Productive Beer Weekend Part 2 (DOA IPA tasting and Brewing Roggenbier)

The last post was getting too long so I decided to split it into two sections. This one will cover the brewing session as well as the D.O.A. IPA that was brewed in a bag as covered earlier.

D.O.A. IPA review.

D.O.A. IPA from the total brew in a bag posting.

I cracked open the D.O.A. IPA that I brewed a few weeks back, and if you recall the hop aroma at the time of bottling was pretty much nill. As I suspected, the carbonation had a huge impact in correcting this. This beer quite honestly shocked me. I have made many beers in my day, but only about 10 batches really stick out in my head as being outstanding in my opinion. This beer actually is one of them.

The aroma is thick of citrus, mostly bitter orange, pine, and some lemon. I know that palisade hops contribute a nice orangy character and this came through very well. The pine and lemon probably are coming from the combination of simcoe, amarillo, and glacier hops. The malt aroma is very nice, biscuity and toasty malt backbone with some caramel mixed in there. What is most shocking to me is how bright the hop aroma is compared to almost getting none at the time of bottling. This just shows the effect of carbonation on the finished beer.

The color is a rich light amber, and quite hazy. I suspect it is from the 10 ounces of hops used. The head poured is very nice and dense. It lasted quite a while and produced a nice lacing.

DOA IPA head

The flavor is good, mildly sweet with some toffee notes as well as biscuty crusty bread. The hop flavor is mostly piney up front then right in the middle you get a huge influx of grapefruit. This fades quickly to a sticky resinous hop flavor that lasts a while into the finish. What is nice is the bitterness is high, but never harsh. In my personal taste, this is what I am looking for in an IPA’s flavor. A nice balance between malt and hops, but with hops winning in the end.

Overall the beer turned out very nice. All I want to say is the first words coming out of my mouth when I drank it were “Wow, oh wow. Damn.” and in all honesty, I don’t do that often, especially with my own beers.

D.O.A. IPA is mine

Brewing A Roggenbier

Taking inspiration from the brew-in-a-bag method, I decided to use a 60 quart mash tun to try a semi- nosparge method. What I did was configure my mash as normal with 1 to 1.25 quarts per pound for the mash. Then when the mash was done, added all the remaining water at mash-out temperature to the tun. Then mixed the mash very well then ran off the wort. I have to say that although not as easy as the brew in a bag method and uses more equipment, it did work a bit more smoothly than with an full sparge.

Here is the Recipe.

He Let Me Push It Roggenbier
8.75 gallons of water
4lbs of Durst Munich
4lbs of Weyermann Rye Malt
2lbs Rhar Pale Malt
1lb of Wyermann Chocolate Rye
.25lbs of caramel wheat
1oz of Mt. Hood Hops (60) 5.1%AA
Wyeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat Yeast
1/2lb of Rice Hulls
3.83 gallons heated to 170 for mash temp of 154.
5.2 gallons heated to 198 for mash out.