F' Everything, We're Doing Five Blades
I’m giving a presentation on Sour Mashing and Berliner Weisse tonight at the Society of Barley Engineers meeting. For posterity’s sake, here are the slides:
[embed width=800 height=550]https://speakerdeck.com/dbspringer/barley-engineers-sour-mashing[/embed]Direct Link
Direct Download – PDF
Now for something completely different: I’m at the Beer Bloggers Conference in San Diego this weekend and about to begin their infamous Live Beer Blogging session. The gist of it is a bit like speed dating, every five minutes a different brewery will come to the table and present one of their beers. In those five minutes the brewery will describe the beer, answer questions, and then us bloggers will write a short post/tweet/video about it. Apologies for the loose format, things are coming hot and heavy!
Smooth easy drinker with a great nose. Notes of pine and a bit tropical character, very little malt
As foretold by the prophets, August 7th is IPA Day. And hey, did you know that folks are bonkers about IPAs!? I like to joke that here in San Diego it’s impossible to throw a stone without hitting a brewery that’s pumping out two or three world-class IPAs (indeed, I can almost literally hit Stone with a stone from my house). While my tastes of late have shifted away from hop explosions, I do still enjoy a good IPA now and again; rest assured I’ll be kicking back tonight with a nice lupulin-laced liquor.
To celebrate IPA Day, here are some tips I’ve gathered about making a world-class West-Coast IPA.
Welcome to the first entry in what I hope to be a continuing series of empirical investigations into a variety of yeast strains commonly used in homebrewing, which I call The Yeast Bank. The goal of this series is to help my fellow homebrewers with a visual guide of how various strains look and act during their different stages. These aren’t reviews of the strains, per se, just an examination of their characteristics.
For no reason other than this yeast happens to be what I had on-hand when I thought of the idea, the first entry into this series is White Lab’s WLP540 Abbey IV Ale Yeast. This is actually my first foray into Belgian style beers (as long as you you don’t count Saison), so I’m curious to see how this yeast behaves as compared to the English and German strains that I typically use. I picked up the vial from Home Brew Mart and was pleased to discover it was only a few weeks old, so I’m confident that this vial of WLP540 will be representative of the strain. Belgian yeasts are renowned for their unique esters and phenols, but is their fermentation character equally unique as well? Let’s find out!
Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.
I often wonder if San Diego breweries are slaves to their reputation: it’s hard to find a beer around here that isn’t big, bold, and exploding with hops; subtlety is certainly not a strong point. I get it, folks are breaking free of the grip of the macro lagers, discovering great beer, and trying to get as far away from the “old stuff” that they can get. Some of us, however, aren’t looking for every beer to melt our faces off; some of us just want a smooth, flavorful beer that won’t leave us on the floor after a pint or two. In my humble opinion, the session beer is where it’s at!
While I think the term “Session IPA” is a little goofy (lump that in with “Black India Pale Ale”), I love the idea: super flavorful beers packed with character that are easy drinking and low in alcohol. I’ve been hankering for English style ales lately, partly because many of them are supremely sessionable, and partly because I love the character that English malt and yeast bring (which is to say, more than a platform to showcase hops). I have a problem though: I’m sitting on a few pounds of bold American hops from the 2013 season that I’m desperately trying to get through before the 2014 hops are released; if I want to get through ’em I can’t got out and buy new English hops.
My solution to this problem is a tribute to my home town and the big, bold beers that are made there: the San Diego Bitter. The base of it is a slight tweak of my tried and true Special Bitter recipe, which showcases English malt and yeast, but is blasted liberally with Citra and Calypso hops. Why Citra and Calypso? All the cool kids love the Citra and the apple/pear from the Calypso matches nicely with the esters from the English yeast (which I typically think of as pear-y).
Is it a session IPA? An imperial bitter? All I know is that it’s easy drinking!
RSS - Posts