Dutch DIPA (Mosaic version) tasting

This beer has not been pushing too many pencils

Yum. The first pulls of the first of the Action Hero IPA series, Dutch, still had some resinous bits floating around in it and were just a little too harsh on the bitterness. After one full week of settling, everything has finally dropped out and it's pouring sparkling clear. Today I'm sampling the Mosaic hopped version. If you remember, I split the original batch and did one with equal parts Mosaic, Centennial, and Nugget and the other with Columbus, Centennial, and Nugget. The Columbus, Centennial, Nugget version was a repeat of a 10% abv DIPA I brewed a few months ago. The idea was that I would see if I could make a West Coast IPA comparable (but different) in flavor to an Enjoy By IPA or Hop Juju without heavy hitters like Simcoe, Amarillo, Citra, Nelson Sauvin, Riwuakua or whatever, or other truly pungent new hop varietals.

I wish I would have followed that beer a little more closely on this brew blog. The results were encouraging. With hop bursting and aggressive dry hopping, I was able to make Columbus, Centennial, and Nugget really shine together. I intended to replicate that DIPA exactly and dry hop one with Mosaic as the spotlight and another the same way I had to taste them side-by-side. Due to a brew day snafu, I didn't have the Columbus hops I wanted on hand and, substituted Mosaic in the whirlpool hop bouquet. I think it will still be a nice comparison regardless. I'll post the results of the Columbus-Centennial-Nugget tasting when I get to pour it. That beer is conditioning at my other keezer at the brewery while this one is in my apartment keezer.

On with the tasting:

Appearance: golden and clear. Head sticks around and sticks to the glass.

Smell: big tropical aroma, mostly kiwi. The aroma is one-sided and lacks depth. By depth, I mean dankness.

Taste: the bitterness gets me first and lingers while I taste pineapple, tangerine and grapefruit. Then the bitterness seems to stay in the back of my throat. I can't help but think that this beer is hamstrung by the amount of bitterness it has. It either needs more malt to balance the bitterness (not the west coast DIPA style), more alcohol to give it more body (not what I want in this beer), or less bitterness. I rolled back the hop extract by 10ml in the last batch. I must have extracted more bittering from my whirlpool addition (14oz @ 212 to 200 degrees for 30 minutes) than in the last batch, which I held at 180 degrees.

Mouthfeel: dry, definitely an enamel stripper, which is appropriate. It feels substantial, despite the low finishing gravity, probably because of the high alcohol and Carapils.

This is a solid beer, but, being uber-critical of my own beer, here's what I want when I brew it again:

1. More dimension on the hops. It lacks dankness. I want dank, citrus, and tropical notes in my west coast IPA.
2. Less harsh bitterness. I love the clean bitterness that hop extract gives to a beer and the reliability I can predict based on adding 5, 10, 15, 20 etc. ml. The X-factor is definitely whirlpool hops and the extra bitterness that they lend. I'll drop the extract bittering addition on the next one and keep the whirlpool hop around the same. It will feel weird adding something like 30 IBUs in my bittering addition and relying on whirlpool additions to make up the rest, but this beer makes me think that will be the case.