 6
Summit 4
Ahtanum 3
Crystal 3
Magnum 3
Nelson Sauvin 3
Hersbrucker 2
Sterling 2
Galena 2
Hop Extract 2 (probably more)
1 each (Falconer Flight, Mt Hood, Tettnang, Styrian Golding, Northern Brewer, Willamette, Pacific Jade, Santiam, Southern Cross, Hallertau, Glacier, Bravo, Vanguard, Galaxy, HBC342, Apollo, Challenger, Golding, Tettnang, Phoenix, Saaz, Aurora, Palisade, and Riwaka)

----

More additions:

Credit to Auror
Trillium Speed Mettle - Single dry hopped version of Mettle.
Trillium Mettle - Citra, Amarillo and Columbus
Trillium Heavy Mettle - Citra, Amarillo and Columbus (plus 30%)
Trillium Vicinity - Galaxy (primarily), Citra, and Columbus.
Trillium FB-90 - Double dry hopped with Galaxy, Mosaic and Columbus
Trillium Public House - Chinook, Centennial, Columbus
Trillium Fort Point/DDHFP - Citra, Columbus
Trillium Congress St - Galaxy, Columbus
Trillium Melcher Street / DDH Melcher Street - Mosaic, Columbus
Trillium Sleeper St/DDHSS - El Dorado, Columbus
Trillium A Street - Amarillo, Columbus

Blazing World #3 - Tasting

The recipe for Blazing World, Modern Times’ amber IPA, has stood out as a unique challenge. All three of the batches have been pretty good, but none has yet achieved that magical combination of dank hop aromatics that we set out to create. Every batch has lead with Nelson Sauvin, and included some Simcoe backing, but varied the hop in the middle. We started with citrusy Ahtanum, moved to surprisingly fruity Columbus, and now to Palisades for this third batch. For the Love of Hops suggests Palisades as a good compliment to “special” hop varieties, like Simcoe and Nelson, but we selected this lesser-hyped American variety for its unique floral-dank aromatics.

Blazing World #3

Appearance – Very clear amber-orange. It might be slightly paler that the second iteration (resulting from the switch from a Vienna to a pale/Munich base, and dropping the C120). Slight haze, but pretty clear for a dry hopped beer. It has beautiful head retention and lacing, a sticky white head.

Smell – This version really pushes that signature Nelson Sauvin melon-dank aroma. Abounds with similarities to what Alpine achieves with Nelson Sauvin and Southern Cross in their Nelson (one of the beers that inspired us originally). Maybe because the pellets did much better loose than the whole Simcoe and Palisade compared to previous batches when all of the hops were bagged and weighted. Not much else other than hop coming through, clean fermentation for all I can tell.

Taste – The flavor is more balanced than the nose. Still a prominent hop character (mango, pine, and that classic Nelson stank) but also mild toasted bread crust. After the resiny-bitter finish there is just a hint of coffee from the pale chocolate malt. Drier than previous batches, but that really brings it inline with the West Coast IPA balance.

Mouthfeel – Moderate body, heftier than many IPAs, but certainly not thick. Carbonation is slightly prickly, which is about right for this one.

Drinkability & Notes – The bitterness is close to spot-on for my tastes, but I could see dialing it back slightly to make it more drinkable. I’m pretty happy with this batch, it is the closest to our original goal of a dank amber IPA, but it isn’t quite there. I’d like to see it leap out of the glass a bit more, which is hopefully where Mosaic we plan to use in the next batch will come in handy.

Dank Amber IPA #3 - San Diego Water

Participating in the recipe development process for Modern Times Beer has been a really interesting experience, and luckily I think Jacob and I are getting pretty good at it! Not to say that early batches weren’t tasty, but I think we are now honing in on beers that are not only delicious, but also more likely to translate well into commercial production.

Initially the goal was to brew our ideal beers, with no limitation on ingredients, process, equipment etc. Soon enough though we started to consider what sorts of requirements/restrictions our four year round beers would have when it came to production:

1. Two yeasts (total)
2. One base malt (ideally)
3. Hops we can get (or don't need) contracts for
4. No processes we won’t have equipment for (house-toasted oats, decoction mash etc.)
5. San Diego water (based)

That isn’t to say the restrictions on the first three won’t be lifted for seasonal and special releases, but each will require more effort and/or higher cost. For example if we choose to use a base malt other than what we have in the silo, we'll need to haul about 40 sacks of malt by hand. With yeast, there is a sweet spot for how often it is repitched (enough to maintain high viability), too many strains in house and we won't be able to use them frequently enough.

This Amber IPA, was partially inspired by Tröegs Nugget Nectar and as a result was based on Vienna malt, which added a nice background toastiness. However, in a beer so hop-forward, the switch to American pale bolstered by a moderate amount of Munich malt will serve equally well (I hope). I also eliminated the small amount of crystal 120 as I didn’t think it was adding anything beneficial. If the malt bill on this recipe doesn’t get us the flavor we want, we’ll keep tweaking until we find a combination of malts that does.

The only other major change to the recipe was the switch from Columbus to Palisade hops for post-boil and dry hopping. The rest of the hop bill, Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe, remained the same. We’re looking for the right earthier/danker hop profile that Columbus (surprisingly) failed to deliver. Columbus is now included in the bittering addition along with hop extract, a combination that has given us good results in other hoppy beers.

