Vital Statistics:
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Recipe: 7 lb 2-row pale malt 2 lb rye malt 1 lb flaked rye 11 AAU (24g @ 13% AA) Nugget @ 60 5 AAU (31g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 15 4 AAU (37g @ 3% AA) Hallertau @ 5 1 Irish moss tablet @ 15 min Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General Notes: IPA-style rye beer. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tasting Notes: Tasting notes taken 3/31/2010. Poured from 22oz bomber into a tulip. Appearance: quite hazy brown-orange color with lots of apparent effervescence. Head is two fingers of pillowy ivory foam that appears to have a fair bit of staying power. This beer doesn't really conform to any typical style, but I like the way it looks. I'm especially impressed by the tenacity of the head. (4) Smell: aroma is sweet and floral. I don't know if it's the rye or the hallertauers, but there's a bit of strawberry aroma mixed in with what is kind of a sweet, unctuous malt. Weird but good. (4) Taste: spicy and somewhat dry. There is a definite alcohol overtone; like #12, I got an unexpectedly high mash efficiency on this one. So, there is spice and fruitiness derived from the alcohol plus a rye spice and bizarre hints of strawberry. I think it's very interesting; there is a hint of vegetable to the hops (is this the nugget I keep using?) but otherwise it's pretty unique among my beers. I imagine this beer would go very well with Indian or Thai food. It's interesting, and not bad, but definitely not great. (3.5) Mouthfeel: per all my recently overcarbonated beers, this has a great creamy mouthfeel, although truth be told this style doesn't seem to really call for "creamy". I'd prefer it to be crisp. Overall, it's not too bad, though. (4) Drinkability: this beer has some interesting flavors and aromas, but overall it's just not very polished. I just don't feel like drinking two in a row. (3.5) Overall score 3.75 (B). I would like to try making this again when I have a more predictable mash efficiency and take it down a notch to maybe 5.5 or 6%. I might even try swapping out the nugget for something else and maybe even switching up yeast; I do feel there's a lot of potential for rye-heavy brews, though. Additional notes: this beer did not age well in the bottle. As time progressed, the strawberry note got stronger and stronger. By June-July, this beer tasted basically like bitter strawberry frosting. Its rating at that time would be more like 2.8-3. This explains its extremely long availability -- I didn't want to drink any more of the stuff. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hops Table
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