Recipe modification and going back to least favorite beer

I have been taking off from brewing in July and concentration on drinking my own homebrews.




I had too many beers going on back then ...

It was hard for me to look after all 8 beers at the same time and I think I decreased the quality of the beer I brewed meantime as I couldn't be paying enough attention to each beer.


MASS PRODUCTION = LOWER QUALITY


It's kind of easy theory from economic course at university (ECON 101)




What I did was to tidy up my brewery  to

looks better now....




It's not only tidying up my brewery, I was up to in last few weeks.


I tried my Imperial Black IPA.


The conclusions to improve the IBIPA is:
- Imperial Black IPA isn't dark enough and needs more roasty flavour as well body. So, adding Black Barley or Roasted Barley is necessary.


This is the modified recipe

6.50 kg Pale Malt

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 40L

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 80L

0.20 kg Chocolate Malt

0.50 kg Roasted Barley

40 gram Pacific Gem  90min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  60min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  45min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  30min

30 gram NZ Cascade  10min

30 gram NZ Cascade  5min

50 gram NZ Cascade  1min

Increased the amount of dark malt and also more 1minute hop addition. I'm hoping the chocolate malt will help the roast flavour and the huge hop flavour get along with its sweet toffy malt character.

I also tried American Wheat Ale and Hoppy Wit.

I confess that Hoppy Wit was my least favourite beer I brewed this year so far. However, I tried from the  bottle today with a friend. He told me that his favourite was Hoppy Wit over American Wheat Ale saying that Wheat Ale was hoppy and good beer, but not interesting compare to Hoppy Wit. 

Actually Hoppy Wit was brewed because of accident that my 8 months old Hef yeast didn't start up after I pitched the yeast. Yeah, I was planning to brew Hopfen Weiss. 

As it's been popular to brew the beer with Belgian/French beer yeast, Saison yeast. 

There's Saison Sauvin from 8 Wired Brewing, which is IPA brewed with Saison yeast. The beer has Belgian yeast character and slightly sour.

My friend tasted similar sourness in my Hoppy Wit and suggested me that it may be possible to brew Wit IPA as well as Saison IPA. I agreed with his idea, but I have to change the hops around.

I thought it is very cool to go back to some beers you wouldn't pay attention to or wouldn't like (at least me) and seek out a new possibility. 

I'd say Imperial Black IPA and Hoppy Wit will be my next brews I must do.