White Star IPA first taste

If you are in the know about making IPA's you'll know that it is an unforgivable and heinous crime to be sampling them when they are barely a month in the bottle. I'm afraid to say that i am guilty of this on a regular basis. Sometimes it can be a bit of a non event and regretted. Other times its a happy surprise. In this instance it was happy time!
We currently have a half decent ongoing Scottish Summer. When I bottled this beer i decided to take advantage of this rare occurence and try a hot maturation with 2 dozen of the 50+ bottles of White Star IPA. To do this i simply put a crate of White Star in the loft space which heats up and holds temperature nicely. It made sense that the bottle i try should be from the experiment as it will be furthest along in development.

Tasting notes on White Star IPA

Chilled bottle for one hour to control potential carbonation explosion(unfounded fear).
Poured well with nice light colour slightly copper in tone.
Let rest for 10 minutes
Large amounts of citrus hops on the nose.
Smooth surprisingly sweet fruitiness on first sip which then changes to almost but not quite a hint of pineapple at the end of the sip.
At the end of the sip its big mangoes in the nose.
There seems to be a hint of whisky knocking about in here somewhere. I can't quite pin it down and admittedly it could be a placebo effect.
Carbonation is quite high as you can see from the head. Head holds all the way to bottom of glass.
Body and malt support the hops nicely.
Bitter but nowhere near as bitter as my Hop Bomb IPA(November 2009,7.3%ABV & Estimated 200IBU) which Catherine and I tried side by side with the White Star for comparison. Smooth is the word that keeps coming to mind(possibly from the FWH).
It doesn't drink anything like a 6+% beer.

 Beer as you may know goes through a number of stages of development in the bottle. With this in mind my expectations for this beer were not high at this early stage. In this case i have been pleasantly surprised and i will be repeating the crime of sampling it again at the end of the month at a BBQ to see if it has changed again with another 2 weeks in the loft.

I'll leave you with pictures of the hops & Others that went into this beer. As you can see IPA's are not simple beers but they are massively rewarding. :)

 Bobek&Styrian goldings(5.6oz)First Wort Hops

Amarillo and Simco(2.1 oz)First Wort Hops

First Wort Hops with First runnings from grain

Aroma hops Simco & Amarillo(6.6 oz)

Final aroma Hops Amarillo, Chinook, Simco & Willamette with a little orange peel

A few Oz's of oak Whisky barrel shavings for flavour during primary fermentation

Amarillo & Simco dry hops during primary fermentation

http://bennachiebrewery.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

Click on link above to go the recipe