Wednesday 22 June 2016

Brewing a Gose (using Lactobacillus plantarum capsules)

I've been promising myself over and over that I would start brewing more sour beer styles; I really love drinking them, and have only attempted a few different ones in the course of my homebrewing career: a Flanders Red that turned out pretty great (1/2 the batch aged on cherries), a Berliner Weisse that wasn't nearly sour enough, and an Oud Bruin that I've finally been drinking the past six months, that I'm pretty happy with. When you're brewing sours by pitching a mixture of bugs and yeasts, you can end up with some truly wonderful beers... the problem, however, is that it can take one hell of a long time till the beer is where you want it. Both the Flanders Red and Oud Bruin were a good 16-20 months before I bottled them.

The solution? Kettle souring. I'm sure most if not all of you have heard of this method by now; it's quickly gained a lot of momentum in the commercial and homebrewing communities. In a nutshell, you mash and sparge as usual, bring the wort to 190 F or so to pasteurize, chill down to a warm temp to pitch your Lactobacillus (the ideal temp will depend on the strain), pitch the Lacto and keep the wort warm until the pH drops to where you want it (3.3-3.5, roughly), transfer back to your kettle and boil the wort briefly to kill off the Lacto, then chill as usual and pitch a neutral yeast strain or Brettanomyces to ferment out the beer. I couldn't explain it any better than many who already have; check out the Milk the Funk wiki on Sour Worting, as well as their Lacto wiki - highly informative and extremely-well researched. Mike Tonsmeire's American Sour Beers is also an excellent resource, one of those books that I keep going back to again and again.

The idea behind all this is that you can sour the wort within several days, and if you then boil it, you don't have to worry about bacteria coming in contact with your kegerator, post-fermentation equipment, etc. Of course, if you don't care, you don't have to boil the wort; just pitch your regular yeast and be done with it. If your wort pH gets down quite low, say, below 3.4, using a Brett strain is a good idea since it ferments better in the presence of acidic wort than a lot of Saccharomyces strains do.

Will this method give you as complex a sour beer as the standard, "old-fashioned" way? Probably not. But if you're looking to brew a hoppy sour, a sour with fruit, or something similar, it's a great way to give you a tasty sour beer without the months of waiting. Or so I've heard; I'm certainly no expert. But I have had several commercial version of kettle-soured beers that were great; I really do love the hoppy sour beers that are coming out now, and more and more breweries are coming up with their own twists on the "style".

But what about a Gose? A lot of brewers have brewed this German style - sessionable, tart, salty - via the kettle sour method, with great results. I've had several commercial Gose beers and have really enjoyed many of them; it's something I've always wanted to brew, so I thought it would be a great one to try with a faster-souring method. I was initially going to order another pack of Lactobacillus from Wyeast (or maybe White Labs), but I had been reading more and more about people sourcing Lactobacillus from Swanson Probiotic capsules. Unlike a lot of probiotics that you see, these ones only contain one type of Lacto, Lactobacillus plantarum, a species that is surprisingly quite effective at lower-than-usual temperatures, between 80-90 F. For someone like me, who doesn't have a lot of options for keeping wort hot (above 100 F), this is a great option. I quickly ordered the capsules on Amazon, and then kind of forgot about them until recently.

I finally got around to making a Lacto starter in April. Of course, there are different thoughts on the approach you should take; the Milk the Funk wiki mentioned above has a very detailed one that I did not see in time. Ultimately, I ended up taking the approach that Ed documented in his attempt: four Lacto plantarum capsules in 1 L of wort. No need to set it on a stir plate of course; I simply set the flask on a heating pad for a few days, where the temp stayed at about 90 F. After 48 hours or so, the pH was down to 3.53. I was hoping to go lower, say 3.3 or so, but even after adding another capsule, it didn't budge. 3.53 isn't horrible, so I decided to press on and brew the beer.

NOTE: Just to make clear, depending on your Lacto source, you sometimes have to be very careful about keeping as much oxygen as possible out of your wort, starter or otherwise. Apparently with the L. plantarum capsules, this isn't an issue. Just keep in mind that if you're sourcing Lacto from grains, it's very important to purge with CO2 whenever possible, so you don't end up with the vomit, cheese, or fecal aromas/flavours from other organisms popping up due to exposure to oxygen.

