Cicada Imperial Red Ale - Review

So, it must be the time of day or something, but I was unable to get a decent picture of the beer this afternoon...needless to say, I will try again and have a picture of the beer posted on this review very soon.  Rest assured, it is quite pretty.  I just wanted to get a review posted before that wonderful fresh hop aroma and flavor fades.


Cicada Imperial Red Ale, brewed 5/29/11:

Appearance: wonderful, rich deep amber with copper red hues; thick and rich creamy head that persists throughout with sticky lacing on the sides of the glass; slight haze from high hop content

Aroma: hops hops hops! grapefruit, complex fruity citrus and pine, with a light amount of cinnamon spice character, small nutty sweetness in the background

Flavor: bright, piney citrus up front with mild pineapple fruitiness and light cinnamon in the back of the hop character; bitterness is high but far from overwhelming...a deceiving 71 IBU on this bad boy (not to mention a deceiving 7.8% ABV...doesn't taste even close to that!); hop character melts into caramel malt flavors and light sweetness with a clean, dry finish

Mouthfeel: nice, big body with a really smooth feel; medium carbonation (I have had a 1-2 slightly overcarbonated bottles, but this one is perfect...glad I was conservative on the priming sugar)

Overall: This is a great beer, and I wouldn't really change anything about the recipe.  To me, this is my ideal big, bold, American ale.  More malt complexity than an Imperial IPA but tons of great American hop character, which is something that I tend to crave pretty often...must be in my Amurrican blood (my dad is also a bit of a hop head).  Definitely a beer that I can see brewing AT LEAST once a year.  Also, I think this would be amazing with New York extra-sharp cheddar.  Can't wait to brew this again and put it on tap (and thus have more control over uniform carbonation).

Quick updates

I figured I should do a quick entry since I haven't updated in quite a while, just to let people know what's up with Jeff's Delicious Homebrew hobby.  Here's the skinny:

• I've been enjoying the Cicada Imperial Red for a little while, and I'm already halfway through it.  It's just so delicious I can hardly stop drinking it.
• The first bottles of the Belgian Table Beer have been tasted, and it is awesome.  Perfect summer beer...it is light and refreshing but not lacking in flavor...complex in its simplicity...sorry, you caught me in a moment there.  Anyway, I can already tell that one won't last long either.  Friends, family, and coworkers have already given it the A-OK.
• I've been wanting to brew my English Christmas Ale (Figgy Pudding Ale) for a while, and this weekend seemed like the perfect time to do it.  Unfortunately, the Nashville tap water currently tastes like moldy potting soil.  If I brew, it may have to be with some jugs of distilled water and a little bit of gypsum/Burton water salts.  More on that soon.
• With all of these batches being drank so quickly, I think I may have to squeeze in one more batch this summer.  I am currently wavering between a few (rather) different ideas.  Right now, I'm trying to decide between Berliner Weisse, SMaSH Ordinary Bitter, and an all-grain adaptation of Sunny's Ginger Wit.  Suggestions welcome

Summer Outlook

My imperial red, and the Wyeast 3522 starter

You all know how much I love looking ahead and planning when it comes to my brewing.  Hell, I even spent an entire semester in school reviewing commercial beers from the different BJCP style categories, all the while formulating recipes and thinking about what I would brew when I got the chance again.  Well, my first brew of the summer is nearly complete (Cicada Imperial Red baby!) and I thought I'd just do a quick mapping out of the rest of the summer as I see it right now.  Here is the plan:

Brew up my Belgian Table Beer tomorrow.  There is an amazingly lively starter on my stir plate right now, and I can't wait to unleash it on a batch of fresh wort.  It will be done really quickly and will be a great summer session beer.  The other important thing about this beer is that I will reuse the yeast cake from it to make my Père Noël de Bruxelles Belgian Christmas Ale.  Make all the jokes you want about Christmas in July, but this baby is topping out at around 8% ABV and I'm going to give it a few months to age to perfection (Cutts family and close friends, get excited for the holidays).

What I didn't mention about the Belgian Christmas Ale is that it will only be a half batch...and that it has an English brother, the Figgy Pudding Ale; a 9.2% ABV behemoth of a beer made with fresh figs, black treacle, and mulling spices.  Mmm...and both of these will be "oak aged," but more on that later.

