Imperial NZ/Australian-Hopped Red Ale

A strong red ale with aggressive bitterness from US Warrior/NZ Pacific Jade balanced by semi-sweet malt and notes of stone fruit, pine and citrus derived from a combination of NZ/Australian hops.

3/13/16: Brew day went well. Hit all temps pretty dead-on. Collected 8 gallons and boiled down to 6 before starting the true boil/adding the initial hop addition. Pre and post-boil gravity were dead on. Did a 20 minute whirlpool/hop stand after chilling to 140 F, then continued chilling to pitch temp. We're assuming 80% attenuation with WLP001 as we usually do very well with it. Here's to hoping. We'll probably dry-hop with another oz of Wakatu in the coming week. Cheers!

3/18/16: Only been 5 days in the fermenter but activity has seemingly slowed down to a crawl. Pulled a sample to check and it's still sitting at about 1.022-23. We'll give it another week and probably rack and dry-hop it then. Tasting somewhat rough-around-the-edges... definitely too sweet (which makes sense given the gravity currently), but it's actually pretty bitter and flavorful regardless. I'm getting a hefty dose of pine as well as stone and tropical fruits. So far I'd say this one's going quite well and will probably end up very solid. -A

4/16/16: Finally drinking a properly-matured bottle of this. Glad we didn't call it an IPA as we were pretty sure it wouldn't come out that way anyway. It's definitely malt-focused but balanced by a resinous, piney bitterness and unique dark fruit character (dates come to mind).

6/7/16: Just opened another bottle of this one that's been in the fridge for a while. Been a few months since it was bottled so hopefully it's come into its own.

A: Hard pour results in a few fingers of decently-retentive head. Good deep-ruby color, almost garnet-like, if a little darker, when held up to direct light. Head is kind of a khaki color. Surface is hazy and wispy.

S: Lots of toffee and treacle, dates and other dark stone fruit plus some undercurrents of botanical/floral character, lime seltzer and dried herbs. Wakatu probably was not the right varietal to dry-hop this with, all things considered, and I'm realizing this now. Since it's essentially just New Zealand's version of Hallertau, it has kind of a noble-hop aroma and didn't add as much heady citrus/tropical as we wanted in the final product. All things considered, this still smells like a solid imperial red ale.

T: Still lots of English toffee, some ethanol, pine and herbal notes, pie crust, a bit of citrus peel. Just tastes a bit too muddled and undefined to me. Bitterness is seemingly high but doesn't translate into anything special on the palate, making this feel kind of dull. We'll probably have to rethink this recipe quite a bit to get what we want out of it. It's quite drinkable and even enjoyable, but I'm too struck by what could have been instead of being excited about what actually became, and that's never a great sign.

M: I'd say we actually succeeded very well at making a "strong ale" with an amber ale bent that retains good, slick feel and drinkability, however. Probably one of this beer's strong suits. In a sense, this reminds me (and Pat, as I recall) of an intensified Irish red ale.

O: We will probably do something of this sort again, but change it to the point that it's likely going to be nothing like this. That said, I think I'll end up wanting to keep the malt bill rather the same. This is good beer, realistically, but just not what we wanted. I would like to achieve both "good beer" and "beer the way we want it from conception to actualization," so this is essentially a failure as it's only "half done" by that standard. -A