Bear Flavored.com

Dear Luxury Yacht Review Readers,


Dear People Who Stumbled Onto This Page from Russia or Possibly a Wealthy Nordic Country While Searching Google to Research Your Next Luxury Yacht Purchase,


I have a new blog. It is called Bear Flavored Ales. It is about beer. Beer reviews, the beer industry, and homebrewing. I would love for you to visit it. That address is, again, www.bear-flavored.com.

I will update it a great deal more frequently than I ever updated The Luxury Yacht Review.

I may still update the Luxury Yacht Review every now and then, should the need arise.

But mostly, www.bear-flavored.com.


Thank you,
Derek

Citra IPA

Citra IPA ver. 1
6% ABV / 90 IBU
brewed on June 3rd
age at tasting: 7 weeks

2.5 gallon batch

As much as I love making beer, my true
strength is as a food photographer, clearly.

Grains: 0.3 lb cara-pils / 0.25 lb wheat
Malts: 3 lb extra light DME / 12 oz clover honey
Hop Schedule: 

1 oz centennial @60

0.5 oz citra @15

0.5 oz citra @0

1 oz citra dry hopped

Yeast: Wyeast American Ale II

If you don't care about any of my rambling preface, feel free to skip down a bit. I'll mark where the actual review starts and the explanations / backstory / bullshit stop.

So here we are, the very first completely Bear Flavored ale of my own design. While my peach hefeweizen was sort of an original creation, the base hefe recipe was taken from Brooklyn Homebrew and simply adapted to my needs. This, though, isn't based on any recipe whatsoever, just my own whims.

Here's the inspiration: the world of beer is a magical, growing world. IPAs have been especially fun in the last 20 years, because unlike other ingredients used in alcoholic beverages, new hops are being developed all the time, creating totally new, unique flavors. One of the newest and most interesting breeds of hops is called "citra," and since it was just created in 2008, not many breweries have had a chance to work with it yet. But after trying a few beers that used it, and reading descriptions online, I knew I had to give it a try. Citra hops have this unbelievably potent aroma — it's a nice hoppy smell, but with hints of mango and peach. It's... amazing. I want candles made of it. I want clothing made out of it. And obviously, I wanted to use it in some beer as soon as possible. So it was time to design an IPA around it.

I read from a number of homebrewers online that citra isn't great as a bittering hop, despite its relatively high alpha acid content, and might lead to some weird flavors instead of the nice clean bitterness I wanted. I decided to use centennial as a bittering hop instead, as it met all those qualifications — mid-level alpha acid content, floral fruity qualities, and a clean unaggressive bitterness.

Here's where I screwed up a bit. It's summer, I needed to ferment my beer at reasonably cool temperatures, and therefore, the beer needed to fit in my temp-controlled mini fridge. So I started brewing smaller 2.5 gallon batches. And for half sized batches, I figured I could mostly just cut the amount of ingredients in half, with a few adjustments. For an IPA, I'd want about 5 or 6 ounces of hops per 5 gallons — here, I decided to use two ounces of hops in the boil and another ounce for dry hopping. I didn't consider that I just couldn't split things in half like that without also adjusting the timing of the hop schedule. True, I was only adding a total of two ounces of hops to the boil, but I was still adding a full ounce of centennial at sixty minutes, and with half as much wort, that led to far greater hops utilization. Long story short, when I put my recipe into some brewing software, I realized I had brewed an IPA with 91 IBUS. Most IPAs land somewhere around 50 to 70 IBUS — 91 is hitting imperial range. But Imperial IPAs usually have double the malts too, to give them enough sweetness to balance things out. I was using pilsner malts with very little of anything that would add malty sweetness. In fact, I was purposefully trying to go in the complete opposite direction from my first, recipe-based IPA, which was way too malty. I had brewed this IPA to be as dry and hop-focused as can be. Whoops.

