Hollow Tree Farmstead Brewery

So this was my second shot at an NEIPA this year and it is better then the first.  The haze is there, it is hoppy and somewhat tropical. Two things I would like to work on are: Getting a lighter hazier look.  I love the orange juice look of some of these NEIPAs that are completely opaque. Focusing in on the hops.  I don't really get Citra, or Mosaic or Vic Secret.  I get lots of hop flavors, but I'm not sure that they blend correctly.  I think I may try to narrow down the hop selection to see which ones really stand out. All and all, I am very happy with this.  The tweaks are minor and I'll definitely be brewing this one again.

I ended up being pretty happy with the base of The Substance clone I brewed earlier this year and decided to try and make it again with different hops and yeast.  For this one, I picked up a packet of A38 Imperial Organics "The Juice" and loaded it up with my favorite hops (Citra, Mosaic, and Vic Secret). I generally tend to use dry yeast, so was interested to see how the A38 would differ from the English Ale yeast I used previously. I mashed in and was very close to my target temperature. The preboil gravity was where I wanted it. I whirlpooled, chilled and pitched the hops and stuck it in the fermentation chamber. A week later, the krausen had not yet fallen.  I dry hopped and waited. I took some gravity readings over the next couple days and the FG was right where it was supposed to be, but that krausen was just hanging around.   I decided at this point (being impatient) that I was just going to keg it. Here's the ...

Well, you win some, you lose some.  This beer came out OK.  It's drinkable, but feels thin.  Also, I think getting the color from the roasted barley was a mistake (or at least I used to much).  There is a distinct burnt taste.  Also, the hops don't really come through as I hoped they would. The color is not, bad, but it is not as clear as I would like for this one. On the plus side, it is an easy drinking beer.  It feels light and clean. I may or may not brew this again in the future.

So how did The Product come out?  Not bad, but there were a couple issues. First off, it had the dank taste that I love about The Substance.  It was also darker (do the fact that I boiled off too much during the brew would be my guess). This was my first time kegging, so the carbonation was a bit of work to get to where I wanted it to be and initially all the hop matter clogged the liquid out post.  The thing I've come to really appreciate about kegging is that you can fix issues almost immediately, unlike a lot of bottle issues and you don't end up with flat beer because you primed wrong or conditioned too cold. (The Substance on the left, The Product on the right) I also had some of the real stuff on hand to compare side by side.  One thing that I noticed immediately was that it wasn't quite as bitter as the Substance.  I'm still not sure why as according to BeerSmith, my IBUs were right on target. The other weird thing that I noticed was that by ...

Earlier this week, I picked up a mixed pack of beer from Harpoon.  One of the beers in it was the Craic, an Irish Red style IPA.  I really liked this beer and thought I would brew something similar since I had most of the ingredients on hand. The Craic is definitely not a traditional Irish Red and I was looking to brew something a little less hoppy, since I've already got an IPA on tap (My Bissell Brothers Clone, which I will be following up on shortly).  I wanted to make a more traditional red, so I set to work in BeerSmith and gave it a shot. This one was definitely easier then my last brew, with less ingredients. I chose East Kent Goldings, since I had a couple ounces on hand, but limited my hop additions to a First Wort Hop, a Whirlpool, and eventually a dry hop. I mashed in at 150 for 75 minutes. Weirdly enough, my preboil gravity was WAY higher then it should have been at 10 Brix (1.040 SG) even after I topped up the water preboil. I added the F...

Bissell Brothers "The Substance" is the first IPA that really made me taste hops (more then just the bitterness in a West Coast style IPA) and is still one of my favorite beers of all time.  Luckily, the fact that I live near Portland,  Maine means that it is pretty easy for me to get a hold of. A couple weeks ago, I saw a reddit post on /r/homebrewing about beer recipes from each state and The Substance was one of the recipes .  While I couldn't get every ingredient, I made some substitutions and brewed up a batch during our most recent snowstorm. Here is the Beersmith BeerXML file if you are interested.  You'll note that this is not 100% dead on, but I think it should be close. I ended up buying most of the ingredients from MoreBeer. I ground all my grain using my Corona style mill pretty fine.  Since I BIAB (brew in a bag), I tend to crush things a bit finer since I feel it helps with my efficiency. Per Beer Smith, I heated the water to 158...