Hophead (VI)

[SiHoltye]

I have for sometime been trying to recreate Dark Star Hophead and am about to keg my sixth attempt tonight. This is the first attempt where I have used late hopping exclusively and judging by the sample I just took I way just have cracked it!!! Obviously time will tell once it's matured but it tastes spot on from the primary

Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.70 kg Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 94.87 %
0.20 kg Caramalt (26.0 EBC) Grain 5.13 %
45.00 gm Cascade [5.65 %] (20 min) Hops 16.0 IBU
60.00 gm Cascade [5.65 %] (10 min) Hops 12.8 IBU
60.00 gm Cascade [5.65 %] (0 min) Hops -
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast-Ale

Beer Profile
Measured Original Gravity: 1.037 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.008 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 3.77 %
Bitterness: 28.8 IBU
Est Color: 8.8 EBC

[jubby]

Now that looks blummin luvly. Can't go wrong with that in my opinion. I'm salivating as i type

[WishboneBrewery]

I never thought Hophead tasted like cascade...
Its a good pint

[dave.wilton]

Yeah it is cascade as the single hop variety (or so it says) page 2 here
http://www.eveningstarbrighton.co.uk/im ... es2010.pdf

[pas8280]

SiHoltye that looks damn good what brew length have you gone with ? might have a go at that myself if you dont mind
cheers Paul

[dave.wilton]

Its a 23l brew length by the looks of it.

SiHoltye please let us know how this turns out, I'd love an easy drinking low alcohol brew for the summer

[SiHoltye]

I did a side-by-side tasting tonight with carry out Hophead from the brewery in Partridge Green.
I considered a few criteria:
Colour
Bitterness
Malt Flavour
Body
Hop flavour
Aroma

Colour, I saw as light yellow almost strawlike. I have a match.

Bitterness I thought of as the initial hit on sipping and the lingering after taste bitterness. I have a match here too.

Maltiness should be low, the brewery use low colour maris otter and a little cara, I used standard maris otter and cara, I couldn't discern any difference, a match here.

Body, my beer is a smidge more solid, it's not sweetness, it's the body after initial sip before the aftertaste. The brewery beer is lighter - more hollow. Any thought? Maybe check mash temp is no higher than say 66, and/or down caramalt to 4%?

Hop flavour, I have a little too much citrus hop flavour, easily remedied by moving hops later not before 10mins from the end I reckon.

Aroma, this is the area where I can notice a difference, maybe force carbinating doesn't help but I've not got the same level of aroma as the brewery. So I plan to stir a greater amount of hops in during chilling with the immersion cooler.

Two final notes are that the brewery make a small bittering charge at the beginning of the boil so I will do the same, freeing up hops for use later on. Also a comment on the yeast contribution. I used WLP001, for my palate that was spot on. However I want to acheive the corrected brew with Safale US-05 as I hear that's a yeast the use at Dark Star, and of course dried yeasts are less hassle!

Had a non-ale drinker taste them side by side, and despite their lack of interest in what I was doing they said they tasted very similar...for what it's worth

[BarnsleyBrewer]

Nice one, might give it a whirl....
BB

[floydmeddler]

Cheers for this SiHoltye. Have brewed a Cascade ale around 5 times now and it was inspired by Hophead. So, are you saying, add some bittering in for the entire boil, removing some at the end of the boil and steeping more at the end - at 80c?

[SiHoltye]

Yep. Add bittering hops full boil and with the late charge achieve an IBU total of 28. I've got some high alpha Apollo hops (~15%AA) I'm going to use for the bittering addition. They're bred from Zeus so I believe so won't be out of character in a citrussy environment, since full boil hops only add bitterness reckon they make safe sense.


As it is this brew is damn close, only tweaking required. The yeast was fab and since US-05 is cock on WLP001's profile I hope it'll prove interchangeable.
60g at 5mins, and 60g at 80degsC stirred for a while to extract max aroma oils. Dark Star add hops to their whirlpool and so want to mimic that agitation.
Brewing HHVIII Monday.

[Andy]

Go girl....

[floydmeddler]

OK. My mate wants to brew this for a party. Here it is scaled up to 25L and to suit his brewery:

Hophead Clone

Size: 25.0 L
Efficiency: 80.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%

Original Gravity: 1.039 (1.000 - 1.100)
Terminal Gravity: 1.010 (1.000 - 1.100)
Color: 4.4 (0.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 3.79% (0.0% - 10.0%)
Bitterness: 28.1 (0.0 - 50.0)

Ingredients:
3.8 kg Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
200.0 g Cara Malt
100.0 g Torrified Wheat
25.0 g Cascade (7.6%) - added during boil, boiled 90 min
60.0 g Cascade (7.6%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
60.0 g Cascade (7.6%) - steeped after boil
1.0 ea Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05

Had to add in 100g of Torrified Wheat to get that trademark foamy head. Really tempted to brew this myself actually!

All these ingredients are available at Thrifty Shopper and with the above recipe, it works out at 25p a pint.

Not bad!

[WishboneBrewery]

One to add to the to-brew list

[Spikesdad]

Its on mine too, as soon as FV is empty, I'm doing this. A great beer.

[SMASH3R]

Listening to some of the Brewstrong podcasts from brewing network, they seem to put a lot of weight on both the fermentation temperature control and the yeast. To summarise:

With the fermentation temperature you should always hold the temperature rock steady, or preferably raise the temperature slightly during the process, say from 18°C start to 22°C finish (depending on yeast strain). Sounds like this is most easily achieved in a (second-hand) fridge with a temperature controller (including a short-cycle delay timer to protect the refrigerant system). Apart from ingredients and major changes like mash temp etc, they rate this as one of the most important aspects of getting quality and consistent brews far above the use of 'fancy' brewing kit.

With the yeast, the consensus also seems to be that brewing on 3rd to 5th generation of harvested yeast produces far superior results to the 1st pitch. Harvest the yeast from the bottom of the fermenter after brewing and store it under beer in a 1-2 litre sterilised container in the fridge. When ready to use, pour off the beer and 'clean' it by adding boiled and cooled water. Shake up the mixture and you should get dark matter separating out first, followed by almost white yeast settling. Once the white layer starts to settle, pour about one-quarter of the remaining cloudy liquid in to the ready-to-ferment beer.