As usual I’m slow to get around to writing reviews of my
beers. I’ve been drinking this IPA for a little while now but it’s not old
enough for it to suffer in any way. I wrote about the problems I experienced
after dry hopping and attempting to rack to a keg. Basically I thought the
yeast had crapped out because it was a commercial strain and on its fourth
generation with me so for all I know it could have actually been at generation
24 overall. Even though I knew 1.023 was way too high and way under attenuated
for this strain (I think it was a little over 54% at the time and it usually
reaches 80-85%) I thought I could dry hop. I took two gravity readings over a
week period and there was no change, even after I raised the temperature to 73oF.
When I was prepping to get ready to rack to the keg for dry
hopping I noticed a thin pellicle over the top of the beer. Normally it doesn’t
bother me when there is Brett in my beers and I accept it as part of the
territory when dealing with Brett as often as I do, but this was my only bank
of Conan yeast and I didn’t have any cans of Heady Topper lying around. Since I
had no idea what strain of Brett it was I was forced to dump the yeast cake.
Racking into the keg and dry hopping as usual went well, but the real action happened
when I went to rack the off the dry hops.
It turned out that they yeast in fact had not finished
fermenting and by rousing it in the keg I had awoken it. When I opened the keg
it began to foam everywhere and sprayed hop matter all over my kitchen. Over
the period of a week I would go by every few hours and purge the CO2 from the
keg through the release valve. By the time I got to keg it the gravity had
dropped to 1.011, which is right where it should have been. I think I didn’t
raise the temperature while fermenting soon enough and I may have started it
too low in the beginning. Never the less it’s still an enjoyable beer.
Appearance: Hazy
orange-yellow with a creamy white head that lingers and clings to the side of
the glass. As the beer warms up the chill haze dissipates but the beer is still
slightly cloudy, which is a characteristic of Conan yeast’s low flocculation
rate.
Aroma: I think
the aroma is more muted then I would have liked, especially given the total
amount of finishing hops I used, but I think I blew a lot of the dry hop aroma
out since the beer wasn’t finished fermenting and I had to purge it. Every time
I purged the keg I could smell my dry hops going away. What I probably should
have done in retrospect is a double dry hop to increase the surface area
contact with the hops. The aroma is reminiscent of peaches, mango, berry, a
touch of citrus, fresh cut grass and a bit of plastic phenols from the Brett.
Taste: Conan
shines through on the flavor again providing that typical peach flavor along
with that elusive blueberry flavor from the Mosaic hops. There is a slightly
grassy finish and lingering bitterness along with a touch of plastic from the
Brett again.
Mouthfeel: Again
the Conan shines through providing a nice creamy mouthfeel to go with a dry
finish and lingering bitterness. The carbonation is medium-high to accentuate
the dry finish. I’m actually very happy with the mouthfeel of this beer.
Overall: I’m very
pleased with this beer but disappointed that Brett got into it. I assumed it
would since I didn’t do the best job cleaning a carboy that had just finished
housing a sour, but I needed to put it somewhere. I’m also disappointed that it
didn’t finish fermenting until after I dry hopped it since I lost some of the
aroma and it prolonged my ability to keg it and thus I missed entering it into
the homebrew store’s competition. At the end of the day I’m very pleased with
it and unfortunately with all of the issues I only ended up with around 3.5
gallons.
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