Contrary to what the Starks of Winterfell might say, summer is coming. At least, that was the theory when I decided to brew a moderate strength pale ale in the middle of February.
This is the first time in a few years that I’ve brewed a pale ale. The hoppy beers I brew usually fall into the stronger IPA or Double IPA category. Something lower in alcohol seemed like a good way to test out a new (to me) variety of hops, Citra. Beernews has this to say about the profile of Citra:
“This hop has a crazy strange flavor profile, leaning toward pineapple, mango, papaya and other tropical fruit flavors and aromas.”
Sounds good, right?
So I came up with a recipe, the guys over at the Ratebeer homebrew forum helped me tweak it, and it came to be.
Malt:
11 lbs Optic
0.5 lbs Vienna
Hops:
0.66 oz Magnum (60)
3.0 oz Citra (5)
2 oz Citra (0)
1.5 oz Citra (Dry, 10 days)
Brew Notes:
I really tightened down the gap on the mill for this one. I’m interested to see what kind of efficiency I get with it. Mash came in a bit high, around 158 but I let it go. Pulled 6.7 gallons pre-boil @ 1.045. Promash says I should have had 6.64 @ 1.045. Pretty much spot on there. Boiled 60 minutes, Ended up pulling 5 gallons into fermenter, leaving behind ~0.25 gallons in the hops. I had calculated .35 gallons left behind – again, close enough. Starting gravity was 1.056. It had calculated to 1.054 – again, close enough. Seems like what promash is calculating is basically spot on with what I got this batch. Pitched 1 packet US-05, which Mr Malty says is enough.
Fermented for 1 week at 67 degrees, transferred to secondary and added the dry hop charge. Let the dry hops do their thing for 10 days.
Bottled with 4.1 oz of corn sugar for 2.5 atmospheres.
The problem
Dry hops need to be put in a bag and weighted down for greatest effectiveness. Lots of people recommend using stainless steel hardware as a weight. Its a great idea, except when you’re sold hardware that claims to be stainless and isn’t. When I removed the hardware from the hop bag I saw that there was a bit of rust. A sample confirmed that the beer tasted like metal. Crap. God knows what was actually in that hardware. So this entire batch is going down the drain. There isn’t any need to potentially poison anyone. Still….
The (very small) tasting
A few ounces probably won’t kill me, so I decided to take a few sips to critique what lies behind the metallic twang.
It pours super cloudy. Like, still in the process of fermenting cloudy. I don’t know if the metal somehow kept yeast & proteins in suspension or what. If this was a Belgian wit it would be spot on. There is a very nice white head that fades from an initial big billowing cap to a thin but persistent layer of foam.
If I had to pick a single fruit to describe the aroma it would be mango – but there is more going on. Metal (ARRRRGH!) mingles with some sweeter pineapple juice and sweet malt notes. It has some citrus pith, but a lot less than a big pale like Lagunitas New Dogtown Pale.
Flavor wise this is a mess. The metal really comes through. The metal should never really come through. It has an interesting grainy malt character along with mango, but mostly it comes off as tannic. Its a real shame, as I imagine this would have been really tasty had things not gone awry.
There is enough goodness going on that I’ll probably brew this (or something very similar) again in the near future. I’m essentially out of Citra hops right now, and don’t plan on ordering more until I use up the pounds and pounds of other varieties in the freezer, but this should serve as a good base recipe for future single-hop brews.
Assuming of course I leave out the metal.
