Homebrew Diary - Blackrock IPA + Hops

Jimmy Weasel - Saturday, November 4, 2006 - Print The Wax

Given that the first batch wasn't a failure, but exhibited signs of having room for improvement, this brew was begun with 2 goals in mind - to make the Pale ale a little stronger in flavour, and also to work out which of the sugars upon god or bog or whoever's great green supermarket shelves would yield the best of the secondary fermentation stage.

The hops component was relatively easy - add hot water and a bag of hops to a cup. Add beer ingredients to keg. Add hops to keg. Brilliant.

The sugar testing phase would be slightly more involved. This is a direct result of the risk of small eruptions of beer and broken glass should the ratio be too high. Careful amounts of: brown sugar, icing sugar, caster sugar, fruit tingles, jelly jubes and red jelly crystals were trialled.

The beer with the brown sugar had a noticeably more bitter taste than the control or "carbonation drop" beer. the caster sugar was very similar to the icing sugar in taste, but in terms of sediment, it was noted (with large amounts of mockery) that the particular box of icing sugar from which I was drawing my 3 grams was a hybrid of sugar and corn flour for the purposes of thickening confection. There was no noticeable thickening of the beer, but there was undissolved crap at the bottom. The rest, friends, is another story altogether.

The aroma of the hopped beer is a very pronounced fruity smell - fruity without being too sweet. It tastes mostly like it smells - grand. Thankfully, the testing/dicing around bottles weren't full longnecks. Two cases of Beer Lao were dutifully emptied to make 48 snack-sized beers for ready consumption. It is definitely easier to fit two stubbies in a crowded freezer rather than one longneck. And BeerLao is a powerful good beer to be drinking. Its fruity aromas increase as the temperature of the bottle rises - perhaps to allow for the hot and steamy Laotian climes from which they hail. Nice and easy to knock back. And stinking cheap. How beer that good is that cheap is baffling.

As a direct result of the correct amount of water, and the addition of the hops, the Blackrock India Pale Ale is definitely a summer beer. It is recommended that you make this one always using the hops, given the "thin" nature of the IPA. This is a great brew to sit in the sun without a shirt and swill back with a bunch of punks.

Jimmy Weasel

Making meals for the world to enjoy.

On the matter of the article...

Previous articles by Jimmy Weasel

Homebrew Diary - Barrel of Blackrock Pale Ale: The journey toward enlightenment need not begin in any particular direction so much as that it needs to begin at all - and if you create your own beery reality with which to illuminate yourself, enlightenment can indeed glass you in the jaw in the comfort of your own bathtub.
Kitchen Antics - Sweet/Sticky/Spicy Pork Stirfry: 80% alliterative. Deliberate? Subconsciously. All normal thought stolen by the weight and treachery of the outdoor world. A world where a boy has to battle all manner of foes armed to the teeth just to find the time to get back into the kitchen where he belongs.
Kitchen Antics - The Mushroom and Salami Incident: If you cook naked, and you get burned, then you're a chump, and I'll throw my empties at you from my balcony. Goddamnit, boy! Put some pants on and cook like a grown-up!

class=hst

Cook up a storm of octopus and lentils while wearing the Cooking With Jimmy BBQ Apron. Or a chopping board.

class=etc

Homebrew Diary - Wheatbeer of misery: If what can turn a foul mood around becomes the harbinger of the foul mood, what happens next? Turn it into a learning experience. And when that learning curve makes a late break over the plate, you'd better start to swing away.
Homebrew Diary - Blackrock IPA + Hops: It doesn't take a big man to admit that he drinks. It takes a big man to get wasted and perform impromptu sermons naked from a balcony; raving upon the ravages of the insanity of stata bylaws and noisy offspring in adjoining arpartments...
Homebrew Diary - Barrel of Blackrock Pale Ale: The journey toward enlightenment need not begin in any particular direction so much as that it needs to begin at all - and if you create your own beery reality with which to illuminate yourself, enlightenment can indeed glass you in the jaw in the comfort of your own bathtub.
Kitchen Antics - Sweet/Sticky/Spicy Pork Stirfry: 80% alliterative. Deliberate? Subconsciously. All normal thought stolen by the weight and treachery of the outdoor world. A world where a boy has to battle all manner of foes armed to the teeth just to find the time to get back into the kitchen where he belongs.
Return to Castlereagh: Enough to return. Enough to go back. Still, just not enough to sign up and be among the legions to call Scientology the religion of choice. And it has nothing to do with being an atheist or having something of an aversion to peanut butter in most forms.
Kitchen Antics - The Mushroom and Salami Incident: If you cook naked, and you get burned, then you're a chump, and I'll throw my empties at you from my balcony. Goddamnit, boy! Put some pants on and cook like a grown-up!
Kitchen Antics - The Chilli & Garlic Chicken Stir Fry: Als de tijd uw vijand is en u geen tijd om hebt te verspillen door dingen in de verkeerde orde te doen, bereid me omhoog door één van de bieren voor te drinken zoals afgeslagen uw groenten, zwengel de muziek aan, en organiseer uw sausen.
Kitchen Antics - The Octopus Pasta: The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda that inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. The term may also refer to only those creatures in the genus Octopus. In the larger sense, there are 289 different octopus species, which is over one-third the total number of cephalopod species. One thing is for certain - these buggers are tasty.
Kitchen Antics - Joy of the Baked Apple: Who likes apples? Most people. Combine those people with more people and you've got a large-ish crowd. Then what happens? It's a mystery; like life. Like apples - nature's pudding just waiting for an oven, and a daring savage with a knife.
Kitchen Antics: The Peanut Curry: Once again we take a trip to Spicytown through the shiftiest back streets a blind taxi driver could steer through. Staggering out to admire the tastes and the sights and the smells while trudging through the debris strewn about an unkempt street we find our hero nipple deep in thoughts about nothing in particular...
House Always Wins: There are those who actually watch late night television for the commercials. There are ones featuring ads about ads. Others are for the phone sex and chat lines with women who don't earn enough for warm clothes. Ads with short-sighted women with hook thumbs who do nothing but SMS all day long on their mobiles. And then there are the ads for those looking to participate as audience members for a show they know nothing about.
Washoe: if a messenger you must be known, then with messages you must return
Kitchen Antics: Lentils of Fiery Doom: Some like it hot, while others, well, don't. This dish, unlike revenge, is best served warm, or even hot, and is ideal for anyone who likes to eat. Guard your kitchen against all who would invade it with a sharp knife and careful eyes...

class=etc

Homebrew Diary - Blackrock IPA + Hops

Jimmy Weasel

On the matter of the article...

Previous articles by Jimmy Weasel

Reviews

Filth