Terrapin India Brown Ale
 

A 6-pack of Terrapin "IBA" caught my eye at the store last night so I was obligated to myself to buy it and try it out. It's advertised as a combination of an English brown ale and an India pale ale.

First thing I noticed upon opening, since I nose my beers now, was an extremely familiar hop character. I brew a lot with Nugget, so I recognize the aroma and taste pretty quickly.

I check their website and sure enough, Nugget is the first hop mentioned: Terrapin Beer Athens, Georgia Microbrew Ale Pilsner

I don't think it's added until late in the boil because the IBUs would be higher, and the Nugget aroma would be rather muted if detectable at all; here it was pretty pungent.

If there was any malty flavor, it was difficult to detect over all the hop action. It certainly didn't taste overhopped or watery, but there was nothing prominent about the malt.

This might be an interesting one to try cloning, but maybe up the malt content. Similar in vein to my Ipankelweiss...

I'm a big fan of this beer too. I guess I have to be since I have 10 cases of it sitting in my living room!!!

I had it for the first time at the back to school festival they had a few weeks ago. They opened up the brewery and served all of their high gravity, the new wheat, and a few others. I was helping my roomate's band pack up. They pointed to a bunch of pallets in the loading area and told us to take as much as we could fit in our cars. We could only fit 10 cases sadly.

I attempted a clone of this beer since I love it so much, it's dry hopping in secondary right now. I'll let you know how it turned out next week.


EDIT: Here's the .rec file attachment

I have been in love with this beer ever since I had it on tap more than a year ago. I spent a while waiting for Nashville to get it in 6-packs and finally got some today at lunch. Can't wait tonight to go home and crack one open.

Thanks for the link, Frink!
EDIT: What opens the .rec?

Mike McDole's American Brown ale (in my recipe pull-down) is also pretty similar. I'm gonna brew it again and bitter with Chinook and hopefully find some Nugget as well.

It's a BeerAlchemy file, give me a few minutes, I'll type up the recipe.

Here's what I went with:

US 2-row 16 lb.
Caramel 20 0.5 lb
Brown Malt 0.5 lb.
Wheat Malt 0.5 lb.
Aromatic 0.25 lb.
Coffee Malt 0.20 lb.
Pale Chocolate0.10 lb.
Roasted Barley0.10 lb.

Hops:
Warrior 15.5 AA 0.5 oz. 60 min
Columbus15.5 AA 0.5 oz. 60 min
Summit 18.0 AA 0.5 oz. 30 min
Columbus 15.5 AA 0.5 oz. 30 min
Mt. Hood 4.5 AA 0.5 oz. 15 min
UK Golding 5 AA 1 oz. 10 min
UK Golding 5 AA 1 oz. Flameout
Centennial 1 oz. Dry Hop

Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

I was shooting for 1.085 OG on this, but I missed badly at 1.072. It's dryhopping with Centennial right now. I really like the hop profile on this, but if I did it again I would cut down on the specialty grains a bit to try to get the FG down lower (I think it was at 1.025 or so when I racked to secondary, I'm not sure). However, I started the fermentation on this pretty low in temp. Chinook would be an excellent hop to use in this.

Cool man, thanks a lot.

Here's the rundown from their site, btw:

The Terrapin India Style Brown Ale is a head on collision between a hoppy, west coast IPA and a complex, malty brown ale. Brewed with 5 varieties of hops and 7 different malts, this hybrid style represents the best of both worlds.

Malts: Pale Dark Munich, Victory, Special Roast, Crystal 60, Crystal 77, Chocolate

Hops:Nugget, Chinook, Centennial, Willamette, Columbus (Dry Hop)

IBU’s: 65

O.G.: 15.1

ABV: 6.0%