402: Colorado WCIPA Roundtable With Cannonball Creek, Westbound & Down, and Amalgam
Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast
Crafting the Perfect West Coast IPA
This chapter explores the essential role of hops in the creation of West Coast IPAs, focusing on the balance between bitterness and flavor. The speakers share their experiences with new brewing techniques, including the use of CO2 extracts, and the challenges they face in achieving a clean, characterful beer. Emphasizing continuous learning and collaboration, they reflect on their brewing journey and the influence of peer brewers on their craft.
Strong brewing communities produce clusters of great breweries, and the Colorado brewing world, centered in Denver, is no different. Friendly competition drives innovation, exploration, and refinement as well as knowledgeable consumers with higher and higher expectations, and in this episode, we brought together three friends (each medal-winning brewers) for a conversation on their approach to West coast IPA.
Brian Hutchinson of Cannonball Creek has brought home a slew of medals in the pale ale space (11 total GABF and World Beer Cup medals between their pale ale and session IPA), and picked up a GABF gold medal last year for their New Zealand-style IPA. Jake Gardner of Westbound & Down has earned a handful of GABF and World Beer Cup medals for their West coast IPAs like Spirit of the West and Westbound Select. And Phil Joyce of Amalgam most recently brought home gold for West coast IPA in the Colorado Brewers Cup, after placing fourth at the Alpha King Challenge last year.
In this episode, the three move through a range of IPA brewing topics, including:
- designing IPA with clean flavors that are easy to linguistically identify
- decocting and step mashing WCIPA for higher attenuation, foam stability, and FAN uptake
- building a malt base in WCIPA with blends of Pilsner malt
- using flaked wheat in smaller percentages for mouthfeel
- fermenting with Chico yeast for dry and low-ester beers
- minimizing hop creep with ALDC, diacetyl-free yeast, and other yeast health tools
- driving faster and healthier fermentations for more vibrant hop character
- understand the impact of water on WCIPA
- integrating flavor and bitterness
- the impact of pH on hop expression
- selecting loud hops that punch hard
And more.
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