Beer Review: Dungarvan Copper Coast Red Ale

I have really enjoyed the two beers from Dungarvan brewing that I have tried so far (Black Rock Stout and Helvic Gold). Next up was Dungarvan's take on the traditional Irish Red Ale.

Irish Red Ale, not a style I
can get excited about



The beer pours a rusty red colour with a thin off-white head. Aroma is subdued with sweet malts being the only dominant aroma. Medium bodied with a nice level of carbonation. A nice beer, however it does not provide any standout characteristics. The hops are very subdued, almost invisible (which many will say is in keeping with the style), while the malts are there but don't offer enough of a punch. Also I discerned a very slight metallic aftertaste which didn't help.

Overall very dissapointing after I really enjoyed their stout and blonde beers.

To me, Irish Red Ale is just not a style of beer that you can get excited about. A nice change would be for some of the Irish brewers to go more the route of an American Amber Ale crossed with an Irish Red, this would provide you with the chewy malty background but then also give a nice hop punch that would balance everything out.

AG #2 - Steam Punk - Revisited

I will be the first to admit that one of my weaknesses as a brewer is my lack of patience. I tend to want to get my beers through fermentation and conditioning as soon as possible and never seem to allow beers to develop. Back in the first week in June I bottled my second ever All Grain beer (Steam Punk) and managed to keep back a few bottles which I enjoyed last night.

My conclusion when reviewing this beer at the end of June was that it lacked a decent level of bitterness and that if I was honest it was probably not a beer I would brew again, however 10 weeks later my opinion has changed somewhat.

The beer pours a dark golden colour with a slight red hue. The head dissipates quickly to leave a thin white head. Hops and bready malts are both apparent on the nose, light bodied with a nice level of carbonation. This has developed into a nice smooth beer, the hops have become slightly subdued but a slight pepperiness is still present. Very clean taste and immensely drinkable. This beer has certainly enhanced with age and is something that I think I would brew again. The one thing I would probably alter would be to add some citrus hops, maybe Amarillo, into secondary to give it a nice fresh citrus zing.

Beer Review: Butte Creek Organic IPA

An IPA that gives equal billing
to its hops and its malt profile.

Described as "a delight for all hop heads" on the label, I was really looking forward to this 6.4% IPA from Butte Creek Brewing.

The beer pours an amber colour with a thin white fluffy head. Aroma is dominated by the hops (citrus predominantly) but there is also a nice sweet malt presence. Medium to full bodied with a big flavour profile. The taste is nicely balanced between the up front hops and the caramel dominated malt. The caramel is nearly cherry like and this is cut through nicely by the hops. However there is surprisingly little bitterness on the end, something that I would have expected from an American IPA.

A really nice IPA that gives equal billing to its hops and its caramel malts, not quite the hop head described on the label, but nonetheless comes highly recommended.

AG #4 - Session Stout, first impressions

This recipe was based on my Standard Stout, however even though I was very happy with that beer (very happy!), I decided to tweak the recipe a bit. This tweaking involved upping the roasted flavour, along with the bitterness, while also changing the yeast.

One problem that I encountered during the brew day was that I missed my volume by quite a bit, this had the result of giving me a beer that was concentrated into 21 litres, but the ingredients were formulated based on a volume of 26 litres. The result of this was to make my "tweaks", major changes! This is apparent in the final brew.

The beer pours a lovely jet black with a thick creamy tan head. The first thing that hits you from the aroma of this beer is the roasted barley, this dominates the smell. This is a full bodied beer with a low level of carbonation, the mouthfeel is very nice with a big deep level of bitterness at the end. I think the yeast certinaly makes a difference in this beer, the Irish Ale II yeast that I used in the original recipe gives a lot smoother taste and also gives a hint of sweetness, whereas I find the Danstar Nottingham yeast used in this version to be quite harsh.

Overall this is a very nice beer, however it just was not what I was looking for from this brew. The roasted taste and bitterness are too strong, also at 5% ABV it is a whole 1% above what I was aiming for. I am hoping that these flavours will mellow and balance over time, in the meantime it is still a beer that I will enjoy. However when brewing my next stout I will revert to the original recipe.