Up until now, I’ve been adjusting the water for these test batches based on the assumption that we’d have a reverse osmosis (RO) unit at the brewery to strip most of the minerals out of the San Diego water. This was one of the many items that Jacob had to make a tough decision on, cutting it from the initial budget. However, there are so many great hoppy beers brewed in San Diego that I’m really not worried! If we were planning on brewing an authentic Czech Pils, I'd be more wary.

For this batch I started with the yearly average San Diego water profile. From there I “added” gypsum and calcium chloride to boost the amount of calcium, sulfate, and chloride to my preferred levels for hoppy beers. This gave me a profile to target that included higher amounts of two minerals (sodium and magnesium) than I would normally add to a hoppy beer. However, since these are the minerals we’ll have in the baseline water profile at the brewery we need to know how they impact the flavor of our beer.

My next task was to transform my local water (Washington, DC) into a reasonable facsimile of that “San Diego, Hoppy” water profile I'd created. To do this I cut my filtered tap water with 35% distilled water to dilute the bicarbonate to the same level as San Diego’s. This is not as much as I would usually dilute for a hoppy beer (50% is my standard), but in an amber beer the higher bicarbonate shouldn’t push the mash pH too high. For paler IPAs, many San Diego area brewers (like Alpine) add a small amount of acid malt to lower the mash pH. So that is something we’ll keep in mind for other recipes.

I added water salts to increase the other minerals to the desired levels. This takes a few minutes to determine because each salt contains two minerals. My process is to start with the mineral I can only get from one salt, magnesium from Epsom salt, and then look at what I still need. In this case I knew I didn’t want to add more bicarbonate (baking soda or chalk), so my only option for sodium was kosher salt. Even with the sulfate added by the Epsom salt, I needed a substantial addition of gypsum to reach my target. This left me slightly short of calcium (despite the gypsum), and chloride (despite the kosher salt), so I added a small dose of calcium chloride. I wasn’t able to hit the profile exactly, but I was within a few PPM (mg/L) on all of the minerals. For additions this precise, a scale capable of .1 g resolution is a requirement.

We’ve had good luck so far when we’ve reached the third iteration of our recipes, so I’m excited to taste how this one turns out!

Blazing World #3

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 6.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 14.63
Anticipated OG: 1.065
Anticipated SRM: 13.3
Anticipated IBU: 141.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 73 %
Wort Boil Time: 120 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
------------
78.6% - 11.50 lbs. American Pale Ale Malt
17.1% - 2.50 lbs. German Munich Malt
2.6% - 0.38 lbs. Crisp Pale Chocolate Malt
1.7% - 0.25 lbs. Table Sugar

Hops
------
1.50 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 90 min.
5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 90 min.
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ 25 min.
3.00 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Hop Stand
1.00 oz. Palisade (Whole, 8.30% AA) @ Hop Stand
2.00 oz. Palisade (Whole, 8.30% AA) @ Hop Back
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Hop Back
3.00 oz. Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.50 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Palisade (Whole, 8.30% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc Fining @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
WYeast 1056 American Ale

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: San Diego, Hoppy

Calcium(Ca): 84.0 ppm
Magnesium(Mg): 15.0 ppm
Sodium(Na): 64.0 ppm
Sulfate(SO4): 178.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl): 102.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3): 104.0 ppm

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 153 F

Notes
-----
Brewed 1/6/13 with Garret and Andrei

Mash - 4 gallons filtered DC, 2 gallons distilled (used about 5 gallons)

Then add (per gallon) .8 g gypsum, .35 g Epsom salt, .45 g table salt, and .1 g of  CaCl. Mash pH 5.3 at room temperature.

Sparge water was treated similarly, although slightly more distilled water to reach my target dilution of 35% overall.

Collected 8 gallons of 1.050 runnings. Had to extend the boil and add a small amount of sugar to hit my target OG.

30 minute hop stand with mostly Nelson since it was pellets. Chilled to 60 F. Oxygenated for 60 seconds. Pitched the decanted 1 L stir-plate starter that I had made 48 hours earlier.

Left at 64 F to ferment. Good activity by the next morning. Moved to 60 F ambient to slow fermentation.

Despite the large bucket, a small amount of krausen came out of the airlock during days two and three.

1/11/13 Raised the temperature to 65 F to ensure fermentation finishes out completely.

1/18/13 Dry hopped, loose in primary. Shook 5-6 times a day for the first five days, then allowed to sit at 64 F to settle.

1/27/13 Kegged into a twice flushed keg and placed into the kegerator to carbonate. No keg hops this time. FG 1.014.

2/14/13 Tasting results, best of the Blazing World series so far. Really shows off the Nelson, the malt bill also survived the switch from Vienna.

West Coast IPA Tasting

I’m not much for brewing specifically for monthly homebrew club competitions, but when the timing works out I’m game. This Saturday is the first joint meeting of BURP and DC Homebrewers (the two clubs I belong to), and festivities includes an IPA competition. With an IPA on tap, coincidentally, I couldn’t resist entering. I’d been feeling pretty confident about my chances with this West Coast IPA, but after drinking what my friends Erich (Amarillo/Galaxy) and Andrei (Mosaic) are entering earlier tonight, I’m no longer as sure about my chances (update: my IPA won 2nd place of the 42 entries). The IPA style can have so much range, it’ll all come down to what sort of hop character and balance the judges are looking for.

