19th Century Imperial Stout Tasting - Three Ways

Russian Imperial Stout has lost just as much of its original meaning as India Pale Ale over the last couple centuries. Both were originally brewed by English breweries, and both names have as much to do with marketing as anything related to where they were exported. In the last twenty years American craft (and home) brewers have claimed both styles as their own, making them bigger, hoppier, and more aggressively flavored than their 19th century namesakes ever were.

In 2007 when my friend James and I brewed a beer inspired by Courage Russian Imperial Stout it was out of necessity. The original (by most accounts the first Russian Imperial Stout) hadn’t been brewed since about 2003, and there wasn’t a hint it ever would be again. Luckily a couple years later Wells and Young's resurrected the beer. For our version we opted to pitch Brett, but subsequently arrest fermentation with campden tablets when the gravity reached the desired point. Luckily the metabisulfite worked and even after more than five years in the bottle the beer is not over-carbonated.

Prior to the resurrection of Courage, the only real alternative had been A. Le Coq’s Imperial Extra Double Stout (a beer the parent brewery doesn't even mention on their website outside the description of their porter). It is based on the recipe that was originally exported from England to Russia by a Belgian, and later brewed in Russia (Estonia today) prior to the revolution one hundred years ago. It still has a Brettanomyces character that earlier versions of Courage RIS supposedly possessed, a flavor absent from the current incarnation. Today it is brewed under contract by Harvey & Son in England (which does mention it on their website).

After five years of tastings my version alone, I wanted to give it a bit of competition. So I brought a bottle of my batch back to DC from Massachusetts, and dipped into my cellar for bottles of the competition!

Courage Russian Imperial Stout - Best by 19/09/24 (Bottled September 2011)

Appearance – Pours with a thicker than expected dense medium-tan head. Clear brown edges frame the otherwise opaque black body. Decent head retention, leaving some sticky lacing behind.

Smell – High-quality, fruity dark chocolate leads. Brandy, vinous, raisins, plenty complex. Sweet almost-but-not-quite vanilla follows. Doesn’t bash you with coffee, char, and roast like so many modern imperial stouts do. You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking the Belgians had something to do with this one, like a roastier version of Rochefort 10.

Taste – Sweet enough without being cloying, still some bitterness from both hops and roast to balance. Nicely bready, toasty, really malty. The flavor seems to end with char, but that evolves into dark fruit, and finally bittersweet chocolate. One of the better linger-ers I’ve tasted recently. It doesn’t have the big-bold flavors American brewers have injected into the style, but that may be why wouldn’t mind drinking a whole (9.3 oz – 275 ml) bottle.

Mouthfeel – Despite the voluminous initial head the beer isn’t over-carbonated per se, but it is more carbonated than I’d prefer. The result is a beer that comes across somewhat thin, not as full as I want a big complex beer like this to be.

Drinkability & Notes – I enjoyed this one considerably more than I did the first bottle I had soon after it was released. As it stands I think this one will benefit from a couple more years, but sadly I don’t have any more bottles.

A. Le Coq Imperial Extra Double Stout – 2009 on Cap

Appearance – Darker than the Courage, basically no translucent edges when held to the light. The head is thinner, coarser, airier, and darker.

Smell – Loads of Brett, damp basement, SweeTarts, dusty, very nice. However, there is only minimal stout character, not much roast or chocolate. As it warms I get some tobacco, licorice, and toasted bread. The aroma has a lot in common with my Brett C finished Old Ale.

Taste – The flavor is sharp, with a lingering metallic charred bitterness. There is some burnt-roast, but its clashes with the Brett. Acrid is a good descriptor for the overall character. Of the three this is the only one I dumped any of.

Mouthfeel – Medium-low carbonation, about right for a big stout. The body is similar to the Courage, a bit thin.

Drinkability & Notes – Clearly I like the aroma more than the flavor. More pleasant than many of the corked bottles they used in earlier years. Those tended to be acetic, flat, and watery. Not in love with this one, but it tastes like I imagine a stock stout should, something that would blend nicely with a younger, mellower, sweeter stout.

My Courage Russian Imperial Stout Clone - Brewed/Bottled 2007

Appearance – The thin tan head recedes with haste leaving a sparse wispy covering. The black beer itself lets the barest hint of light through the edges when held towards a lamp.

Smell – The nose has a lot in common with the Courage, but it isn’t as bold. The dark chocolate is there, but not nearly the quantity of dried fruit. I wonder if the new version of Courage includes a bit of dark crystal malt that those of a bygone era did not? The fruitiness of the Brett barely pokes through, much mellower than the Le Coq.

