Wednesday 20 January 2010

Collaborative brew results.



As a follow up post to my previous mingling with collaborative brewing I thought I'd put in some conclusions. Depicted above, the IPA shown on your right is that from collaborative brewer and ex Heriot-Watt university chum Simon, from Cambridge. On the left is my own interpretation. Both were brewed to be as identical as possible using different yeast strains on most defiantly different water supplies, but came out noticeably different. To start, although its hard to tell from the picture Simon's brew is just shade lighter in colour. His beer produced a more forward bitterness, firmer more integrated palate with yeasty caramelised tones and alittle candy sugar. My beers yeast (the Daleside breweries house strain) pushed hop bitterness to the back revealing a malty fullness at its core, with plenty of jammy malt and fruity ester.

From my impressions I would say that my beer tastes the most out of style, drinking more like a heavy amber ale, whereas Simon's (using White labs English ale yeast) has that signature English pale ale character. Both of these classic 'old School' British India pale ales are decent beers, in fact half my batch has already been drunk. Sadly Ed's beer apparently had to be disposed of due to infection. Its happened to me before and its not nice, you just have to move on.

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