West Coast IPA

Appearance – Golden-yellow, almost clear, but with a slight blur. Given how flocculent the yeast (WLP007) is, blame falls squarely on the dry hops. The white head is very sticky, but retention is moderate at best.

Smell – Wow! Huge citrus peel (fresh orange), tropical-mango, with some pine. I’d call it classic, but I don’t think a nose like this was possible until the modern high-oil hops started to be released a decade ago. Saturated, complex hoppiness, with just a hint of malt toastiness. The yeast adds to the generally fruity character without being immediately discernible. Can’t imagine a better IPA nose. I like that this beer has the complex essence of the hops, without the green-grassy “nose in a hop-bag” character of some much sought-after hoppy beers.

Taste – The flavor is coated in hops, lingering into the finish. There is a slight sweetness, hard to say whether it is residual sweetness (1.013), or a trick of the fruity hops and yeast. Lots of citrus zest and dank-pine, not as tropical as the nose. Slight maltiness, but it sits on the sideline. Coating grabby bitterness, without being harsh or rough.

Mouthfeel – Slightly fuller than many IPAs, but considering the substantial flavors, I don’t mind it. Solid carbonation mostly stays out of the way.

Drinkability & Notes – It is remarkable how much better this beer is than the DIPA I brewed a week earlier. The nose leaps out of the glass, and the flavor is dripping with hop oils. One of the best two or three hoppy beers I’ve ever brewed, complex, drinkable, beautiful! We’ll see if the judges agree…

Galaxy/Rakau DIPA Tasting

When I suggested brewing a double IPA recipe that featured about a pound of hops in five gallons (6+ lbs per bbl), split between Rakau and Galaxy, Jacob told me that it sounded like fun, but probably wouldn’t happen full-scale at Modern Times given hop prices/availability. Although it highlighted a question that we’ve been trying to figure out, how will the hop additions scale from my modest homebrew setup to the 30 bbl brewhouse currently being manufactured for the brewery? Bitterness will be relatively easy to scale once we determine the hop utilization of our kettle, but hop aromatics are a trickier matter.

As a homebrewer it is easy to buy more hops if I need more hops. With the demand for these oil-saturated varieties though, on a commercial scale we’re forced to lock-in amounts now with contracts for nest fall (or the next three years for varieties from Australia and New Zealand). Meaning that we'll only have a certain amount to use, so increasing the hops in a recipe means reducing the number of batches we’ll be able to brew of it until the next contract.

Jacob has been talking to craft brewers who brew hoppy beers he enjoys, and the general message is that we should be able to cut my dry hop amounts per gallon in half and still achieve similar results. Could I do that at home, or is there something more efficient about the way craft breweries dry hop? Is it the larger volume? The fact that many breweries circulate the beer to increase exposure to the hops? No answers yet, but I’m glad we are (if anything) over-estimating the amount of hops we’ll need.

For this Southern Hemisphere DIPA I was hoping to compliment the tropical fruitiness of Galaxy with Rakau, which I read has a more herbal/piney character plus a unique fruitiness of its own. My hope was this would achieve a balance similar to the one created by Amarillo’s fruitiness and Simcoe's mango-pine thing. The resulting beer is solid, but the balance of aromatics isn’t what I hoped for in a double IPA. Considering the high (absurd?) hopping rate late in the boil and split between two dry hop additions, the aromatics aren’t as bold as I wanted! The hops smelled great coming out of the package (unlike my first Galaxy-only DIPA), but that didn’t translate to the finished beer.

Southern Hemisphere DIPA

Appearance – Medium-amber body, but the wide glass makes it appear darker than it does usually. The head pours dense and thick, beautiful once it settles, but it is time to turn the pressure down. Chill haze and two substantial dry hoppings have created a somewhat murky beer.

Smell – This beer hadn’t been wowing me, but served in a deep/curved glass the hop nose is much more pronounced. The Galaxy and Rakau provide a very deep fruit flavor. There is certainly a tropical aspect to it, but also a cooked pear and cherry. The pine and citrus most people expect in a DIPA are hardly detectable. There isn’t anything to dislike about this one, but it just doesn’t leap out of the glass and demand to be tasted like my favorite hoppy beers!

Taste – The flavor is reasonably well balanced between malt and hop. There are hints of toastiness poking through the fruity hops. The finish is firmly bitter, lasting for a few seconds before fading (the combination of HopShots and Columbus for bittering worked really well). Similar to the nose, the combination of hop oils doesn’t grab me, I enjoy the fruitiness, but it doesn't scratch my hop itch. The fermentation, from what I can tell, was very clean. There is a slight alcohol presence, about what I expect in a beer this strong.

Mouthfeel – Considering that this beer is 8.4% ABV, the body is relatively thin. This is what I want in a double IPA, much thicker and it would taste like an American barleywine. Solid carbonation enough to keep it light.

Drinkability & Notes – Very drinkable for a strong beer. Similar to the first DIPA I brewed with Galaxy, it is a solid, but doesn’t captivate me. I don’t feel like the Rakau is adding much to the aroma, as I enjoyed Galaxy by itself more.The strange thing is I was blown away by Hill Farmstead's Galaxy DIPA, not sure it is how I am using them, or the specific hops I'm getting.

