Tired Hands HopHands Clone - Tasting Notes

This is a low alcohol, very hoppy pale ale, which I brewed back in January and which I've been enjoying on tap for the last month.  This has become one of my favorite styles of beer to brew since I started kegging.  It is a very drinkable beer session kind of beer that has hop flavor comparable to the famous commercial examples of IPA when it turns our right.  This is an expensive style of beer to buy (frequently see $4+ pint cans for these.  Buying hops in bulk makes the price for homebrewing pretty good

Tired Hands is a very good local brewery here in SEPA that makes some very good hoppy beers.  I got this recipe from another PA Homebrewer's former blog "Ales of the Riverwards".  It has been a while since I had the original beer so I can't really comment on how close this is as a clone to Hop Hands

This was kind of an interesting recipe in that it uses a large amount of flaked oats (2 lbs).  The original beer is very hazy due to this.  My beer started out pretty hazy as well but has dropped fairly clear over time in the keg.  These beers are so hevilly hopped that the malt usually doesn't come through much - this one has a bit more malt character than others I've made (which may be the oats or the fact that it finished at 1.020)

I've been drinking quite a bit of this beer and am starting to expect it to kick soon.  Figure I better do an official tasting while it lasts

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Sweet Citrus (Grapefruit and Orange) along with a bit of piney aroma.  I may be picking up a bit of fruity ester in there as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 3 finger head.  This fades down to a thin layer over 5 min or so.  Leaves lacing on the glass.  Straw colored and a little bit of a haze to it.
• Flavor:
• Bold hop flavors up front - piney, herbal, and citrusy.  These linger into the finish.  The finish fairly assertive bitterness that lingers.  There is a bit of malt character that cuts through in the finish as well - the balance is strongly towards the bitter and other hop flavors.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium-light bodied and pretty smooth.  A very easy drinking beer - bitterness lingers and makes you want to take another sip
• Overall:
• This a very nice hoppy beer.  It has bold hop aroma and flavor and a nice level of complexity.  The level of bitterness is very nice - makes for a really drinkable beer.  It has a nice level of body and substance to it that you would not guess that it's a 4% ABV beer (kind of like the way an English Bitter doesn't drink like a low alcohol beer).  I'm drinking this after quite some time in the keg (a bit over a month) but the hops haven't really fallen off in any significant way which I'm very happy about.  This is a beer that I will make again for sure.

English Barleywine (2021 Version) - Tasting Notes

This is my eighth version of the English Barleywine style of beer.  These are beers that are strong and often very sweet which allows them to age well.  They are often hopped aggressively (as was this version with low AA English hops) which makes them quite bitter young.  Over time they hops fade and complex malt, fruity yeast derived flavors, and aged flavors become more prominent.  I've brewed this beer with the intention of drinking half of this relatively fresh this year and to drink the remaining half over the next 25 years or so.

I choose a different recipe every year to keep things interesting.  This year I chose a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog: 1954 Tennant’s Gold Label.  This was an interesting recipe in that it used Flaked Corn at a high percentage (20% which was 5 lbs worth in my brewing) as well as Invert Syrup (which is a common ingredient in English Beers but not typically in Barleywine in my experience).

I hit my OG numbers and used the recommended yeast for this beer (S04, the Whitbread Strain) but ended up finishing quite a bit higher in FG than the recipe called for 1.040 vs 1.024.  I let the beer sit in primary for 2 months, secondary for 4 months with a couple ounces of Brandy Soaked Oak, bottled almost 3 months ago now and am very much enjoying the beer.

Time to do a first set of tasting notes now.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Boozy with a bit of overripe fruit character.  I get some herbal hop character and maybe some caramel and bready malt - maybe some graham cracker in there.  Has some oak character that cuts through as well
• Appearance:
• Pours with a thin layer of foam that quickly dissipates down to nothing.  Dark golden brown in color and fairly clear
• Flavor:
• Sweet up front with caramel and lightly toasted bread flavors.  After that I get a hit of alcohol, some fruitiness (indistinct in character) and then a bit of grassy hop flavor.  The finish has a fairly assertive bitterness which almost balances out the sweet malt - bitterness and sweetness linger together for some time after the swallow.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium-full bodied and pretty sticky on the palate.  Has a bit of astringency to it.
• Overall:
• Bold flavors and a lot of different elements to pick out with this beer.  Quite sweet and pretty boozy.  I like the strong hop presence of this beer and the bitterness - the balance is somewhat to sweetness but the hops provide enough of a counter to make this a beer you feel like drinking rather than sipping.

