Look: a little gunsmoke is visible as soon as I pop the bottle. Some sediment is suspended in the glass, which is an effect I really like in my IPAs. Thin, white foamy head that doesn't retain very long and quickly ends up as thin layer of bubbles around the sides of the glass. The beer has a little bit of spotty lacing.
Smell: though not as pungent as I would've liked, it has a big passion fruit, citrus, tropical aroma with some papaya and mango as well. Very pleasant aroma and I'm very pleased with this.
Taste: follows the nose well with a delicious blend of passion fruit, papaya, pineapple and some mango with a little bit of citrus zest. The malt is hardly detectable, which is something I appreciate.
Feel: medium bodied and a little more full bodied for a DIPA than I think I would want. The carbonation is good. The alcohol isn't noticeable and its not overly bitter but there's no sweetness to be found either.
Drinkability: fairly easy drinking and though its a little big for a session beer, its still something you could have a few pints of without a problem.
Overall Impression
Overall, I thought this was pretty good and with some tweaks, I can see it being very excellent. There are some adjustments I'm going to make to improve it, but otherwise, I am pretty happy with how this one came out.
Adjustments for Next Time
I'm going to adjust the malt bill. I'm thinking of adding carapils, reducing the caramel malt but using a higher lovibond malt for color adjustment, using some wheat for head formation/retention, and some sugar to lighten the body. I'm thinking:
11# 2-row malt
1# Carapils
.5# 120L Caramel
.5# US White Wheat
1.75# table sugar
I'm also going to up the hops. 93 IBU is good but there could be more hoppiness to it to really make this beer an exceptional DIPA. I've been tinkering with it and I think the goal should be to get to 120IBU but to stick with all Citra hops. I think the schedule might look more like:
1.5 oz @ 60 minute
2 oz @ 30 minute
1 oz @ 15 minute
2 oz @ 5 minute
1.5 oz @ turn off
1 oz dry hopped
That gets me up to 118.9 IBU. The issue is... that's a lot of hops. This recipe lost a lot of volume to vegetal matter and it was only using 6 oz of hops all together. This uses 9 oz. So I think the plan will be to brew more wort and to use a hop bag for the dry hopping.
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