Brewer's Corner: To Grandmother's House We Go

I have a few of homebrew posts to write and get up here on this blog, but I have been spending more time drinking beer than writing about beer.

We will get started with a Red Ale that I brewed with my good friend Alex, aka onegoodarm.  This was a bit of a kitchen sink ale, where we threw a recipe together from the grain and hops we had left-over from a few other brews.  However, the brew crew had recently brewed both American and Irish Red Ales, so we had the material for another Red.  The American Red was the second beer I ever brewed. It was decent but was not awesome.  The real problem with it was that it kinda fell in between two different styles.  It was not malty and bready enough to be an Irish, but was not quite crisp and hoppy enough for an interesting West Coast American Red.

We decided to fix this with a new recipe and dry hopping the smack out of it.  4ozs total of dry hop went into it and a hoppy American Red Ale was born.  We christened her Little Red Hopping Hood. Probably the most clever beer name I have come up with to date. We dry hopped in the keg so as the keg matured and the keg got drank, the beer changed.  It was probably best at week two, T-minus 2 gallons when the hops gave off the perfect, albeit strong, floral, herb aroma.

Primary fermentation prior to transferring

Transferring to the soda keg

Yes, Little Red Hopping Hood was clever, but I have seen a few craft beers out there with great pun names that I really wish I had thought of first.

(1) Hoptimus Prime by Legacy Brewing: Reading, PA.
(2) Tricerahops Double IPA: Nikasi Brewing: Eugene, OR
(3) Hopacolypse: Drake's Brewing: San Leandro, CA (I am drinking this as I write this post and at 9.6% it is certainly a big boy beer, but has a very fresh hop flavor. Highly recommended)

Help a brother out with any good Hop puns that I can use for an upcoming IPA.

In the glass after 3 weeks of dry hopping