Hoppy Boston/Hopster’s DIPA

My friend Tom is a fellow craft beer fan and frequent reader of this blog. He read about my two previous experiences brewing beer at Hopster’s Brew and Boards in Newton and wanted to try it out, so we booked a brewing session together. After some back and forth on style we landed on a big hop-forward DIPA. I had a homebrew IPA recipe that had produced a great beer, and the Hopster’s staff had no problem helping me modify it for their equipment and available malts/hops. Special thanks to my wife Kristin for helping bottle the beer, Tom couldn’t make it due to one of the blizzards so she stepped up and it’s a much easier job with two people working together. The Hopster’s concept has really caught on, we brewed on a Saturday afternoon and I went back to bottle 3 weeks later. On both days the place was packed full with people brewing, eating and enjoying some delicious beer.  Hopster’s is so popular that they are in the process of setting up a second location, rumored to be in the South Boston area, with an even larger capacity. Here is what we brewed and how it turned out:

Recipe: 7.5 gallon batch, sparge the specialty grains then add extract and boil for 60 minutes, adding the hops at the times shown.

Fermentables: 16 lbs. Pilsner Light Liquid Malt Extract, 1.0 lbs. Crystal 120, 1.0 lbs. White Wheat, 0.5 lbs. CaraPils, 1.0 lbs. Dextrose.

Hops: 2.0 oz. Magnum (60 min.), 2.0 oz. Hallertau (30 min.),  1.0 oz. Citra (flame out), 4.0 oz. Columbus (dry hopped).

Fermented with American Ale yeast.

Hopster's DIPAHoppy Boston/Hopster’s Double IPA pours a deep orange with a moderate off-white head. The first whiff is pungent hop aromas, pine and citrus fruit. The taste is very hop-forward with notes of lemon, resin, orange, mango and grapefruit. Citra and Columbus are amongst my favorite hop varieties, so adding them late resulted in a beautiful mixture of hop scents and flavors. There is just enough malt to provide a little balance, a touch of cereal grain and caramel. You get a noticeable hit of bitterness from the high alpha acid Magnum hops, but it isn’t tongue numbing. This beer drinks clean and easy for a bigger beer, we didn’t take an official gravity reading but I estimate the ABV to be nearly 8%. The finish is clean with a nice little hop kick at the end. Overall this is one of the best home brews that I have made, tons of hops and very drinkable. If it sounds good to you book an appointment at Hopster’s and tell them you want to make some Hoppy Boston IPA!

Previous Hopster’s Articles:

Hoppy Boston/Hopster’s Fuggles PorterHoppy Boston/Hopster’s Belgian IPA, Hopster’s Brew and Boards

 

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