Categories
beer reviews

A quick one: Acorn Green Bullet IPA

The latest in Acorn’s fascinating series of beers showcasing New Zealand hops uses Green Bullet, a variety I’ve never heard of before. Green by name and green by nature — this tasted raw, grassy and herbal. I thought it was just the right side of astringent, but still probably a bit more bitter than I’d like. It slipped down very nicely, nonetheless.

Boak

Categories
beer reviews

Another brew, another hop

Acorn Brewery’s experiments with IPAs using single varieites of New Zealand hops continue with number four in the series, which uses Nelson Sauvin.

I was excited about this one, hoping it would give me that elderflower kick I love so much.

Unfortunately, in this particular brew, I found the bitterness just too intense. Is that to do with the hop variety or the amount they used? I guess it must be quite difficult to reformulate the recipe each time to maintain the right ratio of hop bitterness to hop flavour.

I’m still loving the concept though, and looking forward to the next one.

Boak

Categories
homebrewing

Build a better homebrew

We’ve not done a lot of homebrewing recently — we’ve either been out and about at weekends or too tired.

And, when we have brewed in the last year or so, the results haven’t been as brilliant as we would have liked. We’re getting to be quite finicky and are past the stage of being pleasantly surprised our beer is vaguely drinkable. We can buy drinkable beers easily and cheaply: we want our beers to be astounding.

We’re not trying to make wacky or extreme beers, and maybe that’s why its become a challenge. There’s nowhere to hide in something as simple as an altbier or best bitter — malt, hops and subtle yeast leave you very exposed.

The trouble is, it can be really difficult to nail down what’s wrong, particularly when it’s not so much an off flavour as the absolute absence of a key flavour. And, as you address some problems, others emerge. For example, we’ve been concentrating on improving the malt flavour by experimenting with lower temperatures, decoctions etc., so it’s disappointing then to taste the latest batch; note that, yes, there are lovely malt flavours; but be disappointed to find that they are overwhelmed by a ‘homebrew’ flavour that means we still wouldn’t want to drink several in a single sitting.

There are so many variables to play with — where do you start?

We’ve been inspired by enthusiastic hop-related posting at the Thornbridge Brewer’s Blog, Reluctant Scooper and Geoff’s website to get brewing again in earnest and, like Geoff, we’re going to do more single hop brews to try to learn a bit more about the differences between varieties.

Categories
beer reviews real ale

Motueka IPA

We’re big fans of experimental beers made with a single variety of hop and (so far) have yet to have a bad beer from Barnsley’s Acorn Brewery, so we just had to try Motueka IPA at the Pembury Tavern.

The beer was fantastic — quenching, herbal and dry, with perhaps just a hint of banana in the aroma — but, on this showing, we’d be hard pressed to identify Motueka hops if we came across them again without a bloody great big sign telling us they were there. We tend to hop from beer to beer if there are several on offer but went back for more of this, Tandleman-style, which must say something.

For more single hop action check out Geoff’s fascinating homebrewing experiments.

Update 17/03/10 — of course we meant “a single variety of hop” rather than “a single hop”. How crap would that beer be?

Categories
bottled beer

Hop extract but no hops?

We’ve noticed this week that a couple of bottled German beers on sale in the UK — including Franziskaner wheat beer — list only malt, yeast and hop extract in their ingredients lists.

It’s quite common for even decent beers to contain hop extract as well as hops to add a bit of pep, but is it going too far to use nothing but?

It makes us feel a bit uneasy.