Well with those exciting brews to look forward to, I figured that I'd want one more good one for while the weather is still warm, so with the help of some sneaky and speedy methods described by a recent issue of Zymurgy, I want to try to fit in a Berliner Weisse.

Oh, and definitely more cider.  ASAP.  Stuff was SO GOOD, SO EASY and gone SO FAST.

Dry-hopping and first taste of the imperial red

Sittin' pretty with some lovely FF dry hops

As indicated by my Twitter, yesterday I racked the Imperial Red to secondary and added an ounce of Falconer's Flight hops into the vessel to give the beer that extra fresh hop flavor and aroma that one can only achieve through dry-hopping.  My first taste of the beer was wonderful.  The specific gravity is down to 1.018, so this baby is almost fully attenuated and the taste will be pretty indicative of the finished product.  The up-front flavor is a delicious, citrusy hop bomb, but differently from your average IPA, this one has some serious biscuity, caramelly malt backing hop all of that bright hoppy flavor.  It is really tasty already and I can't wait to taste it after its two weeks of dry-hopping.  The beer is deceptively smooth for around 7.5% ABV, no nasty fusel alcohols or excessive esters, and I attribute that to the nice cool fermentation temperature (thank you, air conditioning).  Either way, this beer will be a great one to enjoy over the hot summer, and will almost definitely be one that I will re-do in the near future.  It's always nice to have a hoppy beer around for drinking, and this one will be no exception.

Cicada Imperial Red Ale

First brew in the new apartment!

Long brew day today...did all of the work myself since my lovely assistant had to work today.  I got started around 9 this morning to do the mash indoors.  It was great to have the convenience and comfort of doing an indoor mash, and it seems I finally have my cooler system down.  Held that guy at 153° for an entire hour and didn't lose a single degree!  Now that is good stuff.  Instead of the usual mashout/sparge method that I do, I did a double sparge, which can be seen in this excellent YouTube video by Don Osborn (I love Don Osborn!).  This was meant to increase my system efficiency and help me to get the maximum amount of extract out of this batch, since it is a pretty high gravity beer.  Good news is that it worked, and I hit 75% efficiency, up from my usual 70%.

After collecting the runnings, I headed outside with my turkey fryer and propane tank to get the boil rolling.  It started up great, coming to a boil in about 15 minutes, so I went ahead and added my first hop addition.  For this beer, I wanted to do a 90 minute boil so that I could achieve the right bitterness levels but also get a nice subtle caramelization, since this is an amber ale after all.  About fifteen minutes in--alas!--the flame started to die down, indicating that my propane tank was just about empty.  Welp, I decided to just take the brewpot off the turkey fryer, put it in a safe place, then put the rest of my stuff in the car and drive to get a refill.  It was a quick and easy trip, and I made it back to resume the rest of today's brewing.  The rest of the boil went smoothly, and I even caught one of the many obnoxious cicadas in my boiling wort this will not affect the taste at all (in fact, Jamil Zainasheff has had black widow spiders fall into the boil on same recipe of stout...on separate occasions!), but it sure as hell gave me a catchy--and appropriately ironic--name for the beer: the Cicada Imperial Red.  It will remind me of my scant few triumphs over those nasty cicadas during this summer.  As promised, here is the recipe for this beauty of an amber ale:

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5
Total Grain (Lbs): 14
Anticipated OG: 1.073
Actual OG: 1.075
Anticipated SRM: 16
Anticipated IBU: 72.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
------
11 lbs. Muntons English Pale Malt (2.5°L)
1 lb. Munich Malt (10°L)
1 lb. Crystal Malt (40° L)
0.5 lbs. Special 'B' Malt (140°L)
0.5 lbs. Belgian Biscuit Malt (25°L)

Hops
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1.0 oz. Columbus (Pellet 13% AA) @ 90 min. (gotta use these for more than just bittering sometime...nice aroma on 'em)
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @45 min.
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @ 5 min.
2.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) @ 0 min/flame out
1.0 oz. Falconer's Flight (Pellet 10.5% AA) dry hop 14 days in secondary

Extras
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1 tsp. Irish moss @ 15 Min.

Yeast
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Wyeast 1764 Rogue Pacman Yeast with an 800 mL starter made 48 hours ahead of time on a stir plate

Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 60 min @ 153

5/29/11 Brewed by myself at Lee apartments in Nashville, TN
8/2/11 Review

Picture may not look like much, but it sure was nice to be able to do the mash in my pajamas