Swing and a miss
I thought it was being smart... I had come across the Haze Craze beer kit from MoreBeer and wanted to test out their "no boil" recipe. I also have stopped drinking alcohol, so I ordered some specific Non-Alcoholic yeast that would only ferment to ~1% ABV tops. I also decided to try my first time pressure fermenting so I would have less things to clean and not have to risk oxygenating the IPA and causing it to taste like wet cardboard.
After tasting the final product, I have learned some things...
- When pressure fermenting, make sure you leave enough head room in the keg for the krausen and fermentation activity... I didn't an managed to have a bunch blow out of the spunding valve all over my bathtub and bathtub wall.
- Listen to the research you've done and adjust the recipe to have lower IBUs (international bitterness units) because the sweetness from the alcohol isn't there to balance things out
- When pressure fermenting, have a floating dip tube in the keg or you'll have to dump litres of beer that are full of yeast and hop material.
Overall, this was an abject failure. The aroma of the beer was perfect - it was tropical and juicy, smelling like a pineapple orange juice. But it was undrinkable. The flavor of the aroma didn't match the taste, which was an astringent bitter flavor.
The recipe called for 4oz of hops and a "hop shot" - oil infused with hops to provide the bittering that normally comes from the hops added to the beginning of the boil. I should have cut back on the hops and fully omitted the hop shot, but I didn't.
Well now I know for next time - don't over hop. Don't fill the keg too much. Use the fermenter you normally do and do a closed transfer instead.
Now to figure out what to try to brew next that will make a decent NA beer. I don't think an IPA - which is usually bitter forward - is the right call for the first time.