West Coast IPA Recipe - Hop Oil Analysis

This West Coast IPA is the last of the four hoppy beers I brewed over four consecutive weekends earlier this fall. The recipe owes some similarities to the 100% Brett Trois IPA I brewed earlier this year, but odds are they won’t taste very similar. Fermentation with WLP007 (Dry English Ale) harvested from the Hoppy Cream Ale will give this batch a very different yeast profile, and the Simcoe-heavy dry hop will lead to a resiny aromatic profile compared to the tropical fruit packed aromatics of the Brett IPA. As a side note, White Labs recently announced that WLP644 Brett Trois will be going year round!

I’m interested to see how the Briess Pale Ale Malt I used as the base malt for this IPA performs in a hoppy beer. I didn’t realize when I bought the sack that the color is about double the Lovibond of the CMC Canadian 2-Row I’d been using previously. We’ll see if the slightly toastier flavors come through in a positive way, without making the beer seem too “English.” The Dank Amber IPA recipe was based on even darker/toastier Best Malz Vienna and did not taste overly-malty, which seems to indicate the pale malt won’t be an issue.

While writing a recipe for a hoppy beer I usually default to an even split of my chosen hop varieties, with similar additions made on both the hot and cold sides of the brewing process. From there I can adjust subsequent iterations based on which aromatics I want to highlight, replace, subdue, or eliminate. Even though this is my first attempt at this recipe, I'm using varieties I’ve brewed with numerous times before. As a result I decided to focus on the more citrusy varieties (Citra and Centennial) on the hot-side (hop-stand and hop-back) and then follow that with the pine-ier Simcoe for dry hopping. My goal was to create a beer that evolves more as it crosses the palate. We’ll see if it works.

The way that homebrewers tend to think about hops is as discrete spices. (e.g., Cascade adds grapefruity flavors. Galaxy is more tropical. Grassy-spiciness calls for Saaz. etc.) However, unlike the wide variety of spices in your pantry, hops are all varieties of the same plant species. As a result many of these flavor differences result from different ratios of the same set of aromatic oils (although not all hops share an identical set of aromatic compounds). I watched a video a few months ago of an interview with Pat Mcilhenney from Alpine during which he mentions that when they develop a recipe for a hoppy beer they target a standard ratio of hop oils. He didn’t provide their actual target though. Their hoppy beers, especially Hoppy Birthday, are so good that I couldn't ignore the suggestion.

Despite making up only a tiny portion of the hop's weight, the hop oils provide the aromatics, as opposed to the much more prominent alpha and beta acids which create the bitterness. I’d never thought about the amounts of myrcene, caryophyllene, humulene, and farnesene etc. in my hop blends before. Here is a list of aromatic descriptors for these as well as many other hop oils. The Beer Sensory Science blog also has several interesting posts about the chemistry underpinning hop aroma perception.

To help me better understand what is happening in different hop blends I created a spreadsheet (free to download here - HopOil-PercentageCalculator.xlsx) that calculates the percentage of each oil given the hop bill. Select a hop you want to add from the drop-down lists on the left and enter its percentage of the hop bill next to it in GREEN (the table at the far right contains average values for total oil content and a breakdown of those oils - if anyone knows of a more complete or reliable source, please pass it along). The results are populated in the middle table in BLUE. In most cases only the most common four oils were specified, so don't trust the percentages of the others unless you ensure that all the selected varieties include percentages for the other oils.

For comparison I included the percentages that these average hop numbers spit-out for Alpine’s Duet, which Pat noted is an even blend of Amarillo and Simcoe, and Russian River’s Pliny the Elder (using only the late boil additions and dry hops).

Checkout Scott Janish's Hop Oil Calculator a web-version/update to my Excel sheet as well!

The timing of the hop additions plays a role in the final aromatic profile as well because some oils are more volatile than others. The sheet does not take this fact into account. While the big four mentioned above account for 70-90% of the total oil content of most hop varieties (according to Indie Hops, pelletization tends to reduce the relative percentages of humulene and myrcene, for better or worse), there are other oils that contribute substantially and positively to hop aroma. As a result two blends that reach the same ratio of the four "primary" oils, will not yield identical beers. I was not able to find average values for all of the oils for each hops, not to mention that there is a huge within-variety variation resulting from growing and packaging conditions. As a result, I wouldn’t suggest using this spreadsheet for anything too serious unless you obtain an actual analysis of your hops to use in place of the generic numbers.

I’ll be brewing a couple less traditional hoppy beers this winter. Jacob and I are currently working on test batches for a split batch of wit (half with hibiscus, half dry hopped with Galaxy and Rakau) and a hoppy tripel, evolved from a batch I brewed a few years ago, this time with Amarillo and Simcoe. I enjoyed the history in Mitch Steele’s recent IPA book, but now I’m really excited about the scientific and process details in Stan Hieronymus’s For the Love of Hops (especially after talking with him while we were both visiting Crooked Stave’s tasting room during GABF).

West Coast IPA

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.00
Anticipated OG: 1.066
Anticipated SRM: 5.9
Anticipated IBU: 133.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
------------
88.5% - 11.50 lbs. American Pale Ale Malt
5.8% - 0.75 lbs. Flaked Wheat
3.8% - 0.50 lbs. CaraPils
1.9% - 0.25 lbs. Table Sugar

Hops
------
1.25 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 60 min.
5 ml       HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.
1.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ 10 min.
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Hop-Stand
1.00 oz. Centennial (Whole, 10.50% AA) @ Hop-Stand
1.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Hop-Back
2.00 oz. Centennial (Whole, 10.50% AA) @ Hop-Back
4.00 oz. Simcoe (Whole, 14.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 152

Notes
------
Brewed 11/18/12 by myself

Filtered DC water cut with 4 gallons of distilled. 8.5 g of gypsum and 4.5 g of CaCl split between the mash and sparge.