Well, my first taste of the beer after a week of aging confirmed what I feared — there was absolutely no sweetness, and it was incredibly bitter, dry, and tart. It was a lot like drinking grapefruit juice. I liked it, but I knew it was absurdly unbalanced and only major hopheads would enjoy it. Then I let it age for another two weeks, before trying another bottle.

Actual Review: You'll hear it a lot from homebrewers, but what an incredible difference just a few weeks of aging makes. This IPA went from an overwhelming bitterness that washed out any other flavors, to a dry-but-smooth, super citrusy west coast style IPA. Don't get me wrong, it's still unbalanced. It's still bitter, but somehow, the bitterness seems smooth and fairly refreshing now. I'm actually really happy with this one. I like IPAs on this end of the spectrum, and it has a good amount of fruitiness to make up for its lack of sweetness. It's smooth and drinkable and extremely hoppy. It doesn't taste exactly like any other IPAs I've had, but there's no weirdness to make it unique in a "Oh huh... that's... different" kind of way.

This won't be my go-to IPA recipe, obviously. It fits a particular whim, but it also doesn't really satisfy what I was trying to accomplish — an IPA based around the strong, unique character of citra hops. After recently discovering a few other breweries with citra IPAs (and you can read those reviews here) I've concluded that maybe citra hops are just very difficult to make taste the way they smell. I know it can be done, because I've had at least one beer like that. But most citra IPAs have a unique taste that isn't necessarily directly fruity — the fruitness is there, but alongside something else. My IPA, unlike those others, took on more of a grapefruit flavor, wrapped around some tasty citrusy hop flavors. Citra creates a very interesting mouthfeel, but I think the trick to getting those strong aromas to come out is a massive amount of dry hops.  In this case, I obviously leaned a lot more toward a bittering hop profile, and that clearly took over. I'd like a citra IPA to have modest IBUs, I think — otherwise, citra may as well be any number of other American hops.

Future Revisions: In this case, having ordered extra citra hops, I ended up brewing a version 2.0 not long after this one, so I'll already have a comparison in a few weeks. I actually didn't change that much for the second version, and I still kind of messed up the IBU calculations. Number 2 is end-hop loaded instead of front hop loaded, though, so there should be some differences. We'll see. Other than that, I guess I would just tweak my recipe to make it more "balanced," with maybe gold malt extract instead of extra light DME, even less bittering hops, and at least double the amount of dry hops.

Some Other Citra IPAs, Reviewed

Kelso IPA #4 — B+
Mikkeller Single Hop Citra IPA — B+

Kelso Brewery is one of New York City's few true "local" breweries — by which I mean, they actually brew everything here and don't outsource the majority of the work to Utica. (In fact, they contract brew for Heartland Brewery, which is oddly one of the few brewpubs in NYC. For a city with so many hipsters and beer nerds, it's sad that we're so lacking in actual beer production.)  Anyway, despite their legit local cred, you tend not to see Kelso's brews all that many places — they seem to have a small fraction of the distribution that Sixpoint enjoys. So when I saw that they were brewing an IPA remarkably similar to the IPA I was attempting, I was like "Hey, that's cool." I don't know anything about what went into this IPA other than its hop profile (nor do I know the hop schedule) but nonetheless, Kelso's IPA #4 was a citra-centered ale with cascade and centennial hops backing it. And that is essentially what I did — cascade and centennial are considered extremely similar sister hops, with centennial having a higher alpha acid content, and therefore being most often used as a bittering hop. Which is what I did, though I didn't add in any additional cascade. So anyway — sounded similar; I had to try. Of course, if you've read my assessment of my own beer, you know that it didn't come out anything like your typical, balanced IPA.

