Magic Hat Ticket to Rye

I like rye beers, and with the warmer months, I'm starting to crave hoppier beers instead of maltier ones.  The Magic Hat sampler I picked up a little while back had a rye IPA, so I figured it was time to give it a shot:

Vittles:

Rye IPA (Specialty Beer)

7.1% abv

80 IBUs

15 SRM

dry-hopped

Appearance: 9/10

Amber is a good color for beer.  Especially when it's topped by a little over an inch of creamy, off-white foam.  Moderate bubbles, decent head retention, and mild lacing all make this beer look appealing.

Aroma: 21/25

Mild rye spiciness and a moderately strong hop spiciness combine quite nicely.  I think I'm also getting something slightly herbal and maybe nutty, but it's a little hard to pick out against the stronger spicy aromas.

Taste: 32/40
Spiciness, both rye and hop, dominate the flavor profile.  Pepper and resin are clear in the flavor, though I didn't pick up on them in the nose.  It's not overly bitter for an IPA, and the grain bill supports the hop characteristics pretty well.  Aside from spiciness, and again a touch of herbal and nutty character, I also taste something mildly sweet, like caramel, and maybe a little roastiness, possibly chocolate notes.  The aftertaste is bitter/spicy and has decent linger.

Mouthfeel: 7/10

The medium-light body and very slight astringency were a bit unexpected, but not necessarily bad.  It was a little more carbonated than I thought it should have been.

Style: 5/5
It's hard to lose points in the Specialty Beer category, which is where a rye-based IPA would land.  I found this beer to be fairly well done -- maybe a little off balance with the spiciness to sweet malt, and the bitterness could have been more forward, but those are personal preferences, not deviations from the style.

Drinkability: 8/10
I could probably have a couple of these back-to-back, since it's not an overly bitter beer, nor does the aftertaste really coat the palate all that much.  It does, a little, especially with that resin character, but not nearly as much as some other IPAs do.  I think this would also pair well with a good steak on the grill.

Overall: 82/100
I'll be looking for this beer again.  I've always enjoyed Magic Hat beers, and I'm glad this one didn't disappoint.  I've only had a small handful of other rye IPAs to compare it to, but it's better than most of the others that I've tried so far.  (The Zeno's-Otto's Rye IPA is still my favorite, I think.)

And I can't pick up this beer without getting the Beatles stuck in my head.  That's just a bonus.

Cheers!

Homebrew: Foamy Roggenbier

For many, many years, I've tried to keep up with writing something on a regular basis, but I found that I ran out of things to write about.  I hope that doesn't happen with this blog.  Unless I'm too busy out finding and sampling new beers.  I think my main issue before was that I just hadn't found my real passion yet.  Now that I have, cyberspace beware!

My passion for beer has led me into the world of homebrew, which has turned out to be a most fantastic hobby.  My husband and I started our homebrewing experience a few years back with a California Common, and that was the only batch we bottled.  It was pretty tasty for a first go.  We switched to a 5-gal. keg system after that, since washing and sanitizing bottles is pretty time consuming.  We also bought a nice big chest freezer and adjusted the cooling knob so we could lager in the summertime if we want, and it also lets us maintain more consistent temperatures for better conditioning.  Right now, we have the remnants of a grand cru, about a gallon left of the pumpkin ale I made for Thanksgiving, and a couple gallons of a roggenbier.  I also have a Belgian Tripel that's still conditioning, and I can't wait to try it!

I have notebooks full of notes and calculations, and I worked up a spreadsheet to keep track of my recipes, calculations, and other helpful information, like grain and hop characteristics, water quality, yeast strain profiles, keg psi charts, etc.  It's a very fulfilling hobby, to say the least.

I have, however, run across a small issue I can't sort out with my roggenbier.  It looks like this coming out of the keg:

I brewed it and fermented it like normal.  The OG was 1.043, and FG was 1.012 when I kegged it.  I topped it with CO2 at about 12psi and disconnected it from the CO2 tank.  Then I put it in my keezer, which was set around 40-42F, to let it condition -- colder than I would have preferred, but at least the temperature was fairly constant, instead of being subjected to 20+ degree temperature swings twice a day, every day.  When I went to tap it, it was under so much pressure that foam backed up into the CO2 hose when I tried to connect it.  The keg lid has no pressure relief valve, so I had to push in the poppet to bleed off enough pressure to get the tap on (very messy -- foam was spraying everywhere in my mudroom while I did this).  I left the CO2 hose off, since there was already more than enough pressure in the keg.  I've emptied more than half the keg since then, and it is still under enough pressure that all I get is foam, and I still haven't attached the CO2.  I fill up a half-gallon pitcher, wait about 10-15 minutes, and get about a pint of beer out of it.  I let the glass of foam above sit for about five minutes, and it looks more like this:

The beer smells and tastes like it should after the head settles, but I can't figure out for the life of me where all that extra pressure in the keg came from.  My husband thought the beer might've kicked off again when we kegged it, but the fact that the FG was already so low, coupled with the pretty cold temps in the keezer, make me wonder if that's what really happened.  Any suggestions or thoughts would be helpful, since I'd rather not run into this issue again.

If you like beer and are looking for an interesting new hobby, try looking into homebrew.  It's made me learn so much more about beers of all kinds, and it has really enriched my life.  Cheers!