American Pale Ale Archives - Five Blades Brewing

Totes McOats – New England Pale Ale

June 26, 2016 by Derek Springer 35 Comments

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

I challenge you to find a topic more contentious than haze in beer. Minus the odd, typically wheat-based style, the general mandate for clarity is the clearer the better–crystal is best. Well, for one reason or another our friends over in New England have decided to buck the trend: instead of crisp, dry, crystal clear megadank hop bombs the New Englanders have opted to follow a whatever-it-takes mentality to squeeze maximum “juiciness” out of their hops and yeast. As the result of their methods, the beers have a distinct haze/turbidity to them (“hazy af“) proponents claim enhances mouthfeel and the fruity-juicy character of the high ester yeast and New World hops.

While I am personally a fan of clear beer–you drink with your eyes, etc–I do not have a problem, per se, with folks developing/enjoying their own regional interpretations of a style. By and large I wager most folks feel the same and us West Coast folks were content to enjoy our thing and let the folks in New England do their thing… until homebrewer king Jamil Zainasheff fired off the “Tweet Heard ‘Round the World” and everyone lost their friggin’ minds.

I'm sorry, you who think this is acceptable beer have lost your minds. This overly yeasty crap is offensive. pic.twitter.com/TTTrT3nbhi

— Jamil Zainasheff (@mrmalty) March 2, 2016

If you follow the thread further it turns out he was merely upset about paying $9 for a beer that has poor fermentation character, but it was already too late: the New Englanders had already grabbed their pitchforks to defend their precious haze and the West Coasters had lined up to join in on the dump-fest. Now you have to have an opinion and the other side is wrong! Oi! (Also, Jamil needs to learn to properly orient his photos)

Here is the sad truth of the matter: many West Coast folks likely have not sampled a good representation of the NE style, it simply does not get made/distributed out here; my own experience was limited to a handful of sips from smuggled cans at bottle shares. Meanwhile, New Englanders have been living under West Coast beer imperialism for the last decade or so, maybe they do know better. Not one to get too tangled up in brewing dogma, I decided to see what the hubbub was all about and brew a New England Pale Ale myself. At the urging of noted oat enthusiast Scott Janish I decided this would also be a good time to experiment with his recommendation of > 18% oats in the grist. It’s so juicy!

Step aside Biggie, this is the new East Coast/West Coast rivalry.

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Neomexicanus Hop Review: HBC 438

August 3, 2015 by Derek Springer 2 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

Think about all the hottest new hops you know about: Mosaic, Azacca, Hallertau Blanc, Equinox–scores more are bursting onto the scene every year. Did you know that your favorite new hop is one of a small handful of its sisters that started its journey over a decade ago? The path to naming and releasing a hop is a long and highly selective process in which vary few varieties make it past even the first year of cultivation.

Hop Breeding Flow Chart – Credit Jason Perrault

Breeders begin by crossing popular existing varieties that they think will 1) produce interesting flavor characteristics and 2) possess the right agronomic traits (e.g. disease resistance, high yield, good storage, etc) and whittle the plants down year by year until only the fittest and most interesting make it into the market. In the latter stages of the process–years 8-10+–select breweries are given the opportunity to experiment and give feedback to the growers; Russian River Brewing famously rescued Simcoe from the brink and popularized it back when it was still an experimental hop variety. Finally, when the breeders, growers, and brewers all agree the variety is worthwhile the hop is given a name and released to the general market. In the mean time, the variety will unceremoniously be referred to by its codename (e.g. HBC 123, YCR 456, USDA 123456, etc).

HBC 438 (aka Ron Mexico)
debuted at NHC 2015.

Those of us fortunate enough to attend the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego this past year were treated to a special debut: a single-hop session IPA made by Russian River Brewing named Ron Mexico, the nickname of HBC 438, the experimental hop variety used to make it. The offspring of a Neomexicanus variety “Chuck’s Mexican” cultivated from the wild by Chuck Zimmermann and an unknown Lupulus father, HBC 438 is a rising superstar amongst the brewers who have had the rare opportunity to use it. Described as “tropical and stone fruit” with notes of “exceptionally unique herbal and mint” and possessing high levels of total oils and alpha acids, HBC 438 has taken an unusual path and jumped from a single hill to becoming commercially available much faster than most other varieties.

The biggest treat of all, however, was for those those in attendance of the seminar titled Brewing With Experimental Hops: A New Hop Variety Just For Homebrewers led by Jason Perrault, Karl Vanevenhoven, and Vinnie Cilurzo: a double whammy of 1) the breaking news that HBC 438 is going to be available to homebrewers exclusively starting this August/September and 2) that everyone in attendance was going to take some home with them! Through some finesse and friend-wrangling I managed to grab a total of five ounces of HBC 438, three of which I decided to dedicate to a single-ish hop review beer and two to blend into a multi-hop beer in the future.

Read on for details and my review.

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Neomexicanus Hop Review: Chama

January 8, 2015 by Derek Springer 7 Comments

Part of my series on neomexicanus hops.

I am a firm believer that there is a certain terroir that should go into the beers you make. The local combinations of water, malt, hops, and yeast created the beer styles we know and love today; true ingenuity comes from working to make the best with what you have. To this end, I am constantly on the lookout for truly local ingredients to use in my beers. This usually means using San Diego tap water, California grown barley, and yeast from White Labs. But where are you, sweet hops? Am I forever doomed to use varieties derived from European lupulus hops?

If you recall from my primer on neomexicanus hops, the genesis of this series occurred at the end of 2014 when I was tipped-off about a monastery in New Mexico that had successfully cultivated and began selling homebrew-sized batches of neomexicanus hops from their website. I was intrigued: here was a a brand-new set of hops that no one has even heard of from a variety that is 100% native to the American Southwest; up until this point, the only reference to neomexicanus I had seen was as a footnote in Stan Hieronymus‘ For the Love of Hops. At $8.33/oz shipped these might be the most expensive hops anyone has ever purchased, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I picked up 3 oz each of Chama (“citrusy, herbal, fruity”) and Latir (“spicy, herbal, flowery”).

As a way to justify the cost I resolved to do a bit of research and share the details, which became this series. Due to travel and the holiday season it took me a longer to actually brew with the hops than I was anticipating, but I am excited to finally share the review of my batch made with Chama hops. Stay tuned in the near future for my review of the Latir hops.

Chama Details

The Holy Hops website does not have the same broad analysis of the composition of Chama that they have for Latir, but they do provide the following. Interesting to note the high levels of beta acids, which are about the highest I recall seeing.

Availability: Holy Hops
Description: Citrusy, herbal, fruity.
Alpha: 7.3%
Beta: 8.2%
HSI: 22.1% (stores decently)

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