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Monday, June 25, 2012

Tasting - "The Drama"

Holy Mamma did I knock this one out of the freak'n ballpark!  I sampled a 341ml bottle of "The Drama" tonight.... speechless.  50g's of Cascade at knock-out + 56g Cascade + 56g Columbus dry-hop, the aromatics make my toes curl.

S04 yeast worked amazingly well.  The brew is crystal clear when served near room temps (as any IPA should).  When I racked from secondary to the bottling bucket, I tied a homemade hop bag to the end of my auto-siphon (article to come).  The result is a brew clear of any hop bits; impressive considering I use pellet hops.  Colour is nothing fancy and in line with the commercial OCB IPA's that I've sampled.

A single 10 minute, 50g addition of Cascade did a beautiful job rounding out the hop flavour which is pure Cascade... I love it.

At 50.3 IBU:1.061, the BU:GU ratio is on the low side for an IPA (0.82); however, near 42 IBU of Columbus @ 60 minutes hits above it's weight class. The bitterness is sharp, aggressive, pungent yet remains in balance because of a slightly heavier gravity ratio.  Honestly, it's everything I crave in an IPA.  The bitterness lingers on and on.  The malt is there for balance and nothing more.  The Melanoidin adds a little something, something but is by no means the star of the show, that honour goes to my favorite hop... Cascade.

This one's going into the recipe book, without question.

6 comments:

  1. Hey Craig.
    I'm happy to hear that you have found yourself an IPA winner.
    Perhaps you will be willing to post your recipe?
    Or are you keeping this to yourself? :)

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  2. Here you are (first blog post)
    http://lowtechbrewer.blogspot.ca/2012/05/brewday-drama-ipa.html

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  3. Ah, thanks.
    I just keep seeing the brews you are doing and they sound delicious. Somehow I didn't consider that perhaps you are only now sampling some of these brews that you posted.

    Does this mean that you only bottle right? Or do you also keg?

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  4. I bottle condition for the time being. I've started collecting keg equipment but will generally only buy when something is on sale.

    Thanks!

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  5. Sounds good. I brewed the Epic Pale Ale clone recipe from the Can You Brew It podcast... it has tons of Cascade as well (actually, it's 100% Cascade) with a kind-of-ridiculous dry-hop schedule.

    Sounds like you love Cascade; give the Epic recipe a try sometime when you get the chance!

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  6. Yep, love the Cascade! Will check out the episode, thanks for the recommendation.

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