quote:
I believe i'm going to try my hand at making Lambic Geueze. I want to brew one every year and keep a rotating crop of 1, 2, and 3 year lambics.

I aspire to get here one day! I'm often impressed by the mixed ferm posts in this thread.

Finally got around to doing a review of my last brew. LINK
I started out designing a DIPA but my MT lacked the volume to handle the grist so I down sized it to an IPA. It was a 12g split batch where one carboy was DH & the second received DDH.

I periodically tasted both versions throughout the aging process & have to say that the final beer turned out completely different than what I expected. At first it was really sweet with unnoticeable bitterness that morphed into tropical flavored caramel. After about 20 days it had a great light orange hue & was reminiscent of Tropicália with a pronounced candy orange rind flavor. Finally, after 34 days of aging, the beer balanced out and really started tasting good.

Here is a pic of freshly poured glasses of each version. DH on the left & DDH on the right. Both have a little chill haze but the DDH is slightly noticeably darker.

Here are both examples after being allowed to warm slightly, DH on left DDH on right. Not sure if you can tell by the photo but the DDH was slightly cloudy & the DH could be read through.

DH:
Light amber with translucent orange hue. Nice off white creamy head with delicate lacing.

Strong orange & lime zest aroma that gives way to expressions of caramel, gooseberry & dried mango.

Orange again on the palate that recedes & allows other tropical flavors to come through. Very low bitterness & almost too sweet in the finish. Good malt backbone without being too intrusive.

Overall the DH version is a little too sweet. I mashed @ 156°F (or so I thought) to create a little bit of perceived sweetness to highlight the hops but this came out sweeter than I would have preferred (more on that later)*.

DDH:
Slightly darker with a little more suspended particulate matter. Strong foamy head with long lingering lacing. Looks like beer!

Orange & stone fruit aromas some tropical undertones. Malty sweetness.

Mildly bitter with balanced hop & malt. Sweet. Fruity with great hop flavor.

This came out better than the DH. Perhaps the additional hops in the dry hopping method led to a more balanced bitterness vs sweetness.

*After the fact, I decided to test my temp probes, first I tried the freeze point method & then the boil method. Apparently my MT temp probe was registering -8°F which means I really mashed in @164°F... which would explain why the beer is so sweet. Not sure when & where this could have happened but I recalibrated it & will employ an insta-read thermometer temp check into my process for redundancy & to prevent this type of mishap in future brews.

Definitely going to chalk this one up as a learning opportunity. Meanwhile, I'll be drinking & giving away 20-30 IBU, IPA...