My wife tried one
sip of this beer, screwed her face up and poured the rest away.
Everyone else at the tasting table did the same. One of the beers I
made for Beeroff4 was a clone of the very famous “pliny the elder”
beer for a double/imperial IPA round. I followed a recipe from a
forum, which had lots of continuous hopping with big C hops and tons
of late editions, plus lots of dry hopping. In retrospect I didn’t
chill the beer quickly enough, and I should have switched from late
hopping to whirlpool hopping which I reckon avoids ,miscalculating
the bittering of late hops by accident. I also tried out a new
dryhopping method using 6cm tea eggs as hop containers.
In hindsight both
of these issues prevented the beer from being as good as I would have
liked. It scored the worst of any beer I have ever entered into
anything. Every parent loves their own children, but I have to say I
wasn’t feeling much love for this beer. I think because I didn’t
manage to cool it quickly enough (this was the brew when I realised
that the tubes connecting to my plate chiller were not heatproof) the
flavour and the aroma additions contributed far more bittering that
I’d intended. This beer scoured your mouth.
I ended up
drainpouring quite a lot of this on Friday. I’d already given a
bottle to some friends of mine who adore IPAs and wanted to try it. I
warned them not to, I apologised when I realised how bad it was. So
imagine my surprise when on Sunday I get an IM saying we loved your
beer. The pumpkin one? No – the IPA! Didn’t you find it too
bitter I asked? No – not for americans my friends said! They had
another American friend visiting them. He wants to know if it’s a
clone of Pliny the Elder, and can you send us any spare bottles. Wow
– luckily I kept 4 bottles back just to see if it aged and got
better with time. I’ll be posting those off to my friends now!
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