I decided to have a brew day on Saturday and try out one of my own recipes. The beer I chose to make is loosely based on a beer I enjoy from Oakham Ales called "Citra IPA" and is my "interpretation" of it rather than a strict copy (from taste rather than a list of precise ingredients). I used mostly Maris Otter Malt as a base and added a little Aromatic Malt to spice it up a bit. Then for the hops I went for Columbus to bitter with and a raft of Citra added over the course of the boil. In about a weeks time I'll also add some more; in a process called "dry hopping" The idea behind dry hopping is that because the beer is cold none of the essential oils in the hops evaporate, meaning that more of the aroma and character of these oils will be retained in the final brew.
As the name suggests Citra is a hop that imparts various citrus flavours to the beer, particularly grapefruit; in fact our house now stinks of it as I dumped the spent hops in the kitchen bin at the end of the day (I probably should have put them on the compost heap!) Interestingly my wife and son hated the smell but my daughter and I love it and think they're a bit odd, I guess that suggests who got the lions share of whose olfactory genes?
Tasting notes to follow (in about 4-5 weeks time!)
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