Collected 7 gallons of 1.055 runnings with a fly sparge.

Chilled to 61 F. Oxygenated for 45 seconds. 1 cup of yeast slurry harvested from Aromatic Cream Ale. Left at 64 F to ferment. Good fermentation by the next day.

12/2/12 Added the first dose of dry hops (2 oz), bagged and weighted, to the primary fermentor. Not as much hop character as I would have expected at this point, but the dry hops will help, so I'm not worried.

12/16/12 Added the second dose of dry hops, bagged and weigthed to a sanitized keg. Flushed, and filled. Down to 1.013.

1/10/12 One of the best hoppy beers I've brewed. Bright, fresh, citrus, tropical, and pine. Maybe slightly sweet (or just fruity?), but with the right amount of bitterness for my tastes.

Southern Hemisphere Hopped Double IPA Recipe

I think double/imperial IPA is one of the easiest styles to brew an “alright” version of, but one of the most difficult to really nail. Loading a large quantity of bold hops into a recipe can obscure many process flaws. However, to produce an excellent strong/hoppy beer you have to address a number of contradictions. Double IPAs are high alcohol beers that need to be served really fresh. Recipes must contain a huge amount of malt, but the finished beer should taste dry and bitter. The best examples are intensely flavored, but still highly drinkable. It is a style that is young (not much more than 10 years as a bottled, year-round beer), but there are already so many breweries that brew at least one.

My favorite commercial examples of the style are all around 8% ABV. Less alcohol than that and it isn’t really a DOUBLE IPA, higher than about 9% ABV and the booze starts getting in the way of the hop aromatics. Some of my favorites are Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, The Alchemist’s Heady Topper, Lawson’s Double Sunshine, The Bruery Humulus Lager, and Hill Farmstead’s Abner. All of these beers have huge hop aromatics, bitterness that isn’t too harsh, and clean/subtle malt bases.

Hops can be of any variety, as long as they are high in oil content. It would be almost impossible to add enough of a subtle low-alpha-acid hop variety to achieve the required aromatics and bitterness without losing most of the wort to hop absorption. For this beer I paired Rakau from New Zealand with Galaxy from Australia. I brewed a similar recipe last year that was 100% Galaxy and while enjoyable, the result never wowed me. Using hops that are in pristine condition should have been on the list of tips for brewing hoppy beers that I included with its recipe post! Lesson learned, no more buying two-year-old whole-hops shipped directly from Australia. Many of the Southern Hemisphere hop varieties share aromatic commonalities with newer American varieties like Citra; they impart lots of tropical fruitiness, with a hint of dankness in high concentrations.

I’d been underwhelmed by the bitterness of Northern Brewer’s HopShots on their own. It seems much lower than their numbers suggest. The bitterness is clean and soft, perfect for many styles, but not IPA or DIPA. As a result, for this batch I split the bittering addition between hop extract and Columbus. For my palate Columbus adds a wonderful lingering tongue-grabbing bitterness that I think is a hallmark of both American IPAs and DIPAs. I was interested to read in Mitch Steele’s IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale that Shaun Hill uses a blend of extract and hops to bitter Hill Farmstead's James, a black IPA.

Brewing a strong beer that you want to start pouring less than six weeks after brewing, demands minimizing the creation of off-flavors that would need time to age-out. Pitch enough yeast for a strong/healthy fermentation, but avoid over-pitching which strips bitterness from the beer (for this batch I harvested slurry from my Third Hoppy Wheat, but didn't pitch the entire yeast cake). Perform most of fermentation near the lower bound of the yeast lab’s suggested temperature range for the strain, but raise the temperature toward the end of fermentation to guarantee a dry finish. A low final gravity should also be encouraged by a moderate mash temperature, minimal crystal malt, and 5-10% (by extract) refined sugar. Residual sweetness gets in the way of hop bitterness, and can yield a DIPA that taste similar to a young American barleywine.

I became distracted (playing with our two new kittens, Ale and Joyce) as the wort heated and as a result lost about a gallon to a boil-over. Rather than dilute or add malt extract, I just kept going; having four gallons of DIPA on tap is probably a better idea than five anyway. For Galaxy and Rakau all I could source was pellet hops, so I skipped the hop-back, and revived my old technique of adding additional hops to the kettle right at the start of chilling (after the hop-stand addition has 30 minutes to soak in the hot wort). Luckily the Galaxy smelled much fruitier and brighter than last time.

To make dry hopping a bit easier I have begun vacuum-sealing the dry hop additions on brew day. I tend to add many of the same varieties to both the boil and post-fermentation, so I simply weigh the additional hops and seal the one or two blended additions separately before resealing the bulk hops for storage. When I’m ready to dry hop I sanitize the mesh bag (or nylon stocking) and glass marbles that will weigh it down, and then add the pre-measured hops.

