Batch 17

I spontaneously picked up a new hops variety “Huell melon” which I didn’t know much about, but it worked pretty well in an American pale ale!

When I looked around for hops I found a lot of hops with recipes tied to them, they had a clear purpose but then I found the Huell melon which didn’t have much information nor did it have many recipes to follow so I Googled since what kind of melon does this taste like? My first thoughts was watermelon since most gums and candy have watermelon taste but obviously there’s a lot of different melons. Unlike my suspicions, another brewer had tested these hops and thought they tasted like honeydew, something I agree with!

Of course I found out later that I agreed with the honeydew taste, but before brewing the beer, I found these hops interesting so I (spoiler alert) bought a package and put together a simple APA recipe. One thing I really like about homebrewing is that testing is pretty forgiving, even if we mess something up or test new ingredients it’s not a big disaster since the batches are pretty small and we don’t have to care if someone is gonna buy our beer. Obviously I don’t want to fail but the stakes are not that high and there’s no rules for what we can try so truly something I enjoy.

The recipe was really simple and had no surprises as I wanted to taste the hops. I’ve used the dry yeast US-05 many times and it ferments really clean without adding any flavor but since I’ve started using liquid yeast now I picked up it’s equal WLP001 from White Labs.

I managed to get 23 liters wort again with the planned OG which was really nice to see. Before using the Grainfather, and becoming friends with it, the resulting amount of wort and brewhouse efficiency was a complete lottery and since they both affect each other it would’ve been impossible to solve them at the same time. Just as a speculation, if I hadn’t bought the Grainfather and continued to struggle with this, I’d start with making sure that I get the same amount of wort every time and then continue working on the efficiency.

Why is it so important to have these numbers predictable? Well, they’re a cornerstone of your recipe and it’s not something you simply want to “try out” each time. If you, like me, want to try out a new hops variety then you don’t want it to taste too much alcohol, too sweet or dry, it should taste as you predict it will taste – but with a new flavor which you’re trying to isolate, sort of.

Anyway, I’m getting predictable and consistent numbers now so I’m happy.

The beer was really good and it felt kind of refreshing to taste an APA without the regular, classical Cascade hops but then I’ve to wonder, was it still an APA?