Putting together a recipe was pretty easy; the grist is just a 50:50 blend of Pilsner malt and Wheat malt, with some Acid malt added in to bring the mash pH down to ~5.4. Goses are usually pretty low-ABV; most seem to be < 5%, so I aimed for an OG of only 1.033, and mashed pretty cool at 150 F. Once the vorlauf, sparge, etc. was complete, I brought the wort up to 190 F or so for a few minutes, then immediately chilled it down to 100 F. Racked into a Better Bottle, I pitched the entire 1 L of Lacto starter and set the whole thing on a heating pad, with a heat belt attached, and let 'er go. I was able to hold to the wort temperature in the high 80s F with this method. After a few days, the pH was 3.69, and it didn't get any lower than that. Again, not 100% ideal, but it did taste slightly tart, so I transferred the wort back to the boil kettle and continued.

A traditional Gose features the addition of both salt and coriander in the boil. The typical approach appears to be 1/2 an ounce (14 g) of each, but I've had many homebrewed Goses that didn't strike me as salty enough. You don't want to be drinking beer that tastes like sea water, but you DO want to notice it. A friend had recently brewed a Gose using 3/4 oz (21 g) of salt, which brought it closer, but not quite there (in both our opinions). I finally settled on a bit more - 25 g - along with 14 g of freshly-ground coriander seed, added during the last 2 minutes of the boil. For the hops, I wasn't looking for much bitterness for this style; since I was only planning on boiling the wort (after soured) for 5 minutes, I added 14 g of Polaris at 5 min, giving 8 IBUs. The wort was then chilled to the low 60s F, and I pitched a full package of rehydrated US-05. I didn't feel fermenting with Brett was necessary; with a pH of only 3.69, US-05 could easily handle the job. However, it's best to still err on the side of caution and pitch more yeast than is necessary in this case, hence the full pack of US-05 for a 1.033 beer.

It didn't take very long, of course, for fermentation to be complete (FG was 1.006). Now, I had to decide where I wanted to go with this beer. I had originally planned on splitting the batch - dry-hopping half with Citra, and keeping the other half plain. However, I knew it wasn't going to be as tart as I had hoped, so I figured it best to add something else to the plain portion. Lots of options, naturally, but I settled on fresh lime zest. I figured it would work well with a Gose, giving the beer an almost Margarita-like quality to it, thanks to the salt (no, do not start thinking about Bud Light Lime-a-Rita!).

Another question... how much lime zest to add? You don't need a lot; lime zest is pretty potent stuff. Mike Tonsmeire mentions in his book to start with 0.5 g/L when adding citrus zest. I was looking at about 10 L of beer, so I went with just a touch more, 6.5 grams (0.65 g/L), to make sure I noticed the lime (hopefully without it tasting like pure lime juice). I racked the beer like so: half into a 3 gallon Better Bottle, and the other half into my dry hop keg, where I added the Citra. I added the zest to a mesh bag and dunked it in Star San for a couple of minutes, before dangling in the BB with dental floss. A smarter way, I now know, is to simply dunk the limes and your zester in Star San before zesting. Oops!

After about 5 days, I kegged the Citra dry-hopped portion and bottled the lime zest portion. Now that I'm drinking both, I have to say that my preference may be for the lime Gose, which surprises me. Both are refreshing, palate-cleansing beers; light and easy-drinking, the salt level is spot-on. I don't get much coriander from either beer; admittedly, the coriander seeds weren't the freshest, but they smelled great when I was grinding them. Maybe going to 0.75 oz next time would be a better amount? As for the sourness level, the beer is definitely tart, but I'd like to see it with more tartness. Not a lot - you don't want Lambic-level sourness - but a bit more would be just the ticket.

The Citra Gose is enjoyable enough, but despite a dry-hop of 2.5 oz (the equivalent of about 5 oz for a 5 gallon batch), I'm not getting near as much Citra in the aroma or flavour as I would expect. Meanwhile, I think I lucked out in my lime zest addition for the other half - there's definitely a really nice, obvious lime presence, but it didn't come out on the heavy side, which I started worrying was going to happen. I ended up naming that one "Margarita Gose", as it comes about as close to a Margarita beer as you would want.

So, I'm happy with the amount of salt used (I don't think I'd change it at all), and the amount of lime zest. I'm still torn on the Citra addition; maybe one can only expect so much hop presence to come through in a beer like this? The equivalent of a 5-oz dry hop for a 5 gallon batch seems like plenty to me. If I tried again, I think I'd experiment with adding some Citra at flameout for a 15-20 minute hop steep; yes, you'd give the beer more IBUs this way, but maybe it would work.