Historical English Porter - Tasting Notes

Last month I brewed up an English Porter recipe I found on the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog: 1881 Whitbread Porter.  I've made quite a few beers based on historical recipes like this one and have had very good results with all of them.  This was a very simple recipe but, once again, has produced a very nice beer.

It has a simple malt bill with 11 lb base malt, 1 lb brown, and 3/4 lb black malt.  It was bittered with a large amount (6 oz) of low AA hops which was somewhat common based on the Historical Recipes.  This produces a nice bitterness but one that is more mellow than one you'd likely get from a small amount of the wrong kind of high AA hops.  It has produced a nicely balanced beer.  It was supposed to ferment down to 1.010 but I ended up at 1.012 with a Yorkshire Yeast (Wyeast 1469 when the recipe called for Whitbread).

Anyway, I've had the beer on tap for about a month now and drinking it a few time a week.  Thinking I better do some tasking notes now while it lasta.  Here we go:

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Roast, coffee and chocolate aroma
• Appearance:
• Dark reddish brown.  Pours with a 1-2 finger head that lingers a couple minutes.  Leaves lacing on the glass.
• Flavor:
• Chocolate and roast flavor up front.  Finishes with a moderate bitterness which is balanced by a slightly sweet malty flavor - these linger quite some time after the swallow.  Pretty well balanced between bitterness and malt character.  It has a bit of a fruity character to it as well on the finish
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium-light bodied and pretty dry.  Maybe a slight bit of astringency on the palate
• Overall:
• A richly flavored dark beer.  Has a good amount of complexity and is fairly easy drinking.  At 5.6% I can have a couple of these and not feel too much of an effect.  I really enjoy having a dark, roasty, beer on tap.

Sour Blonde Blend (2019) - Tasting Notes

This is a Lambic/Geuze Inspired beer I blended up back in August 2019 using three beers which had aged for several years.  I let this blend bulk age for an additional 9 months before bottling in May 2020.  I've been drinking one of these beers every couple months and, since I'm starting to consider making up some new blends, I've decided it's time to jot down some official impressions.

The experience of blending these beers (which I did based on tasting notes collected for 13 fermenters of Sour Blonde Beer of various ages and with various strains of yeast/bacteria) is a lot of fun.  It rally is amazing how many different flavors you can get from the wild yeast and bacteria used for lambic.  My goal with this blend was to maximize the complexity of the beer which I believe was a success.  This beer has turned out to be very flavorful with a great fruit character.  

Most of my beers are fairly sour and this one is no exception.  I have been working to try to reduce the lactic sourness of these beers going forward and will continue to do so in my next blending/top up sessions.

Anyhow, I'm very happy to be doing an official tasting here for posterity

Tasting Note:

• Aroma:
• Has a bold musty, earthy and leathery smell along with some overripe fruit
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that quickly dissipates down to nothing.  Dark gold in color and not quite clear
• Flavor:
• Quite fruity up front - peach and citrus like flavors.  A medium level of acidity kicks in next and this lasts into the finish.  The finish also has a bit of bready flavor along with some earthy flavors
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied with an impression of some light sweetness.  The acidity has a slight roughness to it that hits in the back of the throat on the finish (a little more than I'd like ideally but it is still a pleasant drinking beer)
• Overall:
• Boldly flavored and very complex beer.  The fruitiness of the beer and the acidity provide a very pleasing combination.  I also think the brett character of it plays nicely in the mix. It's balance is quite a bit more towards the acidic character than on Brett and I'd say it's a bit more sour than the famous Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze which has become more accessible here in Pennsylvania in the last couple years.  My beer is good but I think Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze is better

Tired Hands HopHands Clone

I'll be brewing a new recipe for my next Hoppy Beer - a Clone of the Tired Hands Brewery's flagship HopHands.  This was developed by the blogger behind Ales of the Riverwards.  HopHands is very hoppy pale ale with a fairly reasonable ABV (around 5%).  This clone recipe calls for a pretty agressive level of late hopping which seems like it has a pretty good chance of duplicating their flavor.

It's a fairly simple grainbill with Pale Ale and Flaked Oats.  HopHands is a hazy beer - I wont take any special action to try to re-create that part so it will be interesting to see if the oats are enough to cause that by themselves.  I'm going to mash in the mid 150s to try to get it to finish around 1.013

For hops, the beer calls for Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo.  These, fortunately, are all hops I have on hand via bulk purchases which will save me quite a bit of money on what would have been an expensive recipe otherwise.  I have hops from Hops Direct which were fairly inexpensive but, for the Amarillo in particular, not particularly bold or complex in character.  I also have some newer hops that I purchased from Hop Heaven which seem a bit bolder.  I've decided to use my Hops Direct Hops for the boil (Centennial and Amarillo) and then use my Hop Heaven hops for the dry hop (will substitute Mosaic for Amarillo due to this.  It will be dry hopped for 5 days per recipe

Finally, I'm using Imperial Yeast Juice for this batch which is a yeast I have saved from a previous batch.  This is a yeast that produces a very nice pale ale with a bit of ester character (same as Wyeast London Ale III).  Reusing the yeast also saves a good amount of money.