Taste – The most drinkable rounded and balanced of the three... I’m quite pleased with how this one is aging-out! The roast is mellow, medium-roast coffee, and bready malt. After all these years, still barely a hint of oxidation with a light soy-sauce flavor just barely evident. Some dried fruit in the finish, slightly sugary, a bit of oak, brandy, and dates.

Mouthfeel – Similar to the others, slightly thinner than I would ideally hope for. Not obnoxious, or unpleasant, but not as creamy and luxurious as I’d prefer. Same goes for the carbonation, just slightly more prickly than I like in a strong ale.

Drinkability & Notes – It doesn’t have the complex roast and fruit of the Courage, or the raw Brett funk of the Le Coq, but I prefer it to either. Glad I have enough of these bottles left at my parents’ house to keep me in supply each Christmas until 2020 or so.

Fifth Annual Dark Saison - Sour Red

Alex and I have been brewing variations on funky dark saison each fall for the last five years. The recipes are never the same, and for the most part aren't even that similar. Over the years the strength has fluctuated from around 7% ABV to over 9%, with the malts, yeasts, hops, spices, and dried fruit varying based on how we were feeling at the time.

The first two brews were on our friend Noah's system. We probably would have kept that up had he not moved to Colorado shortly after the second batch. Luckily for us, Noah recently returned to the area (moving back into the very same house). Hopefully we’ll get him on board for Dark Saison #6 next year!

I’m hoping to convince the big-wigs (ha) at Modern Times to brew something like this as an annual tradition. Maybe not this exactly, but I enjoy the concept of seasonal beers that aren’t just dusting off the same recipes each year. Creating variations on a theme, rather than dialing in a stagnant target. Jason Yester of Trinity Brewing really inspired me while I was at GABF (recording an episode of Basic Brewing Radio); he brews a huge number of saisons each year, many with seasonal ingredients (grain of paradise, pumpkin, cacao nibs, brown sugar candied endive, Buddha's hand etc. and that’s just one beer, Capitane Petite Bouddha! Jason’s ode to Peter Bouckaert of New Belgium).

The dark saison Alex and I brewed last year was the first time we didn’t sour the beer, relying on Brett to add earthy-funk without significant acidity. For #5 we went back to our sour ways, but brewed the lightest colored wort of the series thus far. The reddish hue is pretty unique for a saison, and we tried to give it a caramel malt profile reminiscent of a Flemish red. Our original plan was to age the beer on quince (tastes like an extra-tart pear), but sourcing them has proved difficult. Jackie O’s Quincedence is the only sour I’m aware of brewed with quince although I wasn’t enamored with the combination of the fruit with a wine barrel aged smoked Scotch ale, and earthy Brett.

As a result of the scarcity of quince, this batch is currently sitting without an added fruit, herbs, or spices. Alex and I have discussed splitting the 10 gallon batch a few ways to create additional variety. Even if we get our hands on quince, we may end up adding it to only a few gallons of the batch. I think this beer would go beautifully with rose hips, hibiscus, schisandra (five flavor fruit), rooibos, or something else we turn up at the local co-op. I’ll wait to see where the flavor is in a few more months before anything goes in.

Dark Saison V

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 10.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 28.75
Anticipated OG: 1.065
Anticipated SRM: 15.3
Anticipated IBU: 21.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65 %
Wort Boil Time: 95 Minutes

Grain
------
41.7% - 12.00 lbs. Munich
41.7% - 12.00 lbs. German Vienna
7.8% - 2.25 lbs. Oatmeal
3.5% - 1.00 lbs. Crystal 90L
1.7% - 0.50 lbs. CaraRed
1.7% - 0.50 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
1.7% - 0.50 lbs. Special B

Hops
------
1.25 oz. Comet (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ 65 min.

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

Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP585 Belgian Saison III

Water Profile
--------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 156 F

Notes
-------
10/5/12 Made a 1.5 L stir plate refresher for the yeast I harvested from the Spelt Saison about a month earlier. Yeast starter took off quickly.

10/6/12 Oats were Country Choice Toasted. 4.5 lbs of the Munich was Briess 6-row, the rest was German.

Chilled to 75 F with the plate chiller. 45 seconds of pure O2. Pitched half the undecanted starter, a few ounces of East Coast Yeast Bug Farm IV, and the dregs from bottles of Dark Saison IV and Duchessic.

11/10/12 Racked to secondary, no fruit or oak yet.

11/10/13 Added 20 oz of quince paste, dissolved in an equal amount of boiling water.

4/13/14 Bottled with 3 1/8 oz of table sugar, and a splash of rehydrated Pasteur Champagne yeast.

9/25/14 Tasting notes for this tart, fruity, interesting addition to the series.