I would also like both beers to be more sour. Again, NOT a Flanders Red or Lambic sourness, but just a hair above where they are now. Now that I've been reading more on the subject, I think a couple of things would need to change for next time on this front:
  1. Use phosphoric or lactic acid to lower the wort pH - There's a couple of reasons why this is a good idea; one is because for someone with water like mine, the wort pH comes out higher than ideal, especially in lighter-coloured beers. Lowering the pH, at least slightly, kind of gives the Lacto a head start, if that makes any sense (this applies to the starter and final wort). On top of that, it's been shown that lowering the wort pH to ~4.5 before pitching the Lacto can help aid in reducing foam degradation (see the Milk the Funk Wiki link for more details). If you can get it, I'd use phosphoric acid, as it won't affect the taste like lactic acid can.
  2. I think it's possible that the Lacto starter was too warm for the L. plantarum to lower the pH where I wanted it. I'm not positive here; the evidence would indicate that L. plantarum is still fine up to 90 F, and probably up to 100 F; but I can tell you that I've brewed a hoppy sour since this beer, and accidentally had the heat pad unplugged for the starter, where the pH jumped from a seemingly-stalled reading of 3.9 to 3.3 in a short matter of time. More on that in a future post.
Overall, though, I'm enjoying both of these beers, and for my first foray into kettle souring, I'm quite happy. The capsules worked well enough for me to warrant using them again, especially now that I know to try a slightly different approach next time.

Recipe Targets: (5.5 gallons, 75% efficiency) OG 1.033, FG ~1.009, IBU 8, SRM 2.9, ABV ~3.2%

Grains:
1.4 kg (47.9%) Bohemian Pilsner
1.4 kg (47.9%) Wheat malt
125 g (4.3%) Acid malt
+ 100 g Rice hulls

Hops:
Polaris - 14 g (20% AA) @ 5 min

Citra - 70 g dry hop for 5 days (in dry hop keg) for 1/2 of the batch

Misc:
1/2 tab Irish Moss at 5 min
14 g freshly-ground Coriander seed at 2 min
25 g Sea Salt at 2 min

Lime zest - ~6.5 g in secondary after fermentation is complete, for 5 days for 1/2 of the batch

Bacteria/Yeast: Lactobacillus plantarum capsules (4) in a 1 L starter; after souring, wort fermented with 1 pack rehydrated US-05

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; 5 g Gypsum and 5 g calcium chloride added to mash

- Brewed on April 19th, 2016, by myself. 50-minute mash with 9.5 L of strike water; mash temp on target at 150 F. Mashed-out for 10 minutes with 5 L of boiling water to 168 F. Sparged with ~3.75 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of ~5.75 gallons.

- Pre-boil gravity at 1.033 (target 1.032). Heated to ~195 F, then chilled to 100 F. Racked to carboy, pitched Lacto starter, attached heat belt and set carboy on heating pad. Four days later, the pH had dropped to 3.65 - with the heat belt and pad, the temp was about 80 F, so I had panicked and turned on a space heater in the room, which brought it up to around 90 F or so.

- 26/4/16 - Transferred wort back into kettle, brought to a boil. Started 5 minute boil, added hops, coriander and salt at time above. Chilled down to 62 F and poured into BB. Aerated for 60 seconds and pitched yeast at 64 F. Fermentation visible by next day, continued for two days and then petered off.

- 4/5/16 - pH reading 3.69. Split the batch by racking half into dry-hop keg and added 70 g Citra, other half racked into 3 gallon carboy (~10 L) and added 6.5 g lime zest (sanitized by dunking mesh bag, marbles and zest in sanitizer before adding to carboy).

- 10/5/16 - Bottled lime half with 60 g table sugar, aiming for 2.5 vol CO2 for 2.5 gal, max temp 70 F reached. Racked Citra half into serving keg and set carb to PSI 30 for 24 hours.

Lime zest on the left, Citra on the right
Appearance: As you can see from the picture, they look pretty identical. Both pour with a moderate-sized, white head that fades fairly quickly, as expected. The Citra head lasts longer, however... due to being force-carbed, or is the lime zest causing that head to fade a bit quicker? Lime body is just slightly darker, but both beers are pretty pale. Touch of haziness.

