Irritation and IPA
I am officially irritated with the world. I can't keep up with all the shit I have to do. Everytime I try to clean the house something breaks or goes wrong that was OK before I started. Clean the kitchen--break a glass. Do a load of laundry--flood the basement. That kinda shit.
On the plus side, how good is my new IPA? It's only been in bottles for a week and a half. I'm going to have to violently restrain myself to let it age a little more. Fortunately, I've got nine six-packs of it. Huge, sweeping Chinook aroma in the nose--the dry hopping is very potent and probably subdues some other interesting elements. But it's not really one dimensional because Chinook is such a great dry hop, with those huge, resiny, flowery, herbal components. It's hard to perceive the malt much--maybe the Maris Otter wasn't needed. We'll see how it develops. The first wort hopping has produced a hugely resiny, rich-tasting palate. And considering all those hops, it's really a pretty smooth beer. The finish is lingering and, you guessed it, hoppy. I could easily imagine designing a subtler IPA but, for the moment, this is just the kind of thing I wanted. A barely balanced, screamingly American, robust IPA. Assuming ProMash's hop calculations are fully trustworthy this was to have 80 IBU's on a 1064 frame. We'll fool around with maltier British ones, or subtler, more delicate American versions, or double IPA's later. For now, fuck it. Yes. Fuck it, dude. I'll do a parallel tasting with a couple of commercial examples in a week or two, see how it holds up, and sketch out a few potential alterations. I figure I'll always brew at least two batches of IPA a year, it being one of my favorite conventional styles, when push comes to shove. This is a nice one to have in the tool-kit.
On the plus side, how good is my new IPA? It's only been in bottles for a week and a half. I'm going to have to violently restrain myself to let it age a little more. Fortunately, I've got nine six-packs of it. Huge, sweeping Chinook aroma in the nose--the dry hopping is very potent and probably subdues some other interesting elements. But it's not really one dimensional because Chinook is such a great dry hop, with those huge, resiny, flowery, herbal components. It's hard to perceive the malt much--maybe the Maris Otter wasn't needed. We'll see how it develops. The first wort hopping has produced a hugely resiny, rich-tasting palate. And considering all those hops, it's really a pretty smooth beer. The finish is lingering and, you guessed it, hoppy. I could easily imagine designing a subtler IPA but, for the moment, this is just the kind of thing I wanted. A barely balanced, screamingly American, robust IPA. Assuming ProMash's hop calculations are fully trustworthy this was to have 80 IBU's on a 1064 frame. We'll fool around with maltier British ones, or subtler, more delicate American versions, or double IPA's later. For now, fuck it. Yes. Fuck it, dude. I'll do a parallel tasting with a couple of commercial examples in a week or two, see how it holds up, and sketch out a few potential alterations. I figure I'll always brew at least two batches of IPA a year, it being one of my favorite conventional styles, when push comes to shove. This is a nice one to have in the tool-kit.
posted by Jason | 12:29 AM
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