Brew Dudes

Didn’t take long to turn around our fresh harvest Wet hop ale. This week we receded to a the dark and shadow laden basement at Jim’s house to taste our efforts with the Harvest ale.

The first thing we get off this beer is that overwhelming citrus aroma. Somewhere between grapefruit and an orange, the aroma was a bit of a surprise based upon the majority of the hops being a more nobel like variety, Mt. Hood.

That same aroma does not hide in the flavor portion of the experience as there is a definite citrus flavor in there too. Although in the flavor we start to get some, of that earthy and spice driven noble character I’d expect from Mt. Hood.

Neither the aroma or the flavor were over the top strong. Albeit the aroma was noticeable and fairly obvious once the bottle was opened and poured. Interestingly, I would not say these wet hops really gave much bitterness. The bittering quality was pretty subdued and almost un noticeable until things warmed up a bit.

We sort of got lucky with Johns choice of Malt. The floor malted Maris Otter saved the day by give the beer a malt forward profile in the absence of enough bitterness. The fruity quality of the hops and fermentation profile worked well with the distinct and strong malt, bread and biscuit that the grist as putting out. (If anything, I think I’ll need to get some of this Maris Otter and make an ESB or something. Fantastic maintenance of that bread malt flavor from post mash to post ferment.)

It was pretty fun to pick hops and see more than 4 lbs of flowers go right into the brew pot. This wet hop harvest ale tasting was a big surprise. The predominant results were so striking that in the video we didn’t even mention something that was certainly on our minds before we started. Will 4 lbs of wet hops give a vegetal flavor. It wasn’t until after we finished shooting that I realized “Hey, there is not ‘green’ flavor to this brew.” I think that a vegetal character from all the fresh wet hops is often a concern. But in this brew there was none of that.

Obviously Hops are a seasonal product. They say you can’t bitter with homegrown hops. Sure you can, you just put them in at 60 minutes and there you go. Its not heresy to assume a mid point for the standard commercial ranges reported for your homegrown hop variety. Its worked several years in a row for John to do that with dried hops.

The lack of bittering this year I think may really be more related to the weird growing in season we had. I know many of us reported smaller produce from our vegetable gardens this year. And Jim said that he was surprised that they harvest was noticeably smaller than last year.

Oh well. Its home brewing. We tried and we learned. I don’t think we’d do much differently brewing with homegrown hops next year either.

Cheers.

Homebrewing can be as easy or as complex as you want it to be. As homebrewing bloggers, we recognize that there is a wide variety of resources available to educate and entertain you. This week’s video we had a little chat about our most popular homebrewing web resources.

John prefers to do much of his internet homebrew surfing via the written word. He follows a handful of blogs. For all of his hop profile research, he hits many different sources. Primarily he likes to read information on the different retail sites and read their descriptions of the hops they sell. He also find different hop growers and distributors resources helpful.

When he puts together a hop profile, it is usually a solid culmination of different information being distilled into one short hop profile.

When researching recipes John and I both take similar approaches. We both tend to look at random recipe postings from other bloggers or forum members. We also like to take a look some of the many recipe databases out there. Taking each recipe sometimes with a little grain of salt, you can often start to come up with a basic trend for what people seem to think goes into brewing a certain style of beer. We both tend to use that information to build our own idea of what a good recipe would look like.
From there, it’s a matter of brewing it up, tasting, modifying the recipe and brewing again.

For me my most prevalent online resources are podcasts. I have been a regular listener to The Session on the Brewing Network. I also listen to Brew Strong, the Sour Hour, and Brewing with Style.
I also listen to the guys over at Basic Brewing Radio (along with their video posts too).

I also read along with The Mad Fermentationist, Sour Beer Blog and Brulosophy.
I also follow too many people on YouTube to mention; except I’ll give a shout out to Chip Walton over at Chop and Brew!

That’s a snap shot of where we go for home brewing information, research, and entertainment.
Where do you travel online when looking for the next great recipe idea or technique?
Let us know in the comments.

Cheers!