CS11 - Pete's Pale Ale

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael_H on July 15, 2014 at 5:33pm

Got a gusher here, so take that into account!

Comments by me and two others. 

Appearance: Murky golden amber. Thin film of a head. Spray of fine bubbles.

Aroma: Subtle tropical fruit, a bit of caramel. Good. Nice. Smells like beer. 

Taste: Good carbonisation, sweet malts that linger. Just the right amount of bitter. Would like more resin-y bitterness.

Overall: Smashbackable. A good session beer. Not sure about the aftertaste. I've had mixed experiences with crystal malt - I find it a bit too sweet for me sometimes. 

Permalink Reply by Mark Weusten on July 15, 2014 at 7:18pm

Apologies for gatecrashing but Im having one of these as we speak. Must be a couple of months at least in the bottle now. At 3-4 weeks this was an amazing beer and I wish I had chugged most of the bottles I have down then. I think hop bursted beer when its young cant be beat. Thanks Peter

Permalink Reply by Duncan Emo on July 15, 2014 at 8:40pm

No gusher here down in Wellington!

Appearance - Golden, bronze and clear - medium carbonation. Head remained for quite a long time - during consumption even!

Aroma - Nice hop aroma - not overly overpowering - tropical.

Taste - sweet malty and the bitterness was bang on.

Mouthfeel - just right - enough body for the style.

A really good beer Pete - nice to have a NZ Pale ale - I'm used to just playing with US hops - good motivation to try these out.

Cheers.

Permalink Reply by Richard Jack on July 18, 2014 at 8:57pm

The bottle looked swollen and felt very firm so I've left it in the fridge for a while to try and prevent any gushing. I poured into a 550 mug and managed to get about half beer half overflowing foam. It's been about half an hour now and the remaining half in the bottle has a good 2" head on it. So I'd say something has gone a bit wrong.

Ap - the first pour was quite clear, then the carb stirred up the remainder, so notes from the first pour. very persistent head for obvious reasons :)

Ar - Caramel and lemon/lime with that Sauvin sweat/mango/papaya thing. Faint grassy notes creeping in. Very nice.

Fl - spritzy in the mouth from the carb. Taste is pleasantly malty (maybe on the sweet/caramel side of perfect) but it kind of falls off a cliff, a light mouthfeel and not much aftertaste leave me wanting a bit more from it, and what aftertaste is present is more sticky caramel than the hop character and bitterness I'd expect. For what it's worth, this is what I've found from my own beers that I've dabbled with hopbursting in. The bitterness just doesn't seem high enough to me to balance the sweetness (again, same as my hopbursted PAs).

I can't pick any brett in there or any unwanted microbe stuff going on to explain the carbonation, so I assume you have probably just made a mistake in priming it. 

I enjoyed this and would happily smash a few back. Aside from the carb problem, if I had brewed this and was going to rebrew, I'd chuck in a 5-10 IBU SX addition at 60min, and/or lower the amount of crystal and mash a bit higher. Of course, recipe stuff is personal preference and this is obviously a successful recipe, so take the feedback for what it's worth - $0.02 (rounds down to zero these days right?)

Cheers. This has reminded me it's been too long since I made an NZPA.

Permalink Reply by Peter Smith on July 19, 2014 at 9:30am

Thanks Good feedback Richard,  I am going to ease back on the light crystal in my beers, I also feel 10IBU of traditional bittering hops is missing, in some of them more then others ie a big variation across bottles?, I have had some very sweet and some very bitter.   I haven't had a gusher in the rest of the batch so I am thinking some of the plastic bottles and cleaning then is the issue.

I am going to try for something with maybe 2/3 pils , 1/3 ale malt, and with NZ hops.   

Permalink Reply by Tilt on July 24, 2014 at 8:47pm

Perfectly carbed for me, this one pours with a persistent head that laces the glass all the way.  

Aromas of lemon/lime and sticky tropical fruit juice with caramel sauce. There's a hint of volatile alcohol but only a whiff. Flavourwise the tropical fruit carries through with a lot on the front of the palate and less to back it up as it finishes. No lingering bitterness to wrap it all up and stretch the pleasure out and a single dimension sweetness to my tastes.  

I reckon the gladdies crystals have a way to go before they give the depth and complexity of malt flavour of euro specialties.  I've done a few PAs with glads base and specs but always come back to a pref for carared or caramunich for crystals due to the richness and maltiness of their sweet flavour. To me it seems like the difference in sweetness is like the difference between white sugar and demerara crystals.

 I also agree that a more resinous and firm lasting palate cleansing bitterness would make this one really pop - but a solid place to step out from in the first instance.  Nice one Peter, thanks for sharing.

Permalink Reply by Peter Smith on July 25, 2014 at 9:06am

You have articulated well what I have been thinking about gladfields crystal,  I am going to replace the GF light cryst with caramalt and less of it.    I was at AGWB and Mike from Brewerscoop mentioned the introduction of bitterness via dry hopping and that got me reading on the web,    

From a chemical point of view, dry hopping will extract all of the alpha and beta acids in hops. The humulones, lupulones and other volatile oils are isomerized in the alcohol and water (the alcohol dues most of the extraction). Yes, more aroma and flavor will be extracted, but so will bitterness. We dry hop most of the time to add aroma to the beer, so most of the time we dry hop with low alpha acid "aroma" hops. Try dry hopping with Galena, Perle, Simcoe, Challenger, Northern Brewer or other high alpha acid hop. You will get the bitterness!

This beer has a lot of dry hop, and a lot of high AA southern cross etc in the dry hop and late.   At 4 weeks this beer was quite floral but its become more bitter as time has gone on (not bitter enough to overcome the gladfields light addition),   The beer is pretty murky.    I wonder how much of the high AA dry hops have overpowered the low AA dry hops over time?   has anyone else seen this happen when dry hopping with both high AA and low AA hops in decent size additions

At 5 days,  dry hopped straight into the fermenter 50g of Motueka and 10 g each of Pacific Jade and Pacifica.  After 5 days, I  added another dry hop. This was 25g of Sauvin and 25g Southern Cross for a further 5 days. 

 

Permalink Reply by Crusader-Rob on July 25, 2014 at 10:20am

I see what people are saying re the Gladfields malt, This pertains mainly to Pale and Medium Crystal (I haven't used enough dark crystal to make judgement) that they dont't offer as much richness as tilt said. I still love the malt freshness and theres plenty of flavour.

although my current favourite malt currently is Shepherds Delight. This malt is awesome!
Toffee as well is probably a better malt than Caramalt.

(Used both in a WY1469 bitter, along with Caramunich II)

Permalink Reply by Richard Jack on July 25, 2014 at 10:35am

you might be interested in the response to that quote here, Pete: http://homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/5492/will-dry-hopping-a... 

Permalink Reply by Peter Smith on July 25, 2014 at 1:14pm

Mike said, from memory and its a bit hazy, that the dry hop bitterness come from the beta acid. 

Permalink Reply by Crusader-Rob on August 3, 2014 at 7:22pm

Cheers peter. nice Beer
nice colur Minor Haze, but all in all clarity is good.

Flavour is good, good malt sweetness, hops dominate, but not overpowering.
 no real faults with the beer, god solid pale ale, slightly stronger than the normal at 1060.

It could benefit from a good dryhop, lacking some aroma there, plenty of hop flavour, can pick out the southern cross a bit.

good hjob :)