Updates on Hop & Liefde clone:
The very first thing I noticed as I took the water lock off was the immediate explosion of aroma from the Citra hops, I can't get enough of it. So I was really excited to taste the sample to see how far the beer has come. I tested the gravity and I am confident that we finally reached the Final Gravity of 1.008 and an abv content of 4.73%, excellent! Then it was time to try out the flavor, and lo and behold, the hops are taking shape nicely. The intensity of the aroma is not quite there yet, but it's only 4 days in, so another 4-5 days or so and we should be game, the flavor though, delicious. It's developing very well and actually turning out quite similar to Hop & Liefde, I can't wait to bottle this and see the final result. But now It's time to start thinking about the next brew, which brings me to my next topic...
The Next Brew: A Brewdog Recipe!
So I've been thinking about my choices a lot for my next brew, I've had a lot of fun trying to recreate the Hop & Liefde beer on my own, but now I think I want to challenge myself with a Brewdog recipe. For those who don't know, Brewdog is an awesome brewery from Scotland which caters greatly to the home-brewing crowd. For one, you can actually invest in the company's equity, and your investment can bring returns to your home country: once investment in equity from a particular country reaches a value of 500,000 pounds, Brewdog will open a bar on the highest investing city, and once the goal of 1,500,000 pounds is reached, a Brewdog Brewpub. Now this is a nice way to reward investors, or Equity Punks as they call them, the price of 1 share is 23.75 pounds and so far the Netherlands has raised around 222k pounds, still a bit to go before we see a Brewdog bar in Amsterdam, but hopefully not too long!
As a Brewdog investor you get a bunch of benefits, including discounts in their bars and webpage, and a free beer on your birthday for life, not too shabby. So if you are interested in investing, please check out the link below - this one for the Netherlands but you can select your country as well.
source: https://www.brewdog.com/nl/equityforpunks
Another great way that these guys cater to the home-brewing crowd is by open-sourcing all of their recipes, yes that's right, every beer you ever had from Brewdog has it's recipe published. The 2017 DYI Catalog of beers contains 222 recipes to play with, a wet dream for brewers like me, and today I will list two of them, of which one will be my next brew! So here are my picks:
1 - Elvis Juice - Grapefruit IPA
Here is the description from Brewdog's catalog:
Punchy resinous hoppy aromas blast from the glass; light floral and citrus notes riff against huge piney character. Showcasing Citra, Simcoe and Amarillo at their absolute best. A huge dose of grapefruit peel brings swirls of fresh pithy zest, accentuating the dry hops and building on the dry, biscuit malt base.
This beer is simply amazing, what a great implementation of citrus aroma into an IPA, the grapefruit works out perfectly and does not overpower the flavor at all, since most of the grapefruit is found in the aroma while in the taste it is very subtle. I would love to brew this beer at home and the challenging part is mostly on getting the hops right, since this recipe uses 5 different kinds. The freshness and citrus of this beer makes it a perfect candidate for drinking in the upcoming spring barbecue season.
2 - Old World Russian Imperial Stout
Here is the description from Brewdog's catalog:
This Old World Stout perfectly recreates the export stouts of years gone by; brewed to imperial strength to avoid freezing during its journey across the Baltic Sea to snowy Moscow. Full bodied with huge chocolate, coffee and roast flavours, this imperial stout employs a variety of hops to add enough bitterness and hop complexity to balance the
huge malt sweetness and rich mocha and molasses flavours.
An imperial stout with lots of hops to create complex flavors, count me in! I've tried this stout a while back and remember it was really amazing. Just the right amount of abv to enjoy two or three at a time, while the complexity and body is just amazing. This is also a great beer to keep for long term maturation, and to finalize, I have been wanting to brew a stout for a long time and this seems to have just the right amount of complexity for a first try.
I'm quite excited about this next one and I want to your your opinion on which you would rather see me brew, this will be a tribute to a great brewery which really cares about home-brewers like me. I can't wait!
Cheers!