Hoppy Belgian Strong Pale Ale focused on brewing with Golden Promise malt, the new El Dorado (Spanish for "The Golden One") hops and the more traditional Brewer's Gold hops. First Gold, a UK dual-purpose hop, was chosen as a late addition/knockout hop for its spicy and slightly floral notes, matching well with the esters produced during primary fermentation.
Aiming for a resinous, fruity and dry profile with some of the traditional Belgian character; a soft yet fairly-full mouthfeel should result from the use of oats and wheat in conjunction with a traditional Belgian yeast blend. This is kind of influenced by Idle Hands' "hopification" of traditionally non-hoppy styles (hoppy hefe and hoppy tripel were both amazing and intense, keeping the best, traditionalist qualities of the original styles and adding some new world flair).
4/16/16: This one's been a long time coming. I switched the hop additions around a lot to focus on El Dorado as an aroma hop instead of a bittering hop. Doing our sacch rest now.
4/23/16: racked onto 1oz El Dorado
4/30/16: sample was great with 1wk dry hop. Forgot yeast, so did not bottle. Heavy phenols up front, great belgian character, soft, medium body. Hints of tropical hops in the finish which become more noticeable after repeated sips, and phenols calm down a bit.
5/25/16: So this ended up with 1 week in primary, 2 weeks in secondary w/ dry-hop (El Dorado). Has been conditioning in bottles for about 2 and a half more weeks at this point. Just opened my first bottle to enjoy at home (had a bottle this past weekend while at Pat's place and posted about it on FB but needed to update here).
Pours a beautiful deep orange/golden color with an absolutely massive head with spectacular retention. With a head this milky, frothy and bone white, this reminds me a lot of a classic Duvel pour, which makes me proud. Lacing is mild but appears tiered when it does come about. Body is opaque, though effervescent carbonation can be seen around the edges of the glass if you look hard enough.
Nose is bright tropical fruit (pineapple/papaya/guava, mostly), mild grassy notes, solid amounts of Belgian funk, a bit of vanilla and honeyed malt. Not a trace of alcohol to be found, and at almost 9%, that's dangerous. In other words, this smells like a perfect Belgian strong pale ale to me.
The palate is mostly rich phenolic Belgian yeast, chewy honey-leaning malt notes and juicy, bright hops. Lots of clove-y aspects intertwined with pineapple and papaya, structured on top of an almost-doughy malt/yeast combo. Very big body on this beer. Definitely not a light tasting one, but it was never really meant to be. That said, the playful hop notes and intense tropical fruit flavors make this an enjoyable warm weather beer if you don't mind the high ABV. Carbonation is medium-high.
If we brew this again, I'm suggesting several changes. The hop bill seems pretty spot-on, other than the fact that we should probably double the dry-hop quantity. It probably would've been better to just do one knockout addition of 1 oz and then do 2 oz in the dry-hop. I feel the aromatic elements of El Dorado could be pushed even more, though they do come out here for sure. I would also say we could play with the malt bill a bit, perhaps utilizing Golden Promise as the whole base malt instead of splitting with 2-row and pilsner. Oats and wheat helped provide structure here, for sure, but I'd also like to see what this is like with a bit more of each. That's more of a weird desire for experimentation than a necessity, but regardless... glad we have so many bottles of this creamy, rich, Belgian yeast-influenced tropical-fruit-cocktail in a bottle!
