"Pinecone of Shame" Imperial Carrot Ale

I guess I forgot to post this one when I brewed it a while back, but I bottled it today so here goes:

3 gallon batch

90-minute boil

Malt Bill:
2 lbs Rice Solids, 90
1 lb Corn Sugar, 90
64 oz Carrot Juice, 90
4 oz maltodextrin, 90
2 lbs Sorghum LME at flameout
14 oz Buckwheat Honey at flameout

Hop Schedule:
0.25 oz Super Alpha, FWH (13.0% AA)
0.25 oz Nugget, 90 (11.3% AA)
0.25 oz Simcoe, 90 (13.0% AA)
0.125 oz Simcoe, 15
0.125 oz Super Alpha, 15
0.125 oz Simcoe, 5
0.125 oz Super Alpha, 5
0.5 oz Simcoe, dry hop for 14 days
0.5 Super Alpha, dry hop for 14 days

1/2 Whirlfloc tablet

Fermentis US-05 Ale Yeast

Brewed May 31st, Bottled June 26th; single-stage fermentation (no secondary)

OG: 1.080
FG: 1.011
ABV: 9.2% (!!!)
65.2 IBUs (used "Average" calculation method)

The hydrometer sample tastes like friggin' orange soda with a pinecone steeped in it. For having such a low FG, it's REALLLLLLLY sweet, but with a big ol' hop punch. A little bit of hotness from the alcohol...gonna have to mellow it a bit in the bottles, I think, though it's quite drinkable even in this state. Only problem is, it doesn't exactly taste "like a beer". I'm really not kidding with the orange soda...even with all these hops, there's a big bright orangey sweetness that really dominates the flavor. I'm guessing this is the work of the Super Alpha hops?

In the future, I'd brew this at a lower gravity with the same IBU's. I'm not sure how I feel about the Super Alpha hops in a beer like this, I'd probably switch them out for Chinook or Nugget hops. I'd also double the carrot juice, because it really doesn't come through much. Or maybe it does, and it's responsible for the orangey taste? I don't really know. What I do know is that I'm actually pretty drunk off the hydrometer sample, and I should probably stop typing!

igliashon said:

0.25 oz Super Alpha, FWH (13.0% AA)
0.25 oz Nugget, 90 (11.3% AA)
0.25 oz Simcoe, 90 (13.0% AA)
0.125 oz Simcoe, 15
0.125 oz Super Alpha, 15
0.125 oz Simcoe, 5
0.125 oz Super Alpha, 5
0.5 oz Simcoe, dry hop for 14 days
0.5 Super Alpha, dry hop for 14 days

I'd also double the carrot juice, because it really doesn't come through much.

Click to expand...

When heated, carrot juice becomes even more bitter and more vegetal. Alternately, the more you boil it, the more it reduces and tastes sweeter - but not a good sweet. It's more like tomato paste sweet. When fresh, carrot juice can be quite good, floral, sweet, aromatic. It also depends on whether the carrots are freshly juiced and de-stemmed after picking (the stems continue to draw out sugars from the root, thus turning the carrot more bitter/less sweet). When all is said and done, I would never boil carrot juice unless I was making a soup or something. And even then, I would only add it last minute.

I wonder where the pine came from. - 1.25 oz. of boil hops (1/2 oz. added late) isn't a lot for a 3 gallon batch of IIPA. The dryhop could also use another ounce too IMO.

Well, every recipe I've seen for carrot wine calls for boiling carrots, so I figured carrot beer would follow a similar process; hence, I added the carrot juice at the beginning. I was actually hoping to get some bitter, earthy flavor out of it, rather than sweetness. I also wanted very little carrot aroma; I wanted it to come through a bit in the body as a bit of vegetal earthiness, more to balance out the sweetness than to add to it.

The pine is probably from the simcoe hops; they're legendarily piney, so I'm guessing they're responsible. Which is good, because I wanted piney.

When I first put the recipe together, I made the mistake of using the Tinseth IBU calculation formula, which (in my experience) has given artificially high readings. It gave me about 84 IBUs for this hop schedule, which was what I actually wanted. However, when I recently switched to the "Average" formula (which I find is more true to my experience), I realized it was much, much lower in bitterness than I anticipated--too low, in fact, for this gravity. 65 IBUs in a 9.2% beer just isn't enough. So that's a bummer. But, it's drinkable, it's tasty in its own special way, and it was a great learning experience. This is one that I'll probably re-brew in the hopes that I can get it closer to where I imagined it initially.