Rebate Belgian IPA follow up

Hi all,

Well i've had a bit of a result with this IPA! I have been trying to lower the ABV of my beers to a more suitable level (44 you see). The hoped for goal has been to keep the flavour and mouthfeel high as per a good strong IPA while achieving 'the balance' and not getting that watery background thing.

Here's the visual result.

Nice colour eh? I put that down to the Vienna malt. The mouthfeel side of this beer is a smooth lightly sweet malt profile balanced out by an acceptable bitterness. On the nose i am experiencing a nice typical mainstream Belgian yeast profile, not disimilar to a well cellared draft Stella Artois, tres smooth and Wheat present.The hops are there in a citrus style but not all the way up to Limes in the initial tasting with tropical notes intermingling well with the juicy malt at the end. Basically this is bang on quaffable, flavoursome beer which doesn't nail too hard! I LOVE the Chimay/Duvel split. It must be about gen 10 or 12 now and keeps getting better (or i am understanding it more).

Anyway, that's enough bragging, any brewers out there could do a lot worse than to give my recipe a whirl, no downside to this one! That's not the whole story though...

 I do like to experiment with my beers and as you may remember i brought a couple of kilos of bitter cherries back from Turkey in July with Wild ideas?

WELL Jings, they have worked their magic and i am now the proud owner of 40+ bottles of pink beer!

 

Allowing for the extra few points consumed by the Brett C and a touch of fermentables from the cherries i have named this as Wild Cherry Belgian IPA at 4.8%. I carb'd it slightly higher than its standard sibling and look forward to trying it on my return to Scotland in Oct. :)

Lower ABV massively flavoursome beers seem to be the way forward, who'd a thunk it?

 

 Edit 27/10/2013

Bugger! This is fantastic beer, a touch tart from the Brett but easily balanced by the residual malt sweetness. A proper moreish Belgian delight. Oh aye, and it's Pink! :)

Rebate Belgian IPA

Hi all,

 

Its been a while since i posted anything new on the blog. Been working in China and busy at home. On the China front i do enjoy Tsing Tao beer, first time i have seen a commercial beer with no ABV displayed! At home i did manage to get a brew on, a wee 20 gallon batch of a 50 IBU 4.5% Belgian style IPA. Here's the recipe.

 

Rebate IPA

8 kgs maris Otter

4 kgs Wheat malt

2 kgs Vienna malt

1 kg Munich malt

2 kgs sucrose

10.5 oz Cascade FWH

17.5 oz homegrown First Gold FWH

2 oz Nelsons 90 min steep

3.5 oz Amarillo 90 min steep

3.5 oz Summit 90 min steep

3.5 oz Simcoe 90 min steep

Duvel & Chimay split yeasts

 

Nothing fancy in the brew day. It all went well and i decided to risk it all by pitching at 30 degrees and maintaining in the mid 20's through the fermentation cycle. I did something similar in my early days of brewing and ended up with insanely phenol laden beer that was of no use to man nor beast.

 

In this case i have higher expectations, certainly the beer was smelling very nice indeed during bottling, sadly no photos from the brewday but TBH there was nothing you haven't seen before. Instead here are a few photos from China!

After i set the brew to ferment i went galivanting to Turkey and while in MidGala i picked up 2 kilos of small bitter cherries (its a Brussels thing). I have had previous success with cherry wild beers and in this case i drew off 5 imp gallons of the unfermented IPA and ran it on a split of Saison,Brett C, Duvel & Chimay. This is a truly unique split and puts out a beautifully scented beer. On my return with the cherries i destalked and set them to work in the fermented beer

No gravity readings, it is what it is. How Belgian is that? :).

Fermented with cherries freshly introduced

 

 

Next day, can you see a slight red tinge?

 

  Today the third day, can you see it now?

 

I am off to China again in a couple of days. If i can avoid the Tsing Tao i may go and find a spice market and see what's good for us! The wild cherry version of the IPA will be ready in a couple of months i am in anticipation! :)

 

Bonus shot of my Cascade hop which is doing rather well for itself.

 

Bramling Cross

Cafetiere Beer II

Hi all,

 

Thanks for all the views you guys have been making, a couple of hundred over the past day or so! Did you all try your own version of Cafetiere Beer? I hope so! One of the viewers mentioned that i had made a good decarbonation device. This hadn't really registered as an issue as we have a culture in the UK of Non carbonated ales. The rest of the world likes a bit of gas in their brew.

 

In the search for further meaning and use of Cafetiere beer i tried the following.

 

The cafeteire has sat in this state in a fridge for approx 10 hours. Its flat Hop Synergy 44 beer with honking amounts of surpressed cold hop goodness.

 

 A quick press of the plunger and a bit of a head has popped up, not long to last i would think.

 

I decanted into a 2 pint jug and as you can see the head collapsed.

 

 

I then added a chilled Hop Synergy 44 on a bit of a waterfall pour.I had a nice jug of carbonated mega hopped IPA which was dutifully poured.

 

 

The head remained for 4/5ths of the wheat beer glass and i haven't been belching so its about where i like my carbonation to be. Aesthetically pleasing while not being a lager!

 

 

The hops used this time are the same from last night, i don't mean the same Genus i mean the same hops flowers! A much mellower hop aroma this time, very sweet, blackcurrant, and a touch of green. Again, its a simple way to get to that Hop Head well loved dry hopped flavour/texture into a beer. I'd be happy for anyone to try these bad boys, no risk of embarassment, these rock! :) Thanks for reading.

Cafetiere Beer

Hi all,

Newly returned from Azerbaijan, really starting to get into that place. Nice people, really nice people. On my return to home a brand new brewing book was waiting for me  Absolutely fantastic book and i can see it will have to be multiple read throughs before i absorb 1/4 of the ideas in there.
 

Here's a link to the book if you haven't read it yet. 

Stan Hieronymous- For The Love Of Hops

 

While reading the first couple of chapters an idea leapt fully formed and vigorous into my upper mind. 'Dry Hopping in a Cafetiere, why not?'. Must mean my subconcious is also a Hop Head! Once the sun went down the experiment commenced! :)

 As you can see, full experiment mode, lots of glass, scales, bag of Hops.

10 grmms of Columbus high aa hops & a one pint cafitere, a match made in nirvana i think?

A couple of bottles of nice Hop Synergy 44, one to clear the palate and fix a base line, the other for the cafetiere.

Love this photo, that's a proper beer!

Deployed cafetiere strainer, First infusion was for 10 minutes only but immediately i could taste the difference. Piney, sweet, viscous hop oil & pepper across the tongue. Really nice, a bigger bolder beer for seconds work!

 So nice i fact that i tried a second one with another few grammes (getting casual now) of Columbus on top of the initial 10 grmms. Applied another bottle of beer and let it soak for 1/2 an hour in the fridge before deploying strainer. WOW, hop bursts going off in my head. Absolutely full on resinous, piney, sweet layer of hop aroma/taste blazing across the malt layer. Beautiful beautiful beer!

Any of you out there who see themselves as a bit of a hop-head have GOT to try this. I'm claiming this one for Scotland, Universities, tyres, tv, tarmacadam, men wearing skirts, we invented the lot. Now Cafetiere Beer and you saw it here first, Scotland rocks, spread the news! Any feedback on how you get on with your own experiments much appreciated, i can only begin to imagine the possible combinations! Cheers :)