Improving the Universe, 5 Gallons at a Time

It's brew day, AGAIN. I'm making a new wheat beer with Amarillo hops and crystal malt.

Some wheat beers have orange peel in them to give them extra flavor. To be specific, some types of Belgian witbier (Hoegaarden, Celis White) are known for this. I don't like putting flavorings in my beer. It occured to me that a well-chosen hop could get me into the same place without making me feel like I was cheating.

Enter the Amarillo hop. It is considered similar to Cascade, the hop everyone thinks Sierra Nevada uses in its pale ale. Cascade is known for a citrusy flavor, usually compared to grapefruit. Amarillo is supposed to be more like an orange. So I'm putting Amarillo hops in my wheat beer.

I'm also doing something called "first-wort hopping" for the first time. Generally, when you add hops to wort (beer that isn't beer yet), you start at the beginning of what is known as "the boil." Beer is boiled before fermenting. It sanitizes the wort and gets the hop bitterness and flavor into the brew. A boil usually takes an hour. Some take two.

First-wort hopping is supposed to give you an improved aroma and better hop flavor and a more refined bittering. We shall see.

While I work, I am enjoying Flying Dog Snake Dog India Pale Ale ("IPA"). A marvelous microbrew concoction. I'm very impressed.

The first really hopped-up pale ale I tried was Sierra Nevada, back in 1994, when I was a physics TA in Austin, Texas, and I used to hold office hours at the Crown & Anchor pub. Sierra Nevada is wonderful, but I always thought it wasn't sweet enough to balance the hops.

Flying Dog is a little paler and perhaps less fruity, but I think they must be using a lot of crystal malt, because it's very bitter, yet balanced with sweetness. I don't know what hops they use, but the smell of the Amarillo hops I'm using is remarkable similar to the scent of the beer I'm drinking.

I highly recommend this ale. It's the only pale ale I've ever had that makes me wonder if my own pale ale isn't the best in the universe.

Sierra Nevada is great, but it's inconsistent as hell, in my opinion, and they have never gotten the balance right.

What else is going on? Well, tomorrow the old man and I will be celebrating Fathers' Day with Val Prieto and his dad and whoever shows up at ManCamp, so I'm making blueberry cheesecake and moros. From scratch, as always. As soon as the beer is off the stove, I'm going to get cranking.

I think I need to experiment more with very bitter beers. Apart from my stout, which comes in at 46.-something IBU, I don't have any beers that go past 40. I held back because I didn't really understand how to balance bitterness with sweetness, and because I didn't know about the crazy new hops that are appearing on the scene.

I have a 54-IBU lager planned. Sort of like Steinlager, only not skunked. That should be good. I put a pound and a quarter of crystal malt in the grist to keep it from tasting like a big ol' glass of alum.

Okay, time to throw the Irish moss in the boil and put my marvelous homemade wort chiller in with it.

The wheat beer will be ready to swill in two weeks, tops. I'll let you know how it comes out.