Double IPA NZ-AU

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 16.00
Anticipated OG: 1.078
Anticipated SRM: 7.3
Anticipated IBU: 200.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 66 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
------------
85.9% - 13.75 lbs. American Pale Ale Malt
6.3% - 1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
4.7% - 0.75 lbs. CaraPils
3.1% - 0.50 lbs. Table Sugar

Hops
-----
1.50 oz. Columbus (Whole, 15.00% AA) @ 60 min.
10 ml.    HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.
1.50 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ 10 min.
1.50 oz. Rakau (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ 10 min.
1.50 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Hop-Stand
1.50 oz. Rakau (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Hop Stand
1.00 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Chill-Start
1.00 oz. Rakau (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Chill-Start
3.00 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
3.00 oz. Rakau (Pellet, 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
WYeast 1056 American Ale/Chico

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 153 F

Notes
------
Brewed 11/11/12 by myself

Briess Pale malt base.

Collected 7 gallons of 1.062 runnings, pre-sugar. 1.067 with the sugar added.

Lost about a gallon of wort to a boil-over

30 minute hop stand with the first dose of aroma hops, the second dose was added at the start of the chill.

Yeast harvested from the third batch of Hoppy American Wheat, about one cup of thin slurry. Chilled to 68 F, oxygenated for 45 seconds. Left at 64 F to ferment. Good activity by the following morning.

12/2/12 Added the first dose of dry hops (3 oz), bagged and weighted to the primary fermentor. Firm bitterness, good fruity hop character, slight toastiness from the base malt. FG=1.014 (83% AA, 8.4% ABV).

1/4/12 Tasting notes for a very solid beer, but the the hops didn't translate with the flavor combination/balance I wanted. Too much fruitiness, not enough anything else. 

Hoppy Red Rye Tasting

Over the last decade, hops varieties seem to be getting trendier. For a long time Cascade was the go-to hop for American beers, then Centennial made a run, the combination of Amarillo ad Simcoe is a modern classic, and now everyone wants Citra. There are dozens of new varieties being bred, and one of them will be the next big hit. It is hard not to get swept up in these new varieties when they impart bold new flavors heretofore not possible in hoppy beers. However, with so many other varieties out there finding new combinations of existing varieties is another way to create unique flavors.

Hop quality is a bigger deal than most homebrewers give it credit. It is of enough importance that many larger craft breweries send someone to the Yakima Valley and Hallertau to evaluate the harvest each year. As homebrewers we are often left with what remains, unable to evaluate the product until we open the package on brew day. There are some brewers who think of hop varieties like a commodity (Simcoe is Simcoe), when in fact you might get a more exciting hop character in an IPA from terrific Centennial rather than poor quality Citra.

Rather than relying on the supply chain to take care of the hops from the time they are harvested in the fall until when I am brewing, I’d rather buy the varieties I know I’ll use in bulk as soon as they are released, and store them myself. Doing this also saves money and avoids situations where those prized varieties disappear six months before the new harvest.

The Cascade for this Hoppy Red Rye was from Indie Hops, hopefully part of a wave of suppliers catering to craft brewers (and hopefully homebrewers) - who appreciate hops for more than just their level of alpha acids. I paired it with Sterling, originally bred as an American grown replacement for Saaz, but it is more powerfully aromatic and brings some fruitiness to compliment the spice.

Hoppy Red Rye

Appearance – When I first brewed this beer I was sure it was too dark. When I poured the first sample from the tap it looked too light. Luckily after the yeast settled it ended up a beautiful garnet red. The head is dense, sticky, off-white, and gorgeous.

Smell – The nose is multifaceted, toasted malt, citrusy hops, and red berries. The hops smell fresh, sticky, grapefruity, but they aren’t over-the-top pungent. The berry-malt is wonderfully aromatic.

Taste – Solid bitterness at first, with some residual sweetness, and then lingering hops. Well balanced, although I tend to like my hoppy beers somewhat drier. The toasted-caramel malt comes through, not doughy or bready. Hops meld with the malt, citrus, hay, herbal; they need to be more intense to market as an IPA variant. Slight ethanol note on the finish.

Mouthfeel – Medium-heavy body for a moderate alcohol beer. Solid carbonation, about right.

Drinkability & Notes – Of all of our “first attempts” at Modern Times recipes, this may be the most successful. However, it doesn’t have the special something that makes Founders Red’s Rye such a perfect beer. Dialing back on the malt, and up on the hop aromatics will get us there though I suspect.

Hoppy American Pale Ale Tasting X 2

How important is yeast strain selection for the perception of hops in the finished beer? Some yeasts, especially highly flocculant strains, have a tendency to strip hop compounds (including bitterness) out of the wort. This is the reason that some brewers suggest waiting until after fining or filtering a batch to add dry hops. Neutral-flavored moderately-flocculant American ale strains like 001/1056 are a safe choice if you want the yeast to simply stay out of the way.

There is another school of thought however. Some brewers select yeast strains that provides an estery character that blends with the hops creating a more powerful/complex aroma. There are breweries that opt for Belgian ale or saison strains (Charlevoix Dominus Vobiscum Lupulus), while others choose English ale strains (Ithaca Flower Power). The right combination can be transcendent, but the wrong pairing of hops and yeast can be close to undrinkable.

In a world where every brewery has access to the same malts and hops, having a house yeast strain is one way to give your beers a distinct character. At the moment, the highest rated hoppy beer on BeerAdvocate that isn't brewed by Russian River is The Alchemist’s Heady Topper. For me John Kimmich's hop saturated beer lived up to the hype (unlike the bottle of Kern River Citra DIPA I opened last week) with a wonderfully pungent hop aroma mixed with a peachy ester that seemed yeast derived.

