Beer: X IPA 1 – 36/50
Tasting Date: 1/4/2010

Appearance [max 5] : 3

Solid head that keeps its form, and slowly settles into a 1/4″ blanket  on the surface that slowly gets consumed through the beer.

Deep copper color.  Definitely darker than what I remember West    Coast IPA would have.  Going to need to do a side-by-side comparison (good thing I have another couple of bottles).

Aroma [max 10] : 8

The Centennial aroma on top of Cascade finishing on top of CTZ/Simcoe backbone is definitely a pleasing hop chord.  With this hop schedule it’s feint but pleasantly floral, then piny, and even a bit summer fruity?

Palate [max 5] : 4

Medium to full body, rich creamy texture, soft carbonation, clean finish

Flavor [max 10] : 7

Nice duration, with a uniform flavor curve that works from the back of the throat towards the front and sides of the tongue, then finishing in back of the mouth with a nice, bitter.  Absolutely love balance of sweet to bitter.

There’s a noticeable light tart finish.  Similar to light lacto in the Boulevard brewing Saison-Brett.  Not really what I want on the end of this beer.  Will need to investigate the underlying cause of that.  It’s definitely a subtle off flavor, so not too distracting from the otherwise very pleasant beer.

The caramels from the Carastan and Cara-pils on the two row are really tasty.  I feel the malt and backbone is just a hair too much.

Overall [max 20] : 14

This is a very solid IPA.  I’d like to turn up the aroma, reduce the mouthfeel (maybe OG just a touch too), and clean up the tart finish.  Once those items are addressed, I can turn my attention to manipulating the IPA’s crowning feature … the hop aroma and flavor.

X Brew Lessons Learned

Sometimes it can be a challenge to “Relax, Don’t Worry, etc…”.  It has been a while since I have broken in a new mash tun, and man did I forget how frustrating that can be.  Yesterday was one of those brew days where you are constantly maneuvering trying to stay on course.  No matter what adjustments I made, I couldn’t get back on track.  Because mistakes provide the opportunity to learn, I decided to push off my X Brew Session Review until I get the bugs in the new system worked out. In its place, I’m going to go over some of the things I learned … or re-learned as it may be.

I fell short on my projected mash temp
Description: This is something I learned on my larger cooler-based system, but failed to remember for this brew session.  I ended up a few degrees shy of the target 152 F mash temp.  I’m going to go into it in more detail in a new section of the site called Brewing Tips, but the short story is that I was wrong about the cooler was actually colder than what registered on my thermometer.  While I brought it in an hour or so before doughing in, this was not enough time for the internal walls of the cooler to completely warm up to the room temperature of the house.

Fix: Bring in the cooler the night before brew day.

I completely missed target gravity (added DME, adjusted recipe)
Description: Pretty sure this is due to being shy of my already-low target mash temperature.

Fix: See above.

Problems lautering
Description: I think that missing my target gravity also had something to do with my lack of ability to adequately regulate my lautering speed.  I have not converted my cooler yet to have an outlet valve, so my process was going to be based on batch sparging.  Multiple batches of a one gallon mash volume would theoretically yield a pre-boil volume of around 1.25 gallons.  I doughed in with a grain bag, and just slowly pulled it up to let it drain.  The results yielded only around 53% efficiency, which was far too low even for batch sparging.  I had to add DME to bring the OG up to be in line with my recipe’s hopping rate.  My working theory is that this method drained too fast to adequately rinse the grains of their sugars.

Fix: Convert the cooler by drilling a hole through the cooler wall, and do one the typical conversions (outlet valve + bulkhead + manifold, plumbing hose, etc.) to give me more control over the draining of the mash.

I will need to get to the point where I can accurately predict my brewing if this X Brew series is going to go where I expect it to.  More to come.

Cheers.

Today I am embarking on the first in a (hopefully) long-running series of experimental brew days, which I plan on sharing here on brewerman.com. The inspiration for my approach is a combination of the recent revisiting of some Brew Your Own articles, and a lay-off that has given me more free time.  I have been thinking for a while about how I can really zero in on my own ideal recipe.

I’ve been performing my own recipe formulation for my own well-received beers for a while now (thank you Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers!), but there are only a few beers that I’ve been really tweaking over the years. To really zero in on what’s in my head, I would need to brew far more often than I currently do, and to do so would require far more money and liver tissue than I have to give.

Enter the Brewerman X Brew series.  I am going to give brewing super-small batches a shot.  Inspired by Brew Your Own’s articles on small-scale brewing, I will be brewing one gallon batches from infusion mashes performed in a Coleman One Gallon Cooler.  Because the volume is so small, I can run multiple brews at one time, and do so in my kitchen … all very convenient, with a minimal hit on resources.

The only way I can realistically pull this off is to:

• Continue to be faithful to keeping accurate records on metrics and observations
• Keep as tight control over brew variables as realistically possible (e.g. temps, volumes, time, etc)
• Keep extremely organized on brew day (multiple hopping schedules at once … ugh)
• Close the loop: sample, make recipe adjustments, repeat experimentation

The only pitfalls I see are:

• I may have to get a more-precise digital scale.
• Fermentation variables of one gallon batch may not transfer to a five-gallon batch (e.g. time sitting on yeast to scrub beer relative to the yeast health after they finish fermenting the beer)
• Having to return to bottling 🙁

Still, I’m very excited.  The first run will be a single batch this time (a calibration run) targeting one of my favorites: Green Flash’s West Coast IPA.  This recipe was largely taken from the awesome Jamil Show episode where they got a recipe straight from Chuck Silva from Green Flash!

I’ll be posting pictures and run-down of the brew session tomorrow.