Beer Review: Big Daddy IPA

I have had the pleasure of trying a few beers from the Speakeasy Brewery in San Francisco, both in bottle and on keg, however two beers that I had never tried were their Big Daddy IPA and their Payback Porter, both of which I managed to pick up recently in Drinkstore. The great thing about these two beers is that they come in 650ml bottles, a great size in my opinion.

Big Daddy IPA: you've got to
love the label design.

The IPA pours a light golden colour with a large white fluffy head. Nice strong hop aroma, predominantly citrus with a hint of pine. Low to medium bodied with a nice low level of carbonation. The flavour is all about the hops, citrussy up front, smooth in the middle and a high level of bitterness on the end, finishes very dry making you want to reach for that next sip before the glass has touched the table. Quite strong at 6.5% and this comes across as a slight booziness in the taste.

I like the fact that the hop profile of this beer is quite complex, although it has that traditional citrus hop aroma, the taste it is more multidimensional than that. The citrus is certainly there but it is joined by earthy and piney characteristics. A very nice beer, nothing outstanding, but definitely worth picking up a bottle.

I'll report back soon on the Porter, but if the IPA is anything to go by I know it's going to be good.

AG #5 and #6 - Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - Recipe

I have been wanting to come up with a Parti-Gyle recipe for a while in order to increase my brew day capacity (due to the fact that brew days are few and far between these days) and so this is what I have come up with:

Total Grain Bill will be:
5200g Maris Otter
2800g Munich Malt
350g Crystal 100 (100g will be added after the first runnings and allowed steep for 20 mins)
150g Crystal 60 (All will be added after the first runnings and allowed steep for 20 mins)
190g Caraipls (.25kg will be added after the first runnings and allowed steep for 20 mins)

This should give me a total batch gravity of 1044. Using a Parti-gyle of 1/3 - 2/3 this should give me an IPA of 1066 and an APA of 1040 (the APA boosted by the addition of 300g of DME late in the boil).

Edit : Check out the brew day post to see how I fared (major gravity miscalculation happened!)

The hops schedules are as follows:

Dr Jekyl - AIPA (14.5 litres) - 6.5%

21g Chinook - 60 mins
32g Cascade - 15 mins
32g Amarillo - 1 mins
35g Cascade - 1 mins

IBU's approximately 67

Mr Hyde - APA (27 litres) - 3.9%

15g Chinook - 60 mins
20g cascade - 15 mins
22g cascade - 10 mins
20g cascade - 5 mins
20g cascade - 1 min

IBU's approximately 30

Hoping to brew this up next week and will report back with how it all went, this will be my first attempt at this type of process (i.e. Partigyle) and so I expect an eventful brew day!

Beer Review: Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA

A love the big bitter slap
in the face that the 90 Minute
IPA delivers.

I have been looking forward to this beer ever since I tried its stable mate, the 60 Minute IPA. The name of this beer comes from the fact that during the boil part of the brewing process the wort is continually hopped for 90 minutes.

The beer pours a lovely amber colour with a thick creamy white head. Fantastic citrus hop aroma, that is slightly sharp on the nose. Medium bodied with a creamy texture, hop flavour at the beginning is replaced by a big bitter slap across the face at the end, fantastic stuff. The hop bitterness comes in quickly and lasts long after your mouth is dry. Despite the powerful bitterness and the 9% ABV this is immensly drinkable and you need to be careful as you would quickly forget the ABV as you reach for another bottle.

This is the extreme end of the hop scale, but Dogfish have taken this one step further with their 120 Minute IPA; a beer I have to try. Buy this beer now!

Kit Hack #1 - Cascade IPA

When I first started homebrewing I bought a number of kits (a wheat beer, a dark ale and an IPA). Having been so dissapointed with my first kit (the wheat beer), I decided to skip the rest of the kits and proceed to extract. Since then the two remaining kits (simply a can of pre-hopped liquid malt and a packet of generic yeast) have sat forlornly in my ingredients bin surrounded by their more sophiticated relatives, pale malt, carapils, crystal, black patent and my personal favourite roasted barley. I never thought that I would brew either of these kits, however the other week after brewing my latest all grain batch I had an hour to kill and a spare fermenter and so I thought, what the heck!

