9.22.2007

American Beauty Belgian Trippel IPA

I brewed an idea I had for a Belgian Trippel IPA a little over a month ago. I decided that Trippel IPA was a uniquely American idea, and named it "American Beauty", mainly after the Dead album. It has appeared done fermenting for a few weeks now, and I finally got a chance to play with it today. I measured the gravity, tasted it, and determined how much corn sugar to add to it to make it more Trippel-like.

The gravity was 1.014, which makes it 6.5% ABV. Not bad, but still more to go.

The taste was OK, but not quite what I was after. Of course, there isn't any corn sugar in it yet, so hopefully that's part of it. But the hops were a bit too much. Very grassy, and almost puckering, but not sour like bad grapes. Just harsh. I believe this will mellow with the corn sugar adding some balance and also be less upfront when cooled. This sample was about 74 degrees F.

I was originally going to add 0.60 lbs of corn sugar (this is a 0.75 gallon batch), but I didn't want to risk too much the chance that it wouldn't carbonate in the bottles, so I pulled it back to 0.25 lbs of corn sugar, for an expected end point of 8.2%ABV. Strong but not murderous.

I didn't really have a good way to transfer fluid into and out of the gallon jug. My beer thief wouldn't fit through the neck, and I didn't really want to draw five gallons of water to sanitize the siphon for this little operation. I did it all with a funnel, and probably introduced some oxygen into the mix. I also poured from the pot in which I boiled the corn sugar water, and of course it poured all down the side of the pot (which I didn't sanitize) and into the beer all splashy. So lots of procedural sloppiness (good thing I wasn't analyzing samples for the Tour deFrance) but hey Relax Don't Worry Have A HomeBrew! Done and done.

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