I'm not at all surprised that Kelso's citra IPA and Mikkeller's Citra IPA taste nothing like mine, but it is bizarre how little either IPA tastes like what I expect from citra. See, actual citra hops, before they're put into beer, have this remarkable, incredibly fruity mango/peach flavor, but from something that's still distinctly hoppy. It really might be one of my favorite smells in the entire world. I expected citra hops to taste like this once added to beer, but they don't, really. Both Mikkeller and Kelso's citra IPAs taste pretty similar, with what I'm guessing was a more-or-less comparable amount and variety of malts. Both are sort of malty and sweet, as far as IPAs go, similar to other east coast IPAs. Oddly, I think citra benefits from a beer that isn't too sweet, and definitely not too malty. Both seemed like they would have gained from being lighter, letting the juiciness of the hops shine through. Or maybe — as I might have learned from my own citra IPA — citra comes out as kind of tart and grapefruity when it's allowed to contribute to the bitterness. If Kelso and Mikkeller wanted to avoid that, I can see why they would have gone darker. As I concluded before, I think citra is best used, and certainly most unique, as an aroma hop.

As a flavor hop, it's still kind of different in a way I can't quite explain. It still has some fruitiness, but the flavors are all melded together into this rounded, very smooth taste that somehow also has a sharp bitterness at the same time. It's interesting and unexpected, but it's hard to pick out or describe individual flavors. It creates an IPA decidedly unlike other IPAs, and yet it's not as bursting with flavor as I would have expected, or hoped. So, pro's and con's, I guess. It's definitely still a fantastic hop, and both of these beers were among the better IPAs I've had recently. I don't remember either specifically enough to review them individually, but I tasted them a few days apart and was definitely left with the impression that they were quite similar. Single-hop IPAs usually have a hard time achieving complexity, for obvious reasons, so the fact that these were quite good — judged against their general style — just makes me want to see citra used in more creative ways.

A WHOLE ****TON OF IPA REVIEWS

Weyerbacher Hops Infusion (PA) — B-
I think hops tend to fall into about four approximate categories: citrusy (and juicy), spicy, piney (which can blend into spicy), and floral (which can blend with piney.) Weyerbacher's IPA embodies the spicy end of the spectrum, with a very dry, spicy, and slightly piney taste. The bitterness is extremely prominent, with little in the way of sweetness rounding it out, and the spicy character of the hops themselves lending to a consistent mouthfeel and dry aftertaste. If you love hops doing that kind of thing, then this is an IPA for you. Personally, not being a huge fan of spicy dry hops, I'd rate this one as average, though it's good for what it is.

Ballast Point Sculpin IPA (CA) — B+
While I don't know that I'd consider this one of the best IPAs I've had, I can see why Sculpin is often mentioned amongst the top tier of IPAs in the country. It's not overrated, it's just a quintessential IPA that's perfectly executed. It's a little dry and not quite as juicy as I'd like, but I suspect if I had this beer fresh, on tap somewhere, it would be more impressive. As it is, the bitterness is a bit monotone, but tasty nonetheless. There's a nice clean grapefruit taste that accents the light-body lack of sweetness. I don't mind unbalanced IPAs — I like the west coast style because I prefer that they not be overly malty — but I am honestly surprised at how unbalanced Sculpin is, tending toward that dry-mouth bitterness. I would certainly get this one again, though I doubt it'll ever enter the ranks of my all-time favorites.

Great Divide Titan (CO) — B
For an IPA, this beer is intensely smooth and malty, and tastes a lot more like the English variations of the style than what you'd expect from a Colorado IPA. I could be mistaken — or maybe I just got a weird bottle — but I thought Titan sported the unique taste of British yeast, something you don't find much from that part of the US. There's a definite hop kick to the aftertaste, and a bitterness that lingers on the tongue, but otherwise you could convince me that this was a nice creamy Scottish ale. It's tasty though, and a nice unique blend of styles. Even though I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, I wouldn't mind drinking Titan on a regular basis.

Ithaca Flower Power (NY) — A
Flower Power is one of the driest east coast IPAs that I've had; it seems much more like a west coast beer. And it really lives up to its name. Floral and crisp and light in color like a thick golden pilsner, it's shocking to find that Flower Power packs an 8% ABV.  Yet as drinkable as it is, the hops are still what sells this IPA. Flower Power embodies the floral side of the hop spectrum, with enough of a hint of pine and citrus to balance things out. It works well for the beer, especially given its crisp body and mouthfeel. Well done in every way, Flower Power is probably in my top 3 IPAs.

