When you start a blog, you don’t think that 14.5 years later it will cause people who you don’t know personally to drop beer off at your doorstep – but here we are. Bill from Massachusetts gave us three beers that he brewed under the Dirty Bucket Brewing moniker. We tasted one on camera and we posted it on YouTube. This is our Brew Dudes Homebrew Swap – Exchange number 45.

Billy B’s Harrison Lager Notes

Before we begin – you can find the recipe for this beer on Brewer’s Friend. On this page, you will see that the grain bill is simple and the hop selections are all noble. Specifically, he uses Hallertau and Tettnang throughout his brewing process.

The yeast he used was Fermentis Saflager German Lager Yeast W-34/70, which these Brew Dudes have used before. We have had success using this strain, especially in lager fermented at warmer than traditional temperatures.

Opening the bottles into glasses, this beer poured clear and had a nice off-white head. The color of the beer was in line with what we were expecting with a Sam Adams Boston Lager clone.

On the nose, you could detect some spicy noble hop aroma with some soft malt notes. The taste delivered the familiar balance of caramel maltiness with the floral, spicy notes of Hallertau. The beer finished clean with a nice aftertaste.

In terms of making a similar beer, we feel Bill hit the mark. The only note we had was to increase the bitterness in the taste. Sam Adams has a present noble hop bitterness that his clone didn’t match exactly. Living in the same area as him, we know all too well that water in our region doesn’t necessarily help us to produce world class bitter beers.

The main tip would be to increase the amount of hops added to the beginning of the boil or upping the gypsum addition. We have found that we need to do that to make our beer’s bitterness pop.

Thanks again for the beer, making our exchange 45 a good one.

Brew On.