I decided to brew the IPA and to dry hop it with some cascades to give it a bit of freshness. Now before I say how the brew went I must admit to having had a couple of pints of ISO Standard Stout and so this may have had an effect on the outcome.

The Recipe:

Coopers Selection - IPA kit
500g Light DME
300g Dextrose
1 Package of Coopers Ale Yeast

Brewday:

It had been so long since I had done a kit that I actually had to read the instructions to remember what needed to be done in what sequence. I dissolved the DME and sugar in 3 litres of warm water and then added this to the fermenter. I then topped up the fermenter to the required mark (23 litres), while I was doing this I had the kit can in a pot of warm water to loosen up the concentrate. Once this was done I opened the can and poured in the contents. Here is where the first problem came, the concentrate took a nose dive to the bottom of the fermenter and stayed there. I tried in vain to stir and slosh the liquid about to dissolve it, however I got bored of this after about 5 minutes and just threw the yeast in. In hindsight I should have added the concentrate to a little of the water, gotten it well mixed and then topped up the fermenter gradually. Because of this lack of mixing, when I took a gravity reading it was about 1035, far short of the expected, however this was of course due to the fact that the wort wasn't well mixed. I hoped that the vigours of fermentation would solve this!

Fermentation:

Slightly slower to kick off than my all grain, but well under way after 24 hours and primary fermentation subsided after three days. Moved from Primary to Secondary after a week. Dry hopped in secondary with 25g of Cascades for one week. Kegged and transferred to kegerator a total of two weeks after brew day. Set regulator to 10psi and allowed the keg to force carbonate for a week.

First Taste Test:

This beer tastes really good! A little thin yet but the cascade aroma and flavour is really good with a nice level of bitterness on the end. I brought a growler of this to a get together at TheBeerNut's house last weekend and it went down really well. I passed around glasses with the introduction of "It's a kit hack but it's not offensive", however the feedback was all pretty good. The comments were all along the lines of "really tasty, very sessionable, however a little thin" and to a man everyone was pretty surprised with the taste and flavour that this kit managed to produce. I have to say I am pretty happy with the fact that I have 3/4 of a keg of this as I think it will only get better with time. Conclusion, kit beers can be really good!

Beer Review: Clotworthy Dobbin

Clotworthy Dobbin is a well known beer amongst Irish beer enthusiasts, it seems to be the go-to-beer for a lot of craft beer drinkers when they are looking for something Irish that hits the mark each and every time. I have tasted this beer a few times and really liked it and the other night I decided to taste it with a bit more of an analytical eye.

Brewed by Whitewater Brewery, Clotworthy Dobbin is , as the brewer describes, 'a rich ruby porter style beer', to me it is a mix between an Irish Red Ale and an American Amber Ale, it gets its malt profile from the former while balancing this out with a hop profile more associated with the latter.

The beer pours a nice rusty red colour with a thick off-white head. Aroma is of floral hops and crystal malt, the latter giving a sweet edge to the aroma. Medium bodied with a nice mouthfeel. The taste favours the crystal malts with a nice caramel flavour coming from these, however the hop bitterness kicks in at the end to balance out the taste.

To me this represents what Irish Red Ales should be, a strong sweet malt backbone, a bitter finish and a sprinkling of flavour and aroma hops.

A very well balanced refreshing beer. Highly recommended.

Beer Review: Sierra Nevada Unrivalled

No in depth notes on this one but I'll give my impressions. The Bull & Castle managed to source a small keg of Sierra Nevada's Unrivalled last week and I managed to have a pint before it sold out. This is a smoked rye beer that came out of the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp last year.

The Beer Camp is where Sierra Nevada bring together a group of competition winners for a brewery tour and this group also gets to determine what beer will be brewed on that particular day, the group then also names the beer. In order to enter the competition you simply send Sierra Nevada your entry (essay, video, audio etc) on why you should be picked to attend beer camp.

The beer pours a dark brown with a slight amber hue, it has a lovely hop aroma. The taste is light and refreshing with a nice subdued level of smokiness. Beer is very nice, light with a nice balance of smoke and hops. I would think this would be a great summer beer, however at 6.3% not one to drink all day.

A really interesting and flavoursome beer, pity we can't get more US kegged beer in Ireland!