Tasting: IPA

Big up's to Eric for getting me the custom pint glasses in the picture above. They say "Rowdy Reptile Brewing, Since 2009" which is very cool. I received 2 glasses and a big glass pitcher as groomsman gifts for his wedding. Thanks to Eric and congratulations.

As for the tasting today, I am writing about our second attempt at an IPA.

Brewed: 2/21/2011
OG: 1066
FG: 1011
Alcohol: 7.2%
Hops: Magnum, Centennial, Columbus, Amarillo, Chinook

Aroma: Bright fruity and floral hop aroma, very nice; slight alcohol; some breadiness from the malts.

Appearance: slightly lighter than in the picture, but the color is somewhat "dull" as it's not very bright. The brew is decently clear once it warms up, but I would like it to be clearer. The cloudiness may be due to the dry hopping, and we'll try cold crashing longer next time.

Flavor: Very citrusy but not as bitter as the estimated 85 IBUs would suggest. The bittering hop we used (magnum) is known for being a very "clean" bittering hop, and as a result may not give that "hop bite" that we like. The brew does hide its 7.2% alcohol well as it has a good drinkability, but it does not have the crispness I want.

Overall: This is just a 'meh' beer for me. I dont know if it is because of the magnum hops we used, or our palates being used to super bitter beers, but this one almost tastes like a Pale Ale instead of an IPA. Unfortunately Elise has not been able to try this one so I cant get her input, but after this somewhat disappointing batch, I think I am going to take a break from brewing origonal IPA recipes and instead brew other people's tried and true recipes. We used a lot of hops in this beer (7 oz) and it should be much hoppier/bitter than it is, but again, I dont know if our palates are just ruined. Our neighbor seems to like it though, so that is a plus.


We probably wont brew an IPA for a while as the upcoming list is Dubbel, Schwarzbier, and Doppelbock. The schwarz and doppelbock are lagers and the doppelbock will need to be lagered in our fridge for 6-12 weeks before we bottle it so we are planning on brewing this about a month before Cooper arrives so that it can lager while we are busy adjusting to our new house guest. We might try to squeeze another brew in there somewhere, but if we do it is likely to be either our Black 'N Mild or the porter. We'll see.

First Snow

I am off from school for about 2 weeks until I start rotations and with nothing to do anymore, I decided today would be a good day to brew our First Snow Winter Ale. This one will be aged and will not be opened until the first time it snows in Denver; usually sometime around Halloween-ish. Another spin we are going to put on it will be oaking some of it, probably ~2 gallons, in honor of Cooper. Back in the day, people were named for their profession. Smith's were generally blacksmiths for example, and Cooper's were (and still are) barrel makers. In honor of his cool name, and because we dont have a barrel, we are going to add oak chips to this beer. The beer will sit on the oak for about 2 weeks before bottling and will add another dimension to the beer. The beer is going to be pretty strong as indicated by the OG (pic above) of ~1.099. If everything goes well it should end up at ~9.7% alcohol. Different from last year will be the yeast we use. Last year we used a British strain of yeast that is pretty fruity, but does not attenuate as well. It did a good job last year and the beer was very tasty, but I thought this year we would change it up a littel bit. We are using a California Lager yeast (think Anchor Steam) that ferments very clean like lager yeasts, but can be used at warmer temperatures (58-60 instead of 45). By doing this we will be making something closer to a Baltic Porter which is very similar to a Russian Imperial Stout but made with lager yeast. They were made origonally made in Northern Europe and were strong beers made to last trips through the Baltic Sea. Hopefully ours turns out well



This was the first batch of beer in a while that has had a significant amount of specialty grains; the Tripel was only base malt for example. As a result, the mash smelled very very good this morning. I was trying to mash in before Elise left so she could smell it on her way out, but the water wasnt warm enough yet, so I missed her by about 20 minutes. This batch also had 1.63 lbs of oats in it which should impart an nice creamy mouthfeel; some of the other specialty grains included chocolate, vienna, caramel, buiscit, special roast, and brown malt.




The beer had a nice deep brown color as can be seen here in the first runnings from the mash tun.

This is a picture of what they dogs typically are doing during the brew day. Riley is looking into the grass for rabbits and Bailey is usually just lounging around. You can click on the photo to get a better look at Bailey side-eying me

The dogs usually get a small amount of the spent grain to munch on while we are brewing as well.

Recently, we found a recipe online for dog treats made from the spent grain. Its 4 cups of grain, 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, and 1 cup of peanut butter. They are kind of like drop cookies and will spend a few hours in the oven on a low temp to dry out. We made some from the grain of the Tripel and the dogs seemed to like them, but I think they will like these ones more as the specialty grains will provide more sweetness to the cookies.

Single Hop Pale Ale: Centennial v Cascade

Today while I was off from school for a day I brewed 5 gallons of pale ale in which it was split into two batches. The first one was made with only centennial hops and the second was with only cascade hops. To try to make everything else the same except for the hops, I only did one mash. After all of the worst was drained, I split it 50/50 and made each of the beers 1 at a time.

I usually dont do a mash out which is raising the grain temperature to above 170 with your sparge water which denatures all of the mash enzymes to "lock in" your fermentability. I did this today because the wort for the cascade brew sat for ~90 minutes while I was brewing the centennial batch. Hopeully, during this time, there wasnt any more conversion because it would make the beer more fermentable and different from the centennial version.

Each beer got ~30 IBUs of bittering at 60 minutes, then 0.33oz at 10 minutes and 0.66oz at 5 min; each will also get 0.5 oz worth of dry hops. Each beer should be about the same IBUs (~50) which will allow us to compare the flavor/aroma of the hops to eachother without having differing levels of bitterness. Whenever we get around to the next series of Single Hops we are probably going to do Columbus and Chinook followed then by Simcoe and Amarillo.