Chinook + Golding Wheat IPA?

[MadLuke]

Hi everyone,


I am looking for an opinion on some crazy-ish idea. I have had in my mind for a while dry wheat IPA. The original plan was to use 2 cans (yes, extract brewing) of Briess Bavarian Wheat and one can of extra-light pale extract, add some Amarillo, and dry-hop with cones of Nelson Sauvin + Amarillo… And then my homebrew shop closed because of COVID, and the only one I found open was mostly sold out. So what am I left with is:


The original extract base: 2 cans of Briess Bavarian Wheat and one can of extra-light pale extract

Yeast: Salafe WB-06

Hops:

- I have some old Golding (so old I can either use them for bittering or throw them away)

- Some newly ordered Chinook

- Some newly ordered whole cones of Golding, planned for dry-hop.

- Some vacuum-sealed Amarillo


What this leads to is an earthy, pine-y wheat IPA, which sounds both intriguing and really weird. Plus I am not sure whether Amarillo would go with Chinook and Golding, or whether to skip that one.


Any opinion here welcome.


Cheers,

 

[day_trippr]

Amarillo works wonderfully well with Chinook, fwiw. Goldings would be the odd strain out wrt the other two and could well be drowned out.

As for the concept, I don't see anything wrong with it. The scope of "IPA" is so broad these days one could drive a super carrier right through it without reaching the edges

Cheers!

 

[MadLuke]

Amarillo works wonderfully well with Chinook, fwiw. Goldings would be the odd strain out wrt the other two and could well be drowned out.

As for the concept, I don't see anything wrong with it. The scope of "IPA" is so broad these days one could drive a super carrier right through it without reaching the edges

Cheers!

To be honest, I am not particularly worried about the beer fitting a particular style (not making it for a competition), just want the beer to make sense. But thanks for the tip. I’ve never used Chinook, but my impression from what I’ve read was that its woody and pine-y flavor would go well with earthy UK hops to create a ‘foresty’ flavor. Still have that idea to brew ale with chinook, spruce and a bit of smoked malt –Yukon inspired, to honor chinook fishing tradition.


But anyway, it might be that the citrusy component if chinook works with Amarillo, and the woody bit just adds complexity. Even better, I love Amarillo. Gonna give it a go, and will try to get some high attenuation hops as well to make it punchy.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Chinook and Amarillo work nicely together - but you won't know because WB-06 completely trashes hop flavour, it's really active in whatever biotransformation is needed to destroy it.

As it happened I used some leftover Chinook with a splash of Amarillo for a yeast trial - M36 had the classic Chinook pine, T-58 reduced the hoppiness by 20% but turned it more limey, and WB-06 knocked it down by 80+% (but you couldn't really tell because of the phenolics). Blending the three meant less phenolics so you could taste that there was a nice complex mix of flavours there - but at <20% of the intensity of the M36 version you didn't really get the benefit from it. So avoid WB-06 for hoppy beers unless you're doing crazy amounts (like >20g/l).

If you can't get other yeast (have you got bottles you can harvest from?) then I'd save the fancy hops for something else and just do a straight wheat beer with the old Goldings (although WB-06 isn't actually a hefe yeast, it's a saison type that's probably most closely related to some of the Duvel yeasts).

 

[MadLuke]

Chinook and Amarillo work nicely together - but you won't know because WB-06 completely trashes hop flavour, it's really active in whatever biotransformation is needed to destroy it.

As it happened I used some leftover Chinook with a splash of Amarillo for a yeast trial - M36 had the classic Chinook pine, T-58 reduced the hoppiness by 20% but turned it more limey, and WB-06 knocked it down by 80+% (but you couldn't really tell because of the phenolics). Blending the three meant less phenolics so you could taste that there was a nice complex mix of flavours there - but at <20% of the intensity of the M36 version you didn't really get the benefit from it. So avoid WB-06 for hoppy beers unless you're doing crazy amounts (like >20g/l).

If you can't get other yeast (have you got bottles you can harvest from?) then I'd save the fancy hops for something else and just do a straight wheat beer with the old Goldings (although WB-06 isn't actually a hefe yeast, it's a saison type that's probably most closely related to some of the Duvel yeasts).

Yeah, that WB-06 was a bit of an accident. Managed to get a pack of BRY-97 on the last moment as well. Not much more maneuvering space, but hope it will do better than WB-06. And might do another batch of wheat beer (using some of my old hops), sweet and Belgium style, for my wife.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

You should be fine with BRY-97, the people who use it seem to really like it, more than US-05 - just don't be freaked out if it takes a long time to get going. Personally I'd probably just go with the Chinook and Amarillo in that case, although I will never ever say no to Goldings!

 

[MadLuke]

Righto. Brewed it last weekend, in the end used Amarillo and Chinook (roughly 1:1 - 2:1 ratios). Gonna chuck it some Amarillo and Chinook for dry hop (and maybe some whole cones of nelson sauvin for a good measure), and see how it ends.

 

[MadLuke]

Righo. Delayed report. The beer turned out to be different than I expected, but awesome in the end. Way less of the harsh dry drapefruity bitterness I kind of hoped for, but very mellow and fruity, with some pine sap notes, and rather smooth finish (that Nelson Sauvin dryhop completely dictates the tone of the beer).