Aromatic Cream Ale Tasting - Bottle vs. Tap

One of the biggest challenges of my participation in getting Modern Times off the ground has been distance. Jacob is setting up the brewery in San Diego while I continue to live 3,000 miles away in Washington, DC. Collaborating on the recipes for the beers has been easy over email, and my brewing have only benefited from the added planning and perspective. However, getting the resulting beer to Jacob has been a pain.

Bottle conditioned strong beers and sours ship beautifully, but I can’t reasonably send a keg of force carbonated IPA. However, I've  found that the beers I want to drink fresh benefit from kegging. Our solution has been to take advantage of force carbonation, keg hopping, and so forth by bottling session/hoppy beers from the keg. While this could be as simple as sticking a sanitized bottle under the tap (in the same way I fill growlers/bombers to bring to homebrew club meetings), oxidation would cause hoppy beer bottled in this way to struggle to survive the long journey in peak shape. Let alone that to serve a variety of beers to prospective investors, distributors, consumers etc. Jacob needs to dole out any given batch over a couple month.

We started with a Blichmann BeerGun. It allows each bottle to be flushed with carbon dioxide (from a tank) and then filled with beer. It relies on a cold/wet bottle, long/narrow liquid line, low dispensing pressure, and its low-turbulence design to minimize foaming. Despite all of this I was unable to push beer as carbonated as Jacob hoped, without excessive foaming (which knocks CO2 out of solution).

For the most recent round of bottles I used a Fermentap counter-pressure filler from More Beer for the first time. It works by pressurizing each bottle with CO2 and then a bleeder valve allows the CO2 to escape as beer flows in to displace it. When operated correctly this system prevents dissolved carbonation from escaping. The beer can be dispensed at serving pressure, but operation is a bit more complex, relying on a three-way ball-valve (the Beer Gun is operated by two separate triggers for gas and liquid). The first one More Beer sent was defective (pressure leaked around a seam) but I have high hopes for the replacement that just arrived.

Here are tasting notes for the Aromatic Cream Ale, on tap, and in a counter-pressured filled bottle. The bottle was filled two weeks ago, and has been hanging out in my fridge since then.

Aromatic Cream Ale - Tap

Appearance – Almost clear, looks a half shade darker than the bottled version, most likely a result of less refraction of light traveling through it. Head last slightly longer, but not by much.

Smell – Fresh, bright hops. Citrus zest accounts for most of it, but a light herbal-spice as well.

Taste – Soft, not as snappy as I want for a cream ale (maybe the low-ish CO2). The English yeast adds a pleasant fruitiness. The hop flavor is nicely saturated, complex without overwhelming the delicate malt base.

Mouthfeel – Carbonation is a bit low, but I turned the gas off a few days ago because it was pouring a bit foamy.

Drinkability & Notes – Nicely complex hoppy beer, would need to be a bit crisper if we wanted to use the “cream ale” moniker, but would be a fine XPA as is. Solid, but not very exciting.

Aromatic Cream Ale - Bottle

Appearance – Moderately hazy, most likely chill haze from being a few degrees cooler. Lacing is sticky, but the head doesn’t last long.

Smell – Very clean, again serving temperature may be part of it (although even as it warms it is significantly less hoppy). Slight toasty malt, moderate American hops.

Taste – Crisp, moderate hop bitterness. Not a very complex hop character, tastes muted. Some sweet-corniness, think Corn Flakes. Well balanced.

Mouthfeel – Slightly higher carbonation than on draft, but it could still be pricklier. Hopefully the fully functioning filler and a few other tweaks will get a firmer carbonation when I’m ready to send the West Coast IPA and Southern Hemisphere DIPA.

Drinkability & Notes – Refreshing easy to drink. This bottle went into the fridge right after filling, so it didn’t experience the four day trip across the country like the bottles Jacob received. More cream-ale-like than it is on draft, but that isn’t a positive in terms of how it tastes.

My favorite beers are...? and Dry Hopped Sour Tasting

Hop Forward - 35%
Sour/Funk Forward - 26%
Malt Forward - 23%
Yeast Forward - 12%
Fruit Forward - 0% (6)
Spice/Herb Forward - 0% (5)

One of the aspects of beer that really sets it apart from wine is the range of ingredients. I am friends with homebrewers who can’t stand hoppy beers, while others won’t brew anything that isn’t hop forward. While some brewers are out foraging for local herbs to flavor their brews, smoking their own malt, or buying fruit at a farmer's market, others are culturing yeast and bacteria to recreate the funky/tart flavors of wild Belgian microflora. This range of ingredients has resulted in a huge number of styles and examples that highlight the various flavors.

I have a pretty open palate. I’m the sort of person who usually orders something new every time I eat at a restaurant, even if what I had the last time was delicious. When it comes to beer, whether I'm brewing or buying, I’m usually looking to experience a new flavor I haven’t tasted before. However, there are certain categories that I often find myself coming back to.