I'm really looking forward to having this hoppy beer on tap.  I'll give it 2 weeks in the fermenter before kegging.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 9 lb 2-row
• 2 lb Flaked Oats
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 0.5 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 0.5 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at 5 min
• 0.75 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at Flame Out
• 2 oz Centennial (Leaf, 8.7% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Mosaic (Leaf, 11.4% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Imperial Yeast A38 Juice (3rd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal Spring Water
• 6 gal of tap water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.75 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 155 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (Low 60s)
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.051 (Target 1.048)
• Efficiency:
• 73% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 60% (Target 72%)
• ABV:
• 4.0% (Target 4.6%)

Brewing Notes:

• 1/22/22 - Built up a yeast starter using a jar of saved slurry, 100 g of DME and 100 L of water.  Set this up on the stir plate over night
• 1/23/22 - Brewday - 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM - Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of spring water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and Gypsum to it so I wouldn't forget

• Moved 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until everything settled at 165 F
• Added the grain and stirred to eliminate all the dough balls.  Let this settle for 10 min
• Cycled the RIMS at 156 F for 50 more min

• With about 30 min left in the cycle I heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Drained the mash tun into the kettle using a manual fly sparge until 5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal and had it at a boil shortly after the first wort was collect
• Adding the bittering hops at this point
• Topped up the mash tun with hot water and let this sit for 10 min.  Then did a second fly sparge until 8 gal of wort had been collected.  Drained fairly slowly to maintain the boil
• Boiled for 60 min
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Added hops and the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min left
• Added flameout hops after chilling the beer to 190 F.  Let the hops steep for 20 min - the beer had chilled down to 140 F on it's own over that period
• Chilled the beer down to 70 F
• Transferred to my fermenter - pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected about 5.75 gal of wort.  Measured the gravity as 1.051.  Just a little above target efficiency this time.
• Set this up at basement temperatures to ferment out.
• 1/25/22 - Still have no signs of fermentation after a couple days.  I decided to add in another jar of yeast (fresher this time) to get things going
• 1/27/22 - The beer had krausen on the surface finally
• 1/31/22 - Added 6 oz of dry hops.  I put each ounce in it's own muslin sack weighed down with stainless steel hardware.  I'll let this sit for 5 days.
• 2/6/21 - Kegged today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020.  Did the normal process of purging the keg with C02 for the transfer.  I let it carbonate for a week before giving it a try
• 3/12/22 - Tasting Notes - This a very nice hoppy beer.  It has bold hop aroma and flavor and a nice level of complexity.  The level of bitterness is very nice - makes for a really drinkable beer.  It has a nice level of body and substance to it that you would not guess that it's a 4% ABV beer (kind of like the way an English Bitter doesn't drink like a low alcohol beer).  I'm drinking this after quite some time in the keg (a bit over a month) but the hops haven't really fallen off in any significant way which I'm very happy about.  This is a beer that I will make again for sure.
  
• 8/16/22 - The keg finally kicked.  I figured I was less than 1 pint away from kicking this so I delayed drinking the last of it out of laziness over the cleaning job.  It was a good beer.

Historical English Porter

I recently kicked my keg of Milk Stout.  I've decided to always have an English Style beer in one of my 4 kegs and really enjoyed having a dark, roasty beer, so I've decided to try an English Porter to refill it.  I've decided to make another historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog:  1881 Whitbread Porter.  

I have made quite a few beers based on these old recopies and have never had a bad one.  They often have some unusual ingredient choices which make things interesting  In this case, the beer is fairly aggressively hopped with low AA% hops (Hallertau and Goldings).  I guess they didn't have the strong bittering hops we have available today.  From previous beer it seems like the large amount of low AA hops produce a different effect than you'd get when bittering with a high AA hop.

The beer uses a brown malt and a black malt for color and flavor.  No caramel malts in this one.  I've used Brown Malt in the past and find it pretty interesting (most modern stouts wouldn't use it most likely).  Here post brew, I can say it produces a beer that is more of a dark reddish brown than black.  I'm shooting for a 1.055 beer here that ferments all the way down to 1.010 for a 5.9% ABV.  We'll be mashing at 150 F to help it take it down that fall.

The one change I'm making to the recipe is to use the Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale yeast rather than the Whitbread strain (S04) since I had it on hand.  This yeast is a fair amount different in flavor to the Whitbread strain but is still a very nice yeast - I don't think I can go wrong here.