Aroma: Moderately salty, touch of coriander; the Citra portion has a light fruitiness and a little dank character. The lime beer definitely has the lime zest coming through in the aroma, more prominent than the salt; works very well.

Taste: Citra half: the Citra hits first, pleasant low fruitiness, followed by a moderate-low tartness on the tongue. Finishes lightly salty, with low to no bitterness. Dry and refreshing. Lime half: great amount of lime character in the flavour, followed by the saltiness to make it seem that much more maragarita-like. Same tartness as the Citra half... pleasant, but not quite enough. Great summer beer.

Mouthfeel: Both are light-bodied, with moderate carbonation.

Overall: Refreshing, easy-drinking; I enjoy both, but give the edge to the lime zest portion. I think the salt level is perfect, could use a bit more coriander. Expected and wanted more Citra presence in the dry-hopped version. And, of course, both could benefit from some more tartness.

Friday 3 June 2016

Brewing a Trillium Scaled Up clone

Back when I wasn't as picky a beer drinker, I thought that DIPAs were one of the easier styles to brew... you basically just had to throw a lot of hops in! Luckily (?), I'm not that naive anymore... it's just not that simple. I now know exactly the type of DIPA that I love, which means there's now a lot of DIPAs out there that I really don't enjoy. I want my Imperial IPA to be light in colour; an absolutely-huge hop aroma that's big on tropical fruit, citrus, and pine; ditto for the flavour, with a bit of supporting malt character, but no noticeable Crystal/caramel malt, and a moderate bitterness, finishing dry. In short: not dark amber, sweet, and bracingly bitter, which too many DIPAs are (in my opinion).

Now, if all that sounds good to you, and you're looking for a brewery that can provide you with such a beer, let me just say that Trillium Brewing is the place to go. I probably don't need to tell you that; if you're into hoppy beer I'm sure you've at least heard of Trillium. Based in Boston, they opened in 2013, with a second location outside the city, in Canton, opening a few months ago. Check them out on Rate Beer, or Untappd, or any rating-based website, and you'll see that virtually all of their beers are consistently rated extremely highly. I've had several different bottles, and I can attest that this is not simple hype talking... they really are that good, and they're brewing some of the best New England-style (Northeast?) IPAs around. A friend picked me up several beers on a trip last year, and they were all great.

After that, another friend was in Boston and brought back some Trillium to share; one of these was Scaled Up, one of their DIPAs. When people ask me, "What's the best beer you've ever had?", I can never really answer the question. I've had so many great beers, all at different times, different places, different circumstances, that I could never really select one best beer. But now I can say without a doubt that Scaled Up is definitely up there with the best beers I've had, probably in the top 3. I know some people hate using "juicy" as a descriptor for beer (I guess because it's too vague or something?), but Scaled Up is the epitome of juicy. It looked, smelled, and tasted very much like orange juice... but more. Super-hazy, super-fruity and tropical, super-smooth... super-everything. And I wasn't alone in my love for this beer; everyone else in the room agreed it was one of the best DIPAs they'd ever tried.


Naturally, I was curious as to what went into this beer, and I wanted to try cloning it. It's been awhile since I've brewed a clone beer, so just to confirm - I never really expect to brew an exact replica of a commercial beer when I set out to "clone" it, I'm just looking to see if I can brew something close... I guess that's the best way to put it. With this beer, Trillium's website did a pretty good job explaining what went into it, ingredient-wise:

The first Double IPA produced at our Canton brewery. Featuring four powerful aromatic hop varieties, Galaxy, Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, and Columbus, Scaled Up emits dank, spicy aromas that lead into fruity, citrusy flavors of peach and orange on the palate. Lighter in body than most of our other DIPAs, Scaled Up finishes dry and smooth with a pleasant bitterness.

Of course, I reached out to the brewery via email - twice - to see if I could sneak a bit more info out of them, especially regarding the hops and what ratio they were used at. Unfortunately, I never received a reply, which is completely understandable. That didn't deter me, though, so I just got to work putting a recipe together on my own.

