Homebrew: Hop Ranking Simcoe

Hop Ranking 

Batch Three

Simcoe

So I have been slowly tweaking my original recipe on the base and shifting primarily to all grain with the "grain in a bag" technique... and a good dose of advice from some extremely helpful brewers. This batch I believe was close to 8 pounds of grain with 2 pounds of extra light DME added to round out the fermentable sugars. I foresee the next batch being all grain and Im thinking Im ready to throw a yeast variable into the mix and do a 100% brettanomyces primary with a blend of citra, simcoe and galaxy for a hop addition.

But back to the current batch of the Hop Ranking series. This batch is drinking quite nicely and holds a gorgeous foamy head for the length of the beer. I've fallen in love with the flavor punch of the simcoe hop. Big dank tropical pineapple mingles with woodsy pine and a citrus kick to draw out the bitterness nicely. This batch is by far the cleanest malt profile, which I attribute mostly to the conversion from less DME and more grain. Im thinking of adjusting out some of the caramunich in the next batch to lighten up the color a bit and possibly add some flaked wheat on a recommendation from a trustworthy source. This should help create more complex starches and proteins for the yeast to munch on. Im hoping this will result in a bit more roundness on the edges of the mouthfeel.

 Overall Im happy with this batch, I have found a few bottles to have brief glimpses of acetone wafting through the beer as the drinking temperature fluctuates. I am however highly sensitive to this aroma and have not found other people who have come across it as well. Not sure quite where those aromas are coming from but I have a sneaky suspicion its occurring as a byproduct of the plastic liner on the oxygen "eating" caps that I bought by accident. Blasted caps !

Always room for improvement.

In closing here is a little glimpse into where I came up with the name Hop Ranking...

Figure a beer with some heavy tropical notes and a hint of toasted malt was pretty clever.

Trinity the original toaster... for those not reggae savvy "toasting" is the art of rhyming over a rhythm and Jamaica is as tropical as it gets! 

Hence HOP RANKING !