Last week we packaged the latest brew of our American-style IPA, Ott. First brewed back in 2018, this is the sixth version of this ever-popular hoppy beer.
Like our beer labels, every time we brew a recipe we’re looking for ways to improve it, which often results in subtle tweaks to the ingredients or the processes that we use. We’re always learning, identifying new ways to use the equipment we have, and developing solutions to the many conundrums that producing such a wide range of beer styles on a simple, small brewing kit throws up.
Ott has always been our “rotating hop” IPA, allowing us the freedom to experiment with different hop varieties, both in the kettle during the boil and in the fermenter as dry hop. However we’ve always kept true to our original goals for this beer – to sit bang in the middle of East Coast juice and West Coast bitter. In the US of A that might be called a “No Coast” or “Mountain” IPA. Mountain sounds good, so let’s go with that.
The simple malt grist is made up of Extra Pale Ale malt and Wheat malt. As we discovered in the last blog post, this keeps the malt character low and allows the hops to take centre stage. To the kettle we added German Magnum hops for bitterness, along with late additions of Wai-iti from New Zealand and American Bravo and Cascade varieties for flavour and aroma. The brew was fermented with a West Coast ale yeast, and at the end of fermentation we dry hopped it with US Citra and Sabro, and Australian Vic Secret.
The result is a very pale beer at 5.8% alcohol by volume. Aromas of sticky sweet peach and mango from the Vic Secret hops meet dank hoppiness from the Citra and a trace of coconut from the Sabro. The flavour is light, hoppy and very drinkable, with a clean bitterness to finish.
Fresh cans have shipped out to Nelson Sauvin for distribution across NI so look out for them in your favourite independent bottle shop. They’re a part of the mixed packs on our online shop with Free Shipping across the store as part of our Black Friday weekend. You can also pick up 12-pack cases of cans, as well as limited edition bottles for anyone who just wants to feel like it’s 2018 again.
