Favourite Cascade Recipe?

[seymour]

Seymour, any thoughts on Dechutes Mirror Pond? I hear its a stellar all cascade beer!...

Oh yeah, that's a really laid-back but DELICIOUS pale ale, very similar to Anchor Liberty actually.

Have you heard the funny story about how Bill Murray put them on the map? My buddy was at a Celebrity/Masters golf tournament in California, attending a catered party at one of the swank mansions bordering the green. One of the waiters who wanted to promote Mirror Pond, his new favorite beer, walked out and handed a bottle to Bill Murray as he played through. Bill Murray held it up for the cameras, took a drink, and complimented it. Almost overnight, Deschutes sales sky-rocketed and led to lots new investor interest which enabled massively expanded distribution. The brewery found out the waiter's name and address and shipped him (and Bill Murray, supposedly) several cases each as a thank you.

[Barley Water]

Well if you like cascade you might also consider Amarillo, it's sort of like cascade on steriods. The thing with cascade is that it is a relatively high cohumolone hop so if you have harder water if it's used as a bittering hop you might end up with a bit of harshness. If I want to make a hoppy ale what I try to do is use a really high alpha acid hop for bittering which is low cohumolone (because I am dealing with moderately hard water) as it keeps the vegital matter down in the brew kettle (I like Warrior for ales and Magnum for lagers although I suppose you could use magnium for ales as well). Amarillo is great as a flavor hop as is Simcoe. Once you get the the aroma portion of the brew then cascade works great along with both Amarillo and Simcoe (plus I may start screwing around with Citra). Of course, dry hopping with any of those works really well also, just keep the contact time at 10 days or less and you should be good to go. I came up with a hop bursted American wheat ale last summer using those hops which was extremely sucessful; I'll be doing it again this year.

By the way Seymour, I agree that Liberty ale is a great beer. Compared to the hop bombs they are currently doing on the west cost it's pretty tame but back in the day it was "out there hoppy" for a commercial beer, similar to Harpoon in that repect. If I am not mistaken however, Ballentines IPA was post prohibition and based on the numbers I've seen for that stuff it was "peel the paint off the wall bitter", a 1.075 ale with 70 IBU's of bitterness (and they were using Clusters if I remember correctly which is pretty wild stuff). I plan to do a "retro IPA" trying to clone that one although of course I never tasted the original as it was before my time.

[seymour]

Good stuff as always, Barley Water. I'm not sure how Maytag got away with that "First post-prohibition American IPA" claim. Perhaps he meant, "first new one after prohibition", since Ballantine resumed brewing a recipe which supposedly went back to the 1800s? In addition to Cluster, I've read Ballantine also used mass quantities of Brewer's Gold/Bullion, which seem to be making a resurgence as we've discussed recently on other threads.

By the way, what's your personal opinion of Ahtanum hops? I've got some, but haven't used any yet, so any tips would be great!

[Barley Water]

Well I can't help you with the hops, I have never used them myself and I can't think of a commercial beer off the top of my head that features them.

In terms of advertising claims who knows; they used to advertise that Stout was almost a medicine it was so good for you (a claim I agree with by the way however I can't offer any proof).

[dreadskin69]

Well over here in ireland if you were post op in hospital they used to give u a bottle of stout each night to help boost your iron levels so their might be a bit of truth in that claim...

[Barley Water]

Well when it comes to stout I must admit, the Irish have it right. I really need to screw around with dry stouts again, I like having a low gravity beer on tap with a bit of character.

[Barley Water]

Well when it comes to stout I must admit, the Irish have it right. I really need to screw around with dry stouts again, I like having a low gravity beer on tap with a bit of character.

[Rookie]

The best beer I ever had with cascades was last year at a beerfest. I didn't recognize it as cascades at first, it was so well balanced. Too many brewers bombard you with cascades.

[Chicken Dipper]

That's the awesome thing though, your beer your way. I love a dry stout with a low hop rate, but I also love a US west coast hop monster IPA! Thanks for all your responses guys