Alongside our friends at Attic Brew Co. in Birmingham, we’ve been cooking up new beers all year, and you guys have loved them. It started with NEIPA, quickly followed by Vermont IPA, West Coast SIPA and then SIPA: Mosaic. Most recently we brewed IPA: Citra, Galaxy, Sabro and SIPA: Simcoe – both of which are still available to buy here (or click to view their brewer’s notes).
It all started after our head of marketing randomly bumped into the guys at Attic while on a night out in the city. We have since held retrospective tap takeovers and shared many a beers. We’re now in a mutually beneficial brewing partnership where we use Attic’s kit to brew smaller runs of beers and their in-house canning set up. In exchange, Attic get a little bit of extra income to help buffer the hit of a tough 2020.
Anyway, it has lead us to here. DDH Pale: Citra has joined the party! Read all about it here, in our brewer Matt’s own words.
ABV- 5%
IBU – 39
DRY HOP RATE- 14g/l
MALT- Extra Pale Ale malt/Oats/Torrefied Wheat
HOPS – Citra leaf and t90 pellets
YEAST – London Ale iii
Sulfate:Chloride Ratio – 1:2
Overall Intention
We love Citra. Citra is like chips. Everybody loves chips, and they go with anything. But what’s better than a few chips? LOADS OF CHIPS. Double chips. This beer is like that, but it’s not full of chips, it’s full of Citra. It doesn’t taste like fried potato, it tastes of grapefruits, oranges, mangoes and lychees. And our good friends at Attic say it’s probably the best beer we’ve brewed together (so far!).
We wanted to brew a strong but quaffable beer packed with fresh and juicy Citra goodness, full of smooth oaty mouthfeel, and finished by a classic, present bitterness that leaves you wanting to go back for more.
Hops
As we may have mentioned, this beer is all about Citra, which brings so much in terms of flavour and aroma to a beer. It’s really versatile; it can be used as a pairing hop with almost any other variety, yet still stands up on its own in a single hopped beer. Full of citrus (think orange, lime, grapefruit) and tropical (think mango and lychee) notes. We doubled the amount hops we would usually add to the FV post-fermentation to maximise these aromas and flavours, while a good chunk had already been added as a post-boil/late kettle addition pre-fermentation. We really wanted to layer the different flavours and get more ‘three-dimensionality’ out of the hop.
Malt
We used extra pale ale malt as the base malt for this beer. Then we added a large ratio of oats (almost a third of the grist) and wheat to help increase body in the beer. It gives it a smooth and silky mouthfeel.
Again, a mash bed temperature of 68degrees Celsius leaves plenty of residual sugar in the beer after fermentation. This mash bed temperature leaves more complex sugar molecules called dextrins and less of the simple, more-easily fermentable sugars such as glucose and maltose.
Yeast
We used a London Ale iii yeast strain in this beer, letting the yeast ferment to a top temperature of 22oC, which provides a great base layer of stone fruit esters to the aroma. This yeast has low flocculation properties, which means the beer will have a nice, consistent haze. It has low attenuation characteristics, meaning a lot of sugars will remain in the beer, unfermented in the beer after fermentation has ended. This, combined with the mash bed temperature, oats, and water chemistry provides a really full mouthfeel and makes for a satisfying and rounded flavour profile.
Water Chemistry
The brewing liquor was treated with a 1:2 sulfate:chloride ratio, which softens the perception of bitterness and helps to create a fuller mouthfeel. We are really happy with the water profile we have been using for our recent pales, and this year’s can and keg beers have been brewed consistently with it.
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