My lack of excitement for malt and yeast forward beers stems from the relatively finite flavors of the ingredients that are commercially available. There is a much higher degree of variation between hop varieties than there is for barley (not to mention the new hops coming out all of the time). While processing has a bigger impact on malt character than it does on hops, it has been a long time since I used a new malt that really made an impression on me. Similarly I enjoy yeast-forward beers, but in many of my favorite beers the yeast provides subtle complementary flavors rather than playing lead.

All that said, I’m torn on what to pick from the list above, hoppy or sour/funky. I’ve had beers from both categories that at the time I’d have sworn couldn’t be topped. I also have certain flavors in both categories that I can’t stand. There isn’t anything worse than oxidized American hops, unless I’m drinking a sour beer with above-threshold acetic acid (vinegar)!

While there are beers I love that feature malt, yeast, spices, or fruit, I don’t like these types of beers consistently or as much as either hoppy or sour beers. The question/options I posed were unfair, as many of my favorite beers highlight a combination of flavors from a variety of ingredients. Sour fruit beers, hoppy beers fermented with characterful yeast, malty beers with subtle spicing etc.

One combination I’ve fallen hard for in the combination of bright hop aromatics layer onto a sour beer. I’ve done it a couple times in the past, but this blended sour might be the most fun. I had a half keg of our first pull from the wine barrel solera, that Nathan and I dry hopped with Hallertau. The bottles were great, but the kegged portion never tasted right. It was sharply acidic and not especially pleasant. As a result, I cut it with a few gallons of the 100% Lactobacillus fermented Berliner weisse, which never soured adequately. Then I keg hopped the blend with a couple ounces of Comet (which HopsDirect describes as “[U]nique, wild, American aroma, and wonderful zesty grapefruit, lemon, and orange notes”). I bought a pound of the 2011 harvest on a whim, and hadn't found an excuse to use them.

Dinosaur Killer (Dry Hopped Sour Blend)

Appearance – Rather generic pale ale appearance, a bit darker than yellow. Some haze, although that may just be from the dry hopping. The head is surprisingly good, most likely thanks to the young Berliner weisee.

Smell – Strong candied citrus aroma, with some pine as well. A vibrant nose with just a hint at the acidity that lays behind the hops. As it warms I get hints of the wine barrel that housed the older portion for 20 months.

Taste – Bright tartness, but not strongly sour however thanks the dilution of the wood aged beer. The hops are bright and crisp, featuring grapefruit zest, and just a hint of Citra-like dankness. The tartness comes across very much like citric acid, sharp but short, not lingering long. Not a super complex beer, but it is still very enjoyable.

Mouthfeel – Moderately thin mouthfeel, bordering on watery. The carbonation is medium-low, it is hard to push a highly carbonated beer from the short/wide tubing I have on the cobra tap without excessive foaming

Drinkability & Notes – Wonderfully refreshing, I only wish I had this on tap when the weather was hotter. The Comet hops are a fun addition, I’ll have to figure out something more traditional to do with the few ounces I have left in the freezer.

Hoppy American Wheat #3 Tasting

One of the really fun aspects of brewing and re-brewing the recipes we are developing for Modern Times is seeing how subtle tweaks can so profoundly change the character of a beer. For example Jacob and I agreed on three subtle recipe changes to the mash/grain of the Hoppy American Wheat that transformed the overly-thin second batch into this nearly-there third batch. For this iteration we increased the CaraVienna (5.6% to 7.1%), the original gravity (1.040 to 1.048), and the mash temperature (153F to 155F).

I'm ready to call this recipe just about where I was hoping, but I'm still waiting for feedback from Jacob on the counter-pressure bottles I shipped west on Monday.

Citra Amarillo Wheat #3

Appearance – Slightly hazy, gilded yellow. The head is terrific, rocky/sticky white. Retention is alright, but the head is down to a thin covering by the time I’m half-way through my glass.

Smell – Beautiful fresh citrus leads, orange especially. The Citra hops dominate, but the Amarillo keeps it in check, preventing it from being overbearing. There is a bit of something tropical in there, mango maybe. The hops don’t let much of the malt come through other than a faint cracker, not that it needs more. Clean otherwise.

Taste – Starts out citrusy like the nose, gets doughy in the middle, and finishes a bit more resiny. Bitterness lingers in the finish, but not in a very aggressive way. Despite the changes made to the malt-side, it is in no way sweet. Nicely balanced.

Mouthfeel – The body is really wonderfully substantial, without being sticky/chewy. Medium carbonation is about right for me, but it could probably be boosted to make it a bit lighter. Hoping the bottles areabout right.

Drinkability & Notes – A real beer-nerd session beer. Layers of hop flavor in a package you could drink a few of. Not much I would change on this one!

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.