This afternoon, I am making a batch of my all-time favorite beer, which happens to be a product of my own design. This one is a New Zealand pale ale that I call Flipside. This is how it is made:
1. Put three gallons of water on some heat. I have a six gallon stainless steel pot that I put on the stove on medium-high, and a remote (wired) oven thermometer probe that I clip to the inside of the pot to keep track of the temperature. The thermometer itself has a magnet that I stick to the side of the fridge and an alarm that I can set for when it hits a certain temperature.
2. Once the water gets to about 150 degrees fahrenheit, add crushed pale ale and crushed carapils malted barley in two separate cotton sacks. Steep the giant teabags in the water for about a half an hour, keeping the temperature between 150 and 170 degrees. After a half an hour, transfer the grain sacks to a bowl to collect the remaining malt extract as it continues to drip. Pour this back in once it stops dripping, then discard the used grain sacks (although I've heard of people drying it out, grinding it into a powder and mixing it with bread flour).
3. Bring the beer-tea (called wort) to a boil.
4. Remove from heat. Add six pounds of pilsen malt syrup (I have not yet invested in a full-mash setup). Stir it in, then put the pot back on the stove. Bring wort to a boil again.
5. Once boiling, add one ounce of New Zealand Green Bullet hops. Stir it in. Set a timer for sixty min (the full boil) and another for thirty minutes.
6. At thirty minutes, add one ounce of New Zealand Pacific Jade hops. Stir it in. It should now look something like a swamp on the planet Jupiter, if such a thing was possible. Set the timer that just went off to fifteen minutes.
7. At fifteen minues, add one teaspoon of Irish moss (a fancy term for dried seaweed). This is to help clarify the beer. Set the timer for ten minutes.
8. At ten minutes, there should be about five minutes left on the main timer. This is when I add the New Zealand Wakatu hops. It's also when I go run cold water in the bathtub, as well as dump in some icecubes and reusable ice packs to get it even colder.
9. When the last timer goes off, remove from heat and put the heavy pot of wort in the bath of cold water, leaving the thermometer in there.
10. Once it gets to 100 degrees fahrenheit, I take it out of the bathtub, stir the hell out of it with a whisk until it gets all foamy, and then I run it all through a sieve and a funnel into a sanitized six and a half gallon glass carboy. At this point, I add another two and half gallons of water, then the yeast. I use Safale-05, a dry American Ale yeast, but I'm sure that other yeasts would also produce good results.
11. Once everything is in there, I put on an airlock cap with some vodka added to the chamber (as a sterile liquid), then stash the full carboy either in the basement or in a dark corner of the house. It usually takes about a week or two for primary fermentation to complete.
12. After that, I transfer it to a five-gallon carboy, where I add one ounce of New Zealand Taiheke hops as a "dry hop." This one goes in the garage, where it's much colder this time of year, which essentially "lagers" the beer. Once the freshly added hops all sink to the bottom, usually after another week or two, I bring it back inside, let it rest for a couple of days, then transfer it to a keg. After about a week in the keg with the CO2, it's fully carbonated. It's really better if you let the flavors meld for an extra three or four weeks -- if you can wait that long.
While I don't consider myself a professional brewmeister by any means, this really is probably the best beer that I've ever had -- and I'm pretty sure that I would say that even if somebody else made it.
Taste, of course, is subjective, but to me, New Zealand hops just seem to have a fuller flavor to them. Compared to other hops that I have used, it's kind of like the difference between strawberries from the farmer's market versus those that you buy at the supermarket. The berries from the farmer's market just taste more like strawberries, if that makes sense.
New Zealand hops are easily among the best that I use in my own homebrewing operation. One more reason to want to move to New Zealand, I suppose.
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