Lagunitas IPA (CA) — A+
This is one of those rare cases where a beer is ubiquitous not just because the company has excellent distribution — although that's probably most of the reason — but also because it's just an all-around excellent (and sessionable) beer. Not that I was paying much attention at the time, but I remember this IPA as one of the first that got me into the style. (And thank god for that; what did I even drink before I became a hophead convert?) It's no wonder to me now. After sampling nearly every IPA I can get my hands on, I keep coming back to Lagunitas as my perfect IPA — perfectly bodied, pleasantly bitter, with mouth-watering citrus / floral / juicy hop flavors. It's everything I want in a beer, and it looks beautiful too. Now, don't get me wrong, I know it's not a very adventurous IPA. But we all need a beer we can come back to anytime, and easily kill a sixpack of, and right now, this is it for me.

Stone IPA (CA) — A-

The hops here are focused on a nice clean bitterness, and only as it warms, on certain sips, do the juicy citrus hops shine through. In another words, this is a pretty quintessential west coast IPA, fairly similar to Sculpin. It's lighter, though, and despite the very present bitterness, it's still quite flavorful. One of my favorites, though I can't think of much else to say about it. Stone knows their way around hops.

Victory Hop Devil (PA) — B+
If east coast IPAs are more your thing, this should probably be one of your go-to beers. Well balanced between malty, hoppy, bitter and fruity, this a great representation of the style, probably one of the best. Since I like my IPAs a little less malty, I'm not sure if I consider this one of my favorites. I can't really pinpoint anything remarkable about it, just that it's good.

Butternuts Snapperhead (NY) — B-
This is a quirky little beer, and not just because it's one of the first IPAs I saw appear in (and only in) cans. Despite its billing, this one doesn't seem much like an IPA; I'd say it's like a cream(y) ale mixed with a pale ale. Judged by those funky hybrid standards, I thought it was pretty good: it's beautiful, creamy, and drinkable, with a pleasant mouthfeel that brings traces of hops, citrus and smooth light maltiness. Don't quote me on this, but I believe I also detected British yeast, adding to the smoothness of the beer's profile. If you're a hophead, this might not be your thing, but it's a decent beer for what it is.

Southern Tier IPA (NY) — B+

While nothing groundbreaking or particularly unique upon first taste, this is one of few IPAs I've had where I can really pinpoint the melding of various hop flavors (without it being jarring or weird.) At first, it seemed not unlike the Lagunitas IPA, as it's the same color and achieves the same almost-creamy smooth mouthfeel, with light malts, a darkened gold hue, and a nice floral/citrus aroma typical of the style. But this one is less juicy or fruity, and actually has a lot of those spicy / peppery hops kicking around. Which sort of masks the fact that this one isn't very bitter — hoppy, but not that bitter. This isn't my favorite combination of hop-types, but it's very well done.

Redhook Long Hammer (WA) — C+
Long Hammer's main selling point is its price — sixpacks are usually a few bucks cheaper than any other IPAs in the beer aisle — so I wasn't expecting anything great here. In that sense it met my expectations, and it's not bad per se, it's just a little... wonky. The hops don't seem to be quite balanced right, and don't quite blend together. The maltiness is a little off and the carbonation, rather than making the beer pleasant to drink, seems to add a bit of a weird metallic bite. I can't tell if this is the result of capable brewmasters just trying to make an IPA that's more affordable — which is fine, really — or an IPA that for whatever reason didn't come together right, but got released anyway. While I thought it was drinkable, I probably wouldn't buy it again unless I was feeling particularly cheap.