“‘The heart of the beer is my private strain of Conan ale yeast,’ John explained. ‘It produces very distinct apricot and tropical fruit esters, but you have to know how to handle it, how to draw the character out.’ It took years of tweaking to get the age and the generation of the Conan yeast just right so it would produce the flavor John wanted.” via Sip this world-class beer straight from the tallboy

In July I cultured Conan from a fresh can of Heady Topper, starting it in the can before building it up on my stir plate. I pitched the yeast it into an extra gallon of wort from my Hoppy Pale Ale. Hoping for the best, but given the proprietary nature of the strain hard to know for sure what temperature to target.

So here is the side-by-side tasting of the same wort fermented by the two very different ale strains (note that in addition to the yeast difference, the WLP001 fermented potion also received a substantial dose of keg hopping.)

Hoppy Pale - WLP001

Appearance – Nearly clear, golden beer. Pours with a large head, but it quickly settles to a dense, creamy white cap. Pretty lacing and retention.

Smell – More malt aromatics than I expect in a hoppy American beer. The Victory malt really comes through, with fresh baked bread and crackers. Plenty of hops too, pine and citrus, fresh and bright. It is an interesting combination, but not the balance I had envisioned.

Taste – The flavor is a good mixture of malt and hops, but I intended it to be hop first with a malt background. The hop flavor is really saturated with the hop bursting, hop standing, hop backing, and dry hopping. Good classic West Coast hop character: orange, pine, slightly dank, balanced. Firm bitterness, without lingering too much. Clean fermentation.

Mouthfeel – Decent body for a session beer, solid carbonation.

Drinkability & Notes – Like most of the other first attempts we’ve made at recipes for Modern Times, the results are good, but not exactly what we wanted. A few tweaks to the malt bill (removing the Victory) and hop bill (considering some Southern Cross in place of the Columbus) and we’ll be closer to the target.

Hoppy Pale - Conan

Appearance – Pours with a similar color to the standard version, but considerably hazier (thanks to bottle conditioning and storage at room temperature). The head doesn’t have the same creamy texture, and retention is much weaker despite higher visible carbonation.

Smell – As expected it lacks the big hop nose, thanks to the lack of dry hopping. Unexpectedly however, the strong maltiness is also absent. Both are preset, but are subdued. Taking the lead is an assertive fruity/spicy yeastiness, with peach and clove most prominently.

Taste – The flavor is a bit drier, which accentuates the bitterness. As with the nose, the yeast character plays a big role. The moderate West Coast hopping melds well with the yeast character. The bready malt comes through more on the palate than it did in the nose. As it warms I detect a slightly funky edge, hard to tell if it is from a stressed fermentation, or something that got into the yeast culture.

Mouthfeel – The medium-high carbonation is a bit more than I prefer, but it doesn’t come across as over-carbonated. The extra bubbles make the body seem lighter, although maybe that is just higher attenuation.

Drinkability & Notes – I was under the impression that the Alchemist’s house strain “Conan” was English in origin, but the phenols give this beer a Belgian slant. I actually enjoy this variation, but without dry hops the yeast overpowers even the considerable late/post boil hopping.

100% Brett Trois IPA Tasting

Unlike just 10 years ago, there are now a lot of American breweries and a lot of desire from us beer nerds to buy beers with unique flavors. Sadly, I think this has resulted in a number of breweries putting marketing before brewing. Releasing gimmicky beers that may convince people to buy them once “just to try it” that aren’t good enough to be purchased a second time.

I’m hoping one of the things Modern Times (shiny new website) will be known for is the sophistication of our flavor choices. You aren’t going to see any beers flavored like carrot cake. We won’t add chai tea to a Sahti just because the last syllable of the style sounds like “tea.” We also won’t be adding ingredients that sound good on the label, but aren’t noticeable in the glass. We’ll have a small pilot system, so we won’t be brewing 30 bbl (930 gallon) batches of beer that haven't been dialed in.

I’m not saying we won’t brew anything unique, weird, or controversial though. For example, I love mixing Brettanomyces and aggressive hopping. One of my biggest complaints about breweries combining sour or funky beers with aromatic hops is that many don’t do a good job. There are only two general methods that I think work. #1 Make a standard, low-hopped, sour/funky beer, let it age until the acid/ester profile is where you want it, then dry hop and serve quickly (New Belgium's Le Terroir is a great example of this method). #2 Brew a hoppy 100% Brett beer that can be packaged quickly (the New York collaborative Super Friends IPA, is my favorite of this breed). For this batch of 100% Brett Trois IPA it was less than five weeks between brewing and drinking a glass of fully carbonated, dry-hopped beer.

What makes a beer like this different than the commercial beers I poked fun at above? Well first of all it actually tastes good. I also selected ingredients with the final flavor in mind. I chose hops (Citra, Centennial, and Chinook) and a Brett strains (Trois/Drie) that have complementary flavor profiles. The resulting beer has a balance that combines characters from the wort and fermentation to give a wonderfully complex, tropical-fruit flavor.

100% Brett Trois IPA

Appearance – Deep sunny yellow beer. There is a slight haze that causes the beer to glow in the early evening sun. The moderate white head doesn’t last very long, despite the wheat malt and hops.

Smell – The nose is almost straight tropical fruit juice. Mango and pineapple especially. Not a hint of grassiness. It is really difficult to tell where the hops end and the Brett begins. There is a slight hint of doughy wheat in the background.

