Rye-IPA brew day

Last night I hosted a brew day in my teensy lil' house. Right around a dozen people showed up, and I feel it went decently well.

As for the beer. I was brewing a Rye-IPA partial mash kit from Northern brewer. The only modification I made was to throw the full oz of Palisades in at 15 mins instead of 0.5 oz and dry hopping on the rest. I'll buy a nice whole leaf to dry hop on. Target gravity was 1.065, I managed to hit 1.057, so I missed a little but not a huge amount. I lost a lot of sugar to my colander setup, the top grains were definitely depleted, but if you dug down you could still taste a little sweetness. I'm working on a way to improve this, and the 1.5 lbs of rye in this kit probably backed it up a little bit. Rye malt is significantly smaller than barley and has plagued homebrewers and brewers in general for centuries. The unique flavor is very worth it though, which is why we voluntarily shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again with this awful yet tasty malt.

Thanks to all who showed, 'twas a great night.

-James

Double dry-hopped Hop Killa

Peoples has rebrewed the Killa. And I'm already up to my old ways. They took their 4 gallon firkin and dryhopped a bit of Killa on "C-word" hop pellets. As far as some of can tell, it's the same combination of the Seaward, so I thought this would be a preview as to a "scalable" version of Seaward. Well, it was tapped at 4 pm, I have group meeting at 6 pm, and had not a lot of progress today. I took off at 5 to get a snifter and return by 6. Good thing I did, I got the last 4 pourable ounces from the firkin. (I am the assassin afterall) The beer was heavy on sediment, but the flavor profile stayed true. The dry hop did fantastic things to this great DIPA. I've always thought that Hop Killa was a little rough compared to a Space Cowboy or Hopslam, but the extra dryhop was excellent, and there are definitely citras in the "C-word" pellets. I look forward to the regular Killa when it comes out.

I did go back after group meeting...a couple of the regulars who missed out were definitely informed that I killed it. What can I say...it's what I do. I also ran into a first year who happens to be my academic nephew (his PI is one of Scott's former students) and a sales rep from Waters (which sells Mass Spectrometers). That was fun, not sure if others thought so though.

As far as homebrewing goes, my proper Amber is sitting on an oz of Indiana Cascade hops in the secondary. My next beer will be a Rye-IPA, in which I hope to use a fair chunk of Indiana grown Nugget hops, if they're still any good. I'm also planning on having people over for that brewday....which means I should get back to cleaning up the ol' bachelor pad, eh? I also need to find my missing airlock...or else things will get interesting.

-J

New Belgium Trippel

First a quick note: The VBS on 52 sold out of 25 cases of Hopslam in 3 days. That's 100 six-packs at $18 a pop. Craft beers are officially a big deal, and as a community, craft drinkers are growing. Awesome.

Last night the victim of choice was the New Belgium Trippel. It comes in 6 packs...that is an amazingly dangerous things for this Trippel lover. That being said, this is not what I would call a world class Trippel. It is good, and at only 7.8% abv it is the closest thing to a sessionable Trippel there is. The flavor is crisp and clean, this would be a great beer to introduce a novice to craft beers and belgian styles. The sweetness of great Trippels is simply not there in this beer, which is probably the biggest thing that I was disappointed with. That being said, for the price and quantity this is a great deal to get your Trippel fix.

-James

Hopslam 2012!

So. Today may have been the best day of my graduate career. I have been bouncing off the walls since about 3 pm, and down right giddy since 5:15. For the first time, I saw ions doing the entire experiment that I have spent 3 years attempting. This project has been plagued with bad luck and misfortune from the very beginning, and the ICIS@Purdue crew is now poised to collect the benefits of never giving up, of relishing the smallest of victories and persevering the worst of setbacks. Of the $300K I was trusted with to build this thing, there is $8K left, and I think we may have finally done it.

I went to People's tonight in a celebratory mood, had a few beers and came home. I then became aware (through Sean) that VBS on 52 had hopslam, and the other VBS's would have it tomorrow. I drove through the driving snow storm to acquire said gem...got to campus just as the basketball game finished. Diverted through the side (unplowed) roads of West Lafayette because I didn't have enough gas to sit in the traffic. 45 minutes after I left, I came upon the VBS and bought hopslam. It's been in my trunk as I had a celebratory cigar (and Manhattan) with my right hand man in this ICIS project. Finally I sit back at home with a cold Hopslam in an Oberon Summer 2011 glass.

This is perhaps the most special glass of liquid I will ever consume...with the significance of this day.

This bottle is part of batch 10846 and was packaged on 1/06/2012. That is (now) only one week ago! This is the freshest of the fresh, besides those bottles which have been consumed by fellow Lafayette Beer Geeks. This is the freshest Hopslam I have ever consumed. And it is good. The smell is cleaner than I remember, not abusive, not sappy, not anything overwhelming. The flavor is the same as I originally fell in love with all those years ago in my dorm room at MSU. So freakin' smooth. I'm sorry Sean and Chris and Abel, but Hopslam this fresh just took back the #1 spot in my book away from Space Cowboy. This beer is an epic brew, and I think this staggered release (as unintentional as it was) may have been the best thing to ever happen to this beer.

As always, I consider the first bottle of hopslam to be the beginning of a "new beer year." Besides Sierra Nevada's Celebration (which is unapologetically not balanced at all), this is one of the first serious beers using the new harvest of hops. Since a vast majority of American hops come from the same region (Yakima and Willamette valleys in WA) and are harvested once a year, and considering that the nature of hops are dependent on their growing conditions, and finally taking into consideration that the hop harvest is in the fall, these early beers do indeed lend an indication to the nature of hoppy beers to come for the whole year. That sentence (I just wrote) is awful, but the short story is that between Celebration and Hopslam, midwesterners can get an idea of what the year will have to offer for big, hoppy beers. And this year promises to be great. (Yes I know that Sierra Nevada is not a midwestern brewery...but nationwide Celebration is one of the first beers available from the fresh hop harvest)

I cannot believe how awesome today has been. Getting the full experiment (minus lasers) to work, enjoying the support of everyone I work with in both of my research groups (a lot of grad students can barely enjoy the company of the people in their own group, nonetheless two groups), enjoying a quality cigar and cocktail with the only group member to be there with me the entire time, convincing the new student who will replace me that she didn't make a poor life decision to join this project (since all she's seen so far is 6 months of fail), and to top it off with a bottle or two (or three) of the best beer known to man. Today is an epic day that has been enjoyed with epic friends and topped off with an epic beer.

-James