Sixpoint Bengali Tiger (NY) — B

I've had Bengali Tiger various times on tap, but since Sixpoint just released their four main beers in cans, I figured I needed to include their IPA in this roundup. It's a nice blend of the various 'types' of IPAs, with a bit of citrusy, spicy and floral joined together, but not quite as malty and sweet as many east coast IPAs. It makes for a nice well-rounded beer, but also an IPA with nothing particularly distinct going on. Beers like this are great when you're out at some generic bar, and it's likely to be one of the best things on tap — but nothing I'd stock my fridge with on a regular basis.

21st Amendment Hop Crisis (CA) — B-
Technically, this one shouldn't really count for an IPA roundup, but I've sort-of been collecting 21st Amendment's line of interesting cans and badass boxes — which, I have to admit, are usually superior to the beer they contain. Fittingly, Hop Crisis is an okay Imperial IPA, but nothing particularly special. The ABV is on the high end of the spectrum even for the style, at 9.7%, despite the smooth golden color the beer pours. While it's light, it's also a bit syrupy, and the alcohol is a bit too warm and noticeable. The hop flavor is nice and juicy, but I could have gone for even more hops. There's very little bitterness, just a nice citrusy flavor that merges into the sweetness. Okay, but underwhelming.

THE SCAR (BY) CHINA MIEVILLE

Published 2002, 656 pages
Characters: B+
Writing: A-
Plot: A
Pacing: A
Poignancy: B+


I've read a lot of China Mieville books in the last year.  The Scar is probably the best of the those books, on a technical level, though it's not my favorite.  Here, Mieville seems to recognize his strengths while trying a bit too hard to shy away from his weaknesses, creating a novel that is consistently good and often great, yet never quite so stunning or impressive as Perdido Street Station.

The Scar, like seemingly all of Mieville's novels, takes place in a city that eventually begins to shape the plot through its own quirks and circumstances. The Scar is set not long after the events of Perdido Street Station, following an exile named Bellis who had to flee her home following the events of that previous novel. That is the only connection between the two books, really — the events of one set in motion the events of the next, but you could easily read The Scar on its own. Proceeding with the plot summary: Bellis is captured by mysterious pirates, who take her to Armada, a legendary floating city composed of thousands of stolen ships lashed together, existing for hundreds of years as a vagrant metropolis, impossible for anyone to intentionally track down. Of course, the story only begins there. The novel deals with a city of pirates, but the story isn't as topical as that tease-y synopsis suggests — stupid Johnny Depp — as pirating actually has very little to do with the plot. Once Bellis arrives in Aramada, she's soon involved in a complicated conspiracy and a hard-to-explain-without-giving everything-away plot to lead the city into a new era. Shit gets real.

Like with Perdido Street Station, the strength of the novel is all the odd, imaginative stuff that goes down. But Perdido Street Station reads like a fireworks display of creativity, with ideas bursting and arcing away out of nowhere, making little contribution to the plot, yet stunning nonetheless. The Scar is more balanced. The plot unfolds at a steady, well thought-out pace. Everything is well structured. Most of the random ideas Mieville throws out make an obvious contribution to later events in the book. And that's both an improvement and a detriment. The Scar is probably a better novel on a technical level, but it never really blew me away. The plot is more structured, and cleverly executed, there are moments when it doesn't feel quite satisfying. The characters are amongst the strongest Mieville has created, but as I've noticed in his other novels, many of them feel like a tease, as if he doesn't quite know what to do with them once they're there — developed to the point where you'd expect some last development from them that never comes. Mieville is also very distant with some of his plot points in The Scar — in particular the Avanc, which he seems to consciously keep at an arms length from the reader, as if worried he couldn't do it justice.

While not his most sprawling or ambitious work, The Scar is a fantastic novel and proof that Mieville has a deep understanding of his craft, an awareness of his own strengths that allows him to create a chaotic, vast world that somehow seems perfectly organic and tangible. In tone — if not in feasibility — The Scar and Perdido Street Station are perhaps the most realistic fantasy-type novels I've ever read. (Uh-oh, gritty... dark... pirates... vampires... how has this not been made into a movie yet?)  Mieville's ideas are so impressive not just because of their variety and uniqueness, but because they fit together like jigsaw pieces, creating something more impressive than any one of them, and somehow, also, creating a rich and compelling narrative.

