East Beach IPA

Indo-American IPA
Bottle conditioned, in 500 ml, crown capped.
Release date 24 July 2017.

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Brewed on: 18.8.2017 Bottled: September 2017

This beer is a continuation of a lineage that began with East Coast IPA and progressed through East Beach IPA, exploring the impact of American hops whilst matching that with malt sweetness. It is once more lower in alcohol and also uses a fair quantity of late Cascade hops on top of the Centennial, Columbus and Summit. The twist with this one however is the use of curry leaves (Murraya koenigii)and kaffir lime leaves (Citrus hystrix) to lift the impact even higher.

Why did I do that? I love cooking spicy food and I have been impressed by the impact that both curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves have on a dish (although I don't use them together). The lime leaves give a sweet aromatic citrus boost that reminds me of Amarillo hops while the curry leaves have an oily hydrocarbon (think Benzine) spirit-like quality that puts me in mind of some of the really resinous hops like the NZ Motueka. I know the matches are far from exact but I just thought that in these times of hop shortage there may be alternative routes to that aromatic impact that should at the least be interesting, if not amazing. I think they are amazing. Would you agree? Both of the spice leaves were dried but next time I plan to use fresh curry leaves (in the DIPA). The chemical compounds in these spices are amazing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_tree href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_tree" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_lime)

Moreover, I was interested in exploring the Yeast Bay Vermont Ale Yeast from Whitelabs. I thought it would leave a little more residual sweetness than my usual California Ale Yeast (WLP001) and it is said that this is the 'Conan' yeast used by The Alchemist for their very successful 8% DIPA Heady Topper. In truth it didn't attentuate anywhere near the published performance but they did warn that this might happen and that its performance improves with repeated brewing. The attenuation was actually only 62% but it was much improved when I re-pitched the yeast to make a double IPA immediately after this one.

The name comes from a spectacular lifeboat rescue that happened very close to the spot where the label photograph was taken. The full story can be found here.

I am afraid there was very little of this batch put into bottle as the majority went into cask for the Norwich Beer Festival, The Plasterers Arms, Norwich and The Hopin micro pub at North Walsham. I will brew it again and put more into bottle.

Martin Warren, The Poppyland Brewer