Anyway, I hope to keg this beer in a few weeks and be drinking it by the end of the month.

This is how I determine my volume of wort

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 11 lb 2 Row
• 1 lb Brown
• 0.75 lb Black
• 2 oz Acid
• Hops:
• 3 oz Hallertau (Pellet, 4% AA) at 60 min
• 3 oz EKG (Pellet, 4.5% AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 2 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 Gal
• Mash:
• 150 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temperature (low 60s)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.055 (Target 1.055)
• Efficiency:
• 72% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.010)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 77% (Target 81%)
• ABV:
• 5.6% (Target 5.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/31/21 - Made a yeast starter using 100g of DME and 1 L of spring water.  My jar of yeast slurry has been in the fridge since January 2021.  Hopefully a 1 step starter will bring it back to life

• 1/1/22 - Brewday - from 12:00 PM to 4:30 PM - Including Cleanup
• Brought 8 gal of strike water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added the CaCl and Gypsum to the milled grain so I wouldn't forget

• Added 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and then cycled through the RIMS until the temperature was down to 160 F
• Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this settle for 10 min
• Cycled the beer through the RIMS at 151 F for the next 50 min

• Heated 8 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• At the end of the mash did a fly sparge until 5 gal were collected.  Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 3 gal and had it at a boil shortly after collecting 5 gal
• Topped up the mash tun with hot water and let sit for 10 min.  Then did another modified fly sparge until we were up to 8 gal.  Kept the drain rate slow enough to maintain the boil
• Added the bittering hops once the hot break had cleared

• Added the 30 min hops
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Decided to extend the boil by 5 min to get down to the 6 gal target
• Added the wort chiller to sanitize with a few min left in the boil
• Chilled the beer down to 65 F (ground water is cold this time of year which is nice)
• Drained the kettle into the fermenter - let it fall a couple feet to aerate.  Pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected 6 gal.  Measured the gravity as 1.055.  Right on target.
• Left the fermenter in the basement to do it's business
• 1/2/22 - The airlock was bubbling away by late this morning (I'd been a bit worried about the health of the 1 year old yeast but it worked out for me this time).
• 1/22/22 - Kegged the beer today.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.
• 2/27/22 - Tasting Notes - A richly flavored dark beer.  Has a good amount of complexity and is fairly easy drinking.  At 5.6% I can have a couple of these and not feel too much of an effect.  I really enjoy having a dark, roasty, beer on tap.
• 6/1/22 - Kicked this keg.  Very sorry to see it go.

American Pale Wheat with Citrus Zest - Tasting Notes

This is my latest American Pale Wheat Beer.  These are beer utilizing American hops which produce a Citrus character - they typically use large amounts of late hops to impart a profound hop flavor.  To take this one step further, I decided to add Citrus zest (Orange and Grapefruit) to this beer.

To do this I mixed sugar and zest which extracts the flavor from the zest and then added this to the keg to kick off a second fermentation which carbonates the keg.  I used a fairly amount of fruit (2 oranges and 2 grapefruit) on this batch to be conservative - didn't want to create an over the top kind of flavor (read on to see the results).

Anyhow, the beer has been on tap for three weeks now.  The carbonation was a bit high initially with the priming but it's now pouring nicely.  I've been drinking it quite a bit and have been getting worried that the keg will kick soon so time to do an official tasking for the record. 

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Citrus and pine aroma are pretty strong - can't really say if I'm smelling hop of citrus fruit zest here.  Fairly rich smell.  May get a bit of sweet bready malt mixed in there as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that slowly fades down to a thin ring.  Leaves some lacing on the glass.  The beer is golden and not quite clear.
• Flavor:
• The beer has some fruity flavors and piney hop flavors up front and the finish has a medium level bitterness.  There is some light malt flavor in the mix here as well.  The balance of the beer is pretty strongly slanted towards hop flavors and bitterness.  The bitterness lingers a bit longer than the hop flavor here.
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied and pretty dry.  Has a bit of a rough edge to the bitterness but still pretty nice drinking
• Overall:
• It's a pretty nice drinking beer with a nice hop focused flavor.  It isn't the most complex beer I've made and the hop character is fairly mild as far as these beers go.  Only going by my imperfect memory I'd say this beer isn't quite as hoppy as some of my other recent examples.  I also think a slightly higher staring gravity could be helpful as think it could have done with just a bit more balance to the malt.  Still, I'm happy to drink every drop of this keg.  As for the citrus, I'd say it certainly doesn't overwhelm the beer used at these levels - I think I'll try this approach again at some point using a bit more.