Thankfully, the Trillium site also listed the ingredients for the grist: Pilsner, White Wheat, Flaked Wheat, Dextrine, Dextrose, and C-15. I would assume that these were listed in decreasing order, in terms of % used, but of course I couldn't be sure. I ended up putting together something that looked good to me, with several substitutions:
  • 2-row replaced Pilsner (because I found out on brew day I was low on Pilsner... stupid)
  • Carapils replaced Dextrine (all I could get, plus it seems to me they're about the same thing)
  • Flaked Oats replaced Flaked Wheat (all I had on hand)
  • Table sugar replaced Dextrose (I've never felt it was worth it to pay more for Dextrose)
  • CaraRed replaced C-15 (the closest I had; CaraRed is ~20 L)
As you can tell, I certainly didn't put work into planning this too far ahead, for some reason. Plus, I've always had issues with inventory through BeerSmith; I think I'm the only one who has this problem, but it constantly fluctuates despite my keeping up with it. Even when I completely zero out a hop variety, for example, I'll see it pop up again a week later, saying I have 10 oz or something. Weird. Anyway, I still thought the grist looked good. I aimed for a mash temp of 149 F to try to keep the beer dry, and added Acid malt as usual to bring the mash pH into the 5.4 range.

I'm not sure what the IBUs are for Scaled Up; they're not listed on the website, but I really didn't care too much, anyway. I know where I wanted them based on my tastes; I was thinking around 60 would be sufficient. Low for a DIPA, yes, but this beer did not taste overly bitter to me, and in my hoppy-brewing experience lately, aiming in that range for a DIPA works well. I bittered at 60 min with a small amount of Polaris; this hop isn't listed by Trillium, but I don't feel that the bittering variety makes a difference. Columbus (CTZ) is listed, and maybe that's the hop they use for a bittering addition; then again, maybe they don't even add anything before the last part of the boil. In the end, I decided to use CTZ and Mosaic at 10 min, CTZ, Mosaic, and Nelson at flameout for a hop-stand, Galaxy, Nelson and Mosaic when I turned on my chiller, and two dry-hop additions (one in primary, one in my DH keg) of all three. I didn't go for huge amounts in the dry-hop, but a total of 6 oz seems like enough to me, now. In fact, I'm always a bit hesitant going above 3-4 oz in the dry-hop for my beers, after some previous not-great results and from reading about beer pH being increased with larger dry-hop additions. I was hoping 6 oz would be right for this beer.

I don't believe that Trillium makes it perfectly clear on their website which type of yeast strain they use, but based on their beers that I've tried, and the how they smell, taste and look, I immediately thought of using London Ale III (Wyeast 1318). I won't go on about how great this strain is; I've already done that on many of my recent hoppy-beer posts. But if you haven't brewed with it before, I suggest you seek it out. If you don't have access and want to use a neutral, American strain like US-05, I'm sure that you'd still have a very good beer. However, try to get LAIII; I don't think you'll regret it!

So, I seemed to be all set. The brew day went well, targets were mostly hit (OG was a couple of points low), and the wort smelled - as expected - pretty damned amazing after being chilled down to the low 60s F. I aerated with 90 seconds of pure oxygen and pitched the yeast slurry at 64 F; fermentation took off by the next morning and was soon going strong. When I saw signs of it slowing down after a day or two, I added the sugar (boiled and cooled in some water) and it picked up again, continuing actively for about a week. It was around 2 weeks or so that I added the first dry hop charge into primary (I took a final gravity, and it looked, smelled, and tasted just like OJ, which got me totally psyched) when the krausen had finally settled; five days later I racked to my dry hop keg with the second dry hop addition.

I've been drinking this beer for a little over a week now, and it's been on kind of an odd evolution. The first pour from the keg was, while a bit undercarbed, completely delicious. Similar to when I took the FG, it was very orangey, fruity, tropical. I made myself wait a few more days before trying it again, and I couldn't believe how different it now was. While it certainly wasn't as nasty as my experience trying to brew a Dinner clone (Maine Beer Co.'s white whale DIPA), it reminded me of it. The hops were more muted, a bit spicy and onion-y; also, quite dank. A few days later, it had improved slightly, and now it's back to being pretty good again.

Ultimately though, while I enjoy this beer, it's nowhere near as great as Scaled Up. And I'm ok with that; I don't expect miracles to happen. But I'm still a bit disappointed that, considering the hops that were used, the beer didn't come out very tropical or juicy; at least, not to the level I was hoping for. It definitely has a big berry character, and it's plenty dank... but I wasn't really going for dank. I also wonder if on my system, 6 oz total of dry hops is just too much? What would this beer have been like if I hadn't dry-hopped it at all?

