A few weeks ago we revisited Brewsmith’s Hoppy Heart IPA. We originally did this one way back in May, but we wanted to try it again, so we did!
All in all, it was a pretty similar beer to before, but it wasn’t exactly the same. This can happen sometimes if we did things at different temperatures, especially the fermentation. Every brew is different! While commercial breweries take a lot of care to make sure each batch is exactly the same, we didn’t… Seasonality can often affect raw material flavours as well, so an autumn brew can be different from a spring brew.
Compared to my review of the previous batch, this beer was a bit more laid back in terms of the hops. The smell was great: sticky and malty with a bit of a metallic feel, not a lot of hops though. From the beginning, the beer felt very malty.
This continued on through the initial taste. There was a great long bitterness, characteristic of an IPA, but there wasn’t much interaction of different hop flavours. It was a nice single bitterness. This was behind the sweetness and malt, which was primary, at least at first. I would have preferred a little more spectrum in there, but it was still a great beer.
I’m not sure why this batch was generally sweeter than before. It possible it’s just how we steeped the grains as well as fermentation temperatures.
Towards the end, the bitterness did start to take over a bit more and the sweetness got pushed out of the way. I usually find this happens in an IPA; the bitterness builds up in your mouth. I quite enjoyed this, and it was in no way overpowering.
All in all this was a fairly sessionable IPA, but maybe a little heavy for too many.
I always enjoy an IPA with curry, and I’m going to maintain this opinion. So get some curry and pop open an IPA.-Chas
We make home brew 