Catching up and the MindTouch RESTful IPA

As usual, my entries are woefully behind my actual brewing. Quick recap (with some questionable chance of detailed follow up) of the last 6 months:

• Second batch of Session Ale recipe using British Ale yeast came out the way i intended right at about 4.5%. This was bottled as the Bunkspeed Hyperdrive 2.0 Release Ale
  
• Third batch of Session Ale repeated the second batch's success but was cask conditioned and put on the Angram (and is already gone)
  
• Another attempt at a Paulaner clone ended up off the mark. A fine Hefeweizen but not quite a Paulaner
• Second annual Cranberry WitBier is now on tap and even tastier than last year.

And my most recent brewing excursion is the MindTouch RESTful IPA. This is a variation on my take on the SDPA and will be bottled. I'll probably start another batch of it next weekend to put on the Angram. Either that or another Session Ale, since it is more quaffable.

Various brew ramblings

Went to the Carlsbad Pizza Port Real Ale festival the other weekend. Beer engine heaven, but I did learn two things:

• Sparklers are important for that hand pulled mouthfeel. There were no sparklers used as the festival
  
• I really only like IPAs from the beer engine. There were a bunch of belgians and the low carbonation did not taste appropriate for them, imho.
  

A little more on the carbonation. I learned this last year, when I tried putting my Hefeweizen on nitrogen. Tasted horrible. Then I switched it to CO2 (but only about 7 psi, because i had an IPA on the same regulator) and it got better but still not right. Since then I learned that Hefeweizen, like Belgians do better at fizzy carbonation levels. I've now bought a dual regulator for the kegerator, allowing me to run most ale's around 5psi, while my belgians and hefeweizen come out at 13psi. I just put a Belgian Triple on tap and it's perfect at 13psi.

At the same time, I moved my Simcoe IPA to nitrogen. Interesting experiment. Really brings out the hop aroma and has that hand pulled mouthfeel. It basically starts as a pint of head. After about 5 minutes, you have about half a pint of ale, the rest is a head that won't go away. So it's a stand-in for a beer engine, but no replacement.

Ready for summer, I've got yet another Paulaner clone sitting in secondary, waiting for an open slot in my kegerator. This one I did with wheat syrup instead of DME. It's very dark. I guess syrup just makes your ales a lot darker. We'll have to say if that's affected the taste once i finally keg it.

Finally, Alpine finally made Duet again and a friend of mine brought me a growler. It wasn't like I remembered at all. Not sure what was different and I don't know if it's my memory is wrong or if it just came out different this year. The aroma was right, but the taste was more like the Nelson. Strange. At the Real Ale festival I had Ballast Point's Sculpin IPA and I guess, at this point, Sculpin's moved ahead of Duet as my favorite IPA.