Devils Backbone Brewing Company

This week I brewed three IPA's.  The first was our year round American IPA, the Eight Point IPA.  The Eight Point is hopped with Columbus, Centennial, and Simcoe hops and clocks in around 5.9-6.0% abv.

The second IPA I brewed was the return of the Congo Pale Ale, a Belgian-influenced IPA.  The name comes from the "what if" Belgians made a hoppy beer for their colonists, it wouldn't be an India Pale Ale it would be a Congo Pale Ale.  For the historically deficient, Belgium had a colony in the Congo.  Last year I used the European hops Saaz and Northern Brewer. This year I decided to add a little more of an American punch by dropping the Northern Brewer and adding Chinook and Sorachi Ace, while retaining a touch of Saaz.   Expect this years to be a little more hop forward.  Hopefully the Chinook will add a pleasant pine note with the Sorachi Ace providing a hint of lemon. I used a different Belgian yeast that produces less banana and bubblegum flavors and more spicy pear and apple which I think will work better with the hops. 

The third IPA brewed this week is the UK-IPA.  It is a English influenced IPA brewed with Marris Otter malt, Northern Brewer & East Kent Golding hops, and fermented with the English Whitbread yeast strain.  I heavily "burtonized" the brewing water in this brew.  What that means is that I added a lot of mineral salts to get my water profile close to that of the English city of Burton-on-Trent which was famous for it's IPA's during the 19th century.  Burton-on-Trent has extremely hard water which is reported to emphasise hop bitterness and hop flavor.

Expect the Congo Pale Ale to be tapped in August and the UK-IPA to be on tap by late July.