Hop Synergy 4.4 tasting & amplification!

Hi all,

Happy New year to you all and all the best to your families. I have just returned from Azerbaijhan, a mere 5 days ago. One of my priorities on return was the bottling of Hop Synergy 4.0. Hop Synergy 4.0 became 4.4 as the FG of the beer bottomed out at a lowish 1.006 giving me a final abv of 4.4%.

I had a couple of samples while bottling and it was tasting good

So good that i had to try a prescreening after 2 days carb'ing!

Its a bit cloudy, a bit new but it does have stonking amounts of toffee(thanks to kettle first running caramelisation) and tropical fruit in large amounts matched by a big bitterness. I felt as if i knew this beer and had been here before (Realised at the second sample bottle that it reminds me of Deuchars IPA). Quite palatable and it will only improve with time. :)

 

Do any of you guys know Randy Moshers Radical Brewing book? In the fruit beer section he says that its pretty pointless to try a peach beer as it gives very little to the beer. I like a challenge and i was growing bored with bottling 4.4 so i decided to boost up a 5 gallon glass with peaches and plain old nasty sucrose thus negating the bottling process for a while!

 

I liquidised eight tins of peaches and a kilo of sugar and had a really cool colour result.

Which only improved once i started the beer transfer.

Final cool layer shots

 

 

 

I have kept the Burton & US-05 yeast kicking out at 22 degrees(rising on day three to 24) and they have been very active indeed. Blow off tube required and much frothing. I look forward to trying this beer as it may only be a fast and rough conversion of a 4.4% quaffable beer to a 7.3% headbanger BUT it has a damn good chance of being gorgeous what with its heavy hop base, caramelised toffee background and stressed yeast side flavours, oh aye and the peaches. See you Randy Mosher? Cheers :)

Update

After three days of frantic fermentation i came down this morning (26th Jan) to a settling beer with most of the peaches on the bottom of the FV and a very restrained finishing gas release. I transfered the beer off of the peach remains into a 4 gallon container and binned the remains. Fruity and cidery(from the table sugar i think) with a hint of sulphur is the smell at the moment. I added 3/4 ounce or so of Columbus Dry hops in a weighted bag and it will stay there for the two weeks i am in Turkey doing diy at the apartment. I really love taking a portion of the main batch and messing with it, i learn and diversify nicely. Cheers :)