So, what would I change? Aside from obviously using Pilsner malt instead of 2-row, I'd try dialling the dry-hop back a bit... say, 1.25 oz of each of the three used, as a single addition. Drop the CTZ from the hop steep, and replace it with Galaxy. I think London Ale III is a good yeast to go with, and the grist seems solid, at least until I can get the hops more where I'd like them to be, and then start adjusting other aspects of the recipe. If you're thinking of trying this recipe, I suggest you go with those changes, and expect a quite-good DIPA, but maybe not the BEST THING YOU'VE EVER TASTED.

In closing, however, I poured another glass of this beer last night for the picture below, and damn if it wasn't tasting even better! It's been on for several weeks now... maybe it really needed some time to settle into its own? If anyone ever has doubt that beer is like a living organism...

UPDATE: Someone on Reddit was kind enough to let me know (shortly after posting) that Trillium has said in the past that the yeast they use is the equivalent of White Labs 007 Dry English Ale; the Wyeast equivalent is 1098 British Ale. So, obviously I also recommend going with either of these two strains, as they would definitely differ from LAIII.

Recipe Targets: (5.5 gallons, 70% efficiency) OG 1.070, FG ~1.012, IBU ~60, SRM 5.5, ABV ~7.7%

Grains:
5.3 kg (79.5%) Canadian 2-row
325 g (4.9%) CaraPils
275 g (4.1%) Wheat malt
200 g (3%) CaraRed (20 L)
125 g (1.9%) Acid malt
90 g (1.4%) Flaked Oats
350 g (5.2%) Table sugar (added in primary when fermentation slowed)

Hops:
Polaris - 7 g (19.8% AA) @ 60 min

CTZ - 28 g (10.5% AA) @ 10 min
Mosaic - 28 g (11.9% AA) @ 10 min

CTZ - 28 g @ 0 min (with a 20 min hop steep)
Mosaic - 28 g @ 0 min (with a 20 min hop steep)
Nelson Sauvin - 28 g @ 0 min (with a 20 min hop steep)

Galaxy - 42 g @ 0 min (when begin chilling)
Mosaic - 42 g @ 0 min (when begin chilling)
Nelson Sauvin - 7 g @ 0 min (when begin chilling)

Galaxy - 28 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)
Mosaic - 28 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)
Nelson Sauvin - 28 g dry-hop for 5 days (in primary)

Galaxy - 28 g dry-hop for 5 more days (in keg)
Mosaic - 28 g dry-hop for 5 more days (in keg)
Nelson Sauvin - 35 g dry-hop for 5 more days (in keg)

Misc: 1/2 tab Irish Moss at 5 min

Yeast: Wyeast 1318 London Ale III (with a starter, ~250 billion cells)

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; 7 g Gypsum and 7 g calcium chloride added to mash

- Brewed on April 12th, 2016, by myself. 60-minute mash with 18.5 L of strike water; mash temp on target at 149 F. Sparged with ~4.5 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of ~6.75 gallons.

- Pre-boil gravity at 1.051 (target 1.052, before sugar addition). 60-minute boil. Final volume ~5.75 gallons; OG a bit low at 1.062 (so, 1.068 with sugar addition). Chilled to 64 F, then poured into Better Bottle. Aerated with 90 seconds of pure O2, pitched yeast at 64 F.

- Great fermentation by the next morning, and was even showing signs of slowing down a mere 48 hours after pitching. I added the sugar at this point, and activity quickly picked up again and continued for several more days. After close to two weeks (FG 1.011), added the first round of dry hops into primary for 5 days, then racked to the dry-hop keg, added the second dry hops for 5 more days, then transferred via CO2 to the serving keg and began carbing.


Appearance: Pours with a moderate-sized, white fluffy head; good retention, sticky lacing left on the glass. Body is a very light amber colour, with better-than-expected clarity (although there's definitely still haze present).

Aroma: Lots of berries, basically. A bit dank, and just the slightest hint of alcohol.

Taste: Big hop blast - again, mainly berries and dankness - balanced slightly by the bready malt character; but, ultimately, yeah... hops. Should be more tropical, but it's still very tasty. Medium-high bitterness in the dry finish, more than expected from the ~60 IBUs for a 7.5% ABV beer.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light bodied, moderate carbonation.

Overall: Very good; I enjoy it as a DIPA, I like the berry hop character and dryness, but since I was hoping for - if not expecting - a closer version of Scaled Up, I have to admit I'm a touch disappointed.