Double Mountain Brewery Blog

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Release Parties

March 3, 2010 on 12:00 pm | In Uncategorized, beers, events, fun, general, new beers | 4 Comments

“EMPIRE STRIKES BACK” All-English IPA Release Parties

Thursday, March 4th
Moon & Sixpence Pub
2014 NE 42nd Ave, Portland
5-9pm

Friday, March 5th
Brother John’s Public House
1227 NW Galveston Ave, Bend
5-9pm

We’ll be in attendance to talk shop and raffle off some schwag at both of these events.

Charlie talks about the Beer:

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is a concept beer that answers the question, “what happens when you make a big Northwest-style IPA with all-English malt and hops?” We are unabashedly local when it comes to raw materials here at Double Mountain, and rightly so, given their impeccable quality. But as a big fan of big British beers, I figured a Brit-inspired brew (on steroids) would make for a nice contrast to our regular line-up. And so I decided to use my self-allotted once-a-year recipe (last year’s was Das Boot, an altbier) to give it a go. Our brewer Kyle Larsen brought me up to speed on the current ins-and-outs of our brewing system and we knocked out the batch together.

Straight out of the gate, we knew this would be a malty affair, as the Maris Otter “pale” malt from Crisp Maltings appeared anything but pale. Maris Otter is floor-malted and turned by hand, which suggest some inherent variability. Our batch of 20 bags was a darkish khaki color with some mild scorch marks — not at all like our beloved house Pilsner malt grown in British Columbia. We added a bag of Crisp “Coloured Malt” to add richness and color. The malt yielded particularly well, giving us a nicely high starting gravity above what we’d been shooting for. (In our world, this is a good problem to have…)

As expected, the Fuggles and Kent Goldings hops we sourced via Hopunion were very muted by Yakima standards; the Fuggles were nicely spicy, the Goldings herbal. We packed the hopback with copious quantities, then saved a bunch for dry-hopping. After a two week fermentation with our house yeast, we rested the beer on 1+ lbs per barrel of Goldings for about two weeks. The final product came in at around 6% ABV and 65 BU.

The resulting beer is big and aromatically malty, very mouth-filling for its strength, with a decided lean towards sticky toffee flavors and aromas. The hopping almost devoid of the citrus character we associate with “hoppy” beers here in the Northwest, but they do provide a backbone of clean bitterness, and a tad of spicy/herbal hop aroma. The mid-palate hop flavors are pretty much overwhelmed, however, by the massive malt attack. Definitely a malt-lover’s IPA…I don’t think anyone would ever guess it had over three lbs per barrel of hops in it. But that’s how it goes in the world of one-off brewing.

So if you’re psyched to take a brief (and I do mean brief — we only made about 40 kegs’ worth) sojourn into the land of malty goodness, come find me at one of the gigs listed above. I’ll be waiting. Cheers, Charlie Devereux