Taste – Similar in its fruitiness to the aroma, but rather than the sweetness you’d expect from juice, it has a balanced bitterness of an IPA with a bare hint of tartness. The light bready flavor is there in the finish. Basically no “classic” horse-blanket Brett funk, but I think the fruitiness of the Brett primary fermentation works perfectly with the Citra, Centennial, and Chinook.

Mouthfeel – Dry, and on the thin side, but no more so than many West Coast IPAs. Solid carbonation.

Drinkability & Notes – Not the most complex IPA I’ve ever tasted, but certainly one of the most unique. Perfect hoppy beer for summertime drinking: quenching, refreshing, and fruity.

India Red Rye Ale Recipe

While it might sound similar to Founders Red's Rye on the surface, this Red Rye IPA shouldn’t share many flavor similarities. Unlike the other test batches I’ve brewed for Modern Times, this one was a bit further away from any of my previous recipes. (As an aside, Jacob is about to dive head-first into brewery site selection!) The only rye IPA I had brewed previously was Denny’s famous recipe. I didn’t really care for the combination of rye, Mt. Hood and Columbus hops in either my batch or the one my friend Scott brewed.

This Red Rye IPA is a continuation of our attempt to brew hoppy beers with a wide variety of characters. Citrus (Hoppy Wheat), Dank (Amber IPA), Classic “West Coast” (Pale Ale), and now spicy-grapefruit. I opted for the combination of Sterling and Cascade in a roughly equal ratio as both are assertive, but not nearly as much as some of the bold new varieties coming onto the market. The Cascade was a sample that Jacob obtained from Indie Hops. They have hyped their lower temperature pelletization, but these are whole hops. Sometimes their hops are available to homebrewers through Falling Sky Brewing.


While brewers often call rye “spicy” I’ve always sensed more of a toasty/earthy flavor. As step-mashes, to alleviate the sticky character of this grain, may prove challenging on the commercial system, I skipped the beta-glucan rest and kept the rye malt to under 20%. In addition I added both Fawcett Caramel Rye and Weyermann Chocolate Rye for additional dimension to the rye flavor. Along with the American pale base, I added melanoidin to enhance the malty character, and CaraRed to ensure a deep saturated red color. CaraRed didn't taste like a true caramel malt, my guess is that it is similar to Weyermann CaraAmber (which despite the name is toasted, and not a caramel/crystal malt). Depending on where CaraRed falls, this recipe may have a bit more caramel/crystal malt than I usually add to hoppy beers, but I had great results with last year’s India Red Ale which was brewed with 12% crystal malt.

After a few batches using my new chilling rig (March pump, to HopRocket, to Therminator) I have to say it was a breeze going back to my old immersion chiller and ice-water-recirculating pump for this brew. It takes a bit longer to chill, but using ice in this way is much more efficient than in a pre-chiller because the ice water keeps running through the chiller until it absorbs as much heat as it can.

This is the last hoppy beer I’ll be brewing for a few batches because I recently had two 5-gallon barrels arrive from Balcones Distillery that need to be filled, and then refilled relatively quickly. I also brewed my sixth batch of lambic last weekend, fermenting with a starter I made from six bottles of 3 Fonteinen gueuze (including all four of the phenomenal Armand’4 series), and you probably thought I’d forgotten the sorts of things this blog is known for?

India Red Rye Ale

Recipe Specifics
---------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.41
Anticipated OG: 1.063
Anticipated SRM: 13.3
Anticipated IBU: 73.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
-------
67.1% - 9.00 lbs. American Pale "2-row" Malt
18.6% - 2.50 lbs. Rye Malt
5.6% - 0.75 lbs. CaraRed
3.7% - 0.50 lbs. Crystal Rye
3.7% - 0.50 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
1.2% - 0.16 lbs. Chocolate Rye

Hops
-------
5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.
1.00 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 7.50% AA) @ 20 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.75 AA) @ 15 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.75 AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 7.50% AA) @ 0 min.
2.50 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.75 AA) @ Dry Hop
2.00 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 7.50% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
--------
0.75 Whirlfloc @ 10 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 10 min.

Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
-------------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 150 F

Notes
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Brewed 8/5/12 by myself

Undiluted filtered DC water. This is a darker hoppy beer, so I didn't mind the high carbonate as much as I usually do. 6 g of gypsum and 3 g of CaCl added to the boil.

Collected 6.75 gallons of 1.060 runnings with a fly sparge that I ended up batching at the end out of concern for channeling.

Added the final dose of hops and waited 15 minutes before starting the chill, hop-standing. Used ground water to get the wort down to 95F, then switched to recirculated ice water. When I reached 66F I strained the 1.070 wort and diluted with .5 gallon of spring water to hit my target gravity.

Wort color looks darker than the expected ruby red, may look a bit lighter after fermentation.

Pitched 12 oz of loose yeast slurry from the Hoppy Wheat #2 harvested two weeks earlier (stored in the fridge, allowed to warm to 66F before pitching). Shook to aerate. Left at 66 F to start fermenting. Good activity by the following morning.

8/18/12 Racked into a flushed keg containing the sack of dry hops. Left at cellar temperature until a tap opens up. The color appears substantially lighter than the wort did, maybe even too light.

8/28/12 Removed the dry hops, and put on tap. Color looks a bit light, and it is really cloudy.

9/26/12 Tasting notes for this one. Really solid beer, I like the hop character, I just want it bolder. I like the maltiness, I'd just prefer it a bit drier.