EMBASSYTOWN (BY) CHINA MIEVILLE

Published 2011, 368 pages
Characters: B-
Writing: B+
Plot: B
Pacing: B
Poignancy: B-

Embassytown is a good book, an OK sci-fi novel, and a slightly disappointing China Mieville novel, given his demonstrated potential. Of the four Mieville books I've read now (I'm concurrently reading The Scar, but that review won't be up for a few weeks) Embassytown is probably the least-great. Probably, that just goes to show how strong Mieville is as an author. Yet here, he shies away from the those things that previously made him such an interesting, unique writer, even as he seems to embrace the same themes and stylistic decisions that should play to those very strengths. Embassytown, like all Mieville novels that I've read, is as much about the city in which it takes place as any of the other plot components. The city is a character — though here, it never becomes the main character, which is maybe the primary difference.

Embassytown only embodies that theme in its setting, a human ghetto set within the borders of an alien city on a frontier planet — it never really deals with the nature of cities within cities the way Mieville's other stories did. Embassytown is the name of a human colony nested within the city of the Hosts, aliens who speak an extremely unusual language. The nature of language itself, rather than that of cities, becomes the main "character" of the novel. There are two quirks to the language of the Hosts: first, they have two mouths, and so their language is layered, a dual language of simultaneously spoken sounds, thus making it impossible for a human to physically reproduce. Secondly, the Hosts are stuck in some bizarre stage of evolutionary psychology, and are not sentient in the way that humans are sentient, despite having evolved society, cities and complex bio-technology. This is also due to their unique language, which isn't a language to them at all, but manifested thoughts. To the Hosts, their words are not 'words' but simply shared, pure reality; they have not evolved the concept of signifiers or metaphors or language as humans understand it. As a result, Hosts cannot lie; what they speak can only directly relate to the world around them. Also as a result, all other organized language is gibberish to them, including their own when not spoken by another Host. In order to communicate with the Hosts, humans have bred special clones, identical dual ambassadors that are able to speak the dual language as one mind. Eventually, naturally, this tedious and imperfect system causes an upset in the balance between the species. Hilarity ensues.

So Embassytown is about language, more than anything. Every plot development is a result of language. The main character herself is caught up in the concept of language — as a child, she was forced to undergo a sort of performance for the Hosts in order to become a living simile, as the Hosts are only able to refer to things that have actually occurred. Embassytown deals with linguistic playfulness far more directly than any other sci-fi book I've read in the past, yet it makes the theme seem obvious and necessary. With an alien civilization, wouldn't the differences in language dominate everything, every relationship and interaction between those societies? And yet, with this interesting and undoubtedly unique conceit, the book takes on a directness that is simultaneously a great idea and its main flaw. Mieville's strengths are in his imagination, and his imagination seems to be best when he gives himself a lot of material to play around with. Embassytown is so straightforward in the themes it addresses that it misses out on the atmosphere and intrigue that usually go with Mieville novels. This isn't a fault — there's nothing wrong with what's actually there, just the sense of missing pieces that could make the story better. The plot seems weak and thin, and so do the characters. Mieville's past novels generally hinge on some mysterious outside force driving the action, but since it's the characters here who push things forward, their flaws become more problematic. I just didn't buy — or even understand — a lot of the developments in the second half of the novel, because I felt no connection to the characters' logic. Worse, a lot of the characters were wholly pointless by the time everything wrapped up.

Embassytown is still good, purely through Mieville's strengths as an author. While much of the book felt a bit thin and arbitrary, it was also consistently interesting throughout, and raises a few interesting concepts — just not as many as I've come to expect from Mieville, and not handled as well. It's easy to criticize a lesser book by a brilliant author, because they've already established their skill, making it hard to ignore when those talents are missing.