Last weekend was Surly's Darkness Day, the annual release of their Russian Imperial Stout. This year they introduced a new keg-only beer called Damien, which is made from the second runnings of Darkness and some additional fermentables. This beer, which still comes in at 5.5% ABV, is then dry hopped to an insane level. When my friends and I had samples on Friday night we weren't sure if the beer had any flavors beyond dry hopping. It was great!
This reminded me just how much I love a dry hopped beer. My most recent batch, Bitters the Monkey, is in the middle of its dry hopping regimen right now. My next batch, a clone of Surly's Furious, will use over a half-pound of dry hops for a 5 gallon batch. That's 1.72 oz of dry hops per gallon, which is a staggering amount.
I decided to add a third beer to the dry-hop mix by transferring my Brown South in History into a keg with 1oz of UK Fuggles and 1oz of Simcoe. I wasn't that thrilled with the results of BSiH -- it's got a great nutty flavor, but after a few sips the roast flavor is overwhelming -- so we'll see if it improves with some dry hopping.
Normally when I dry hop a beer I remove the beer from the hops before serving. But with this keg of BSiH I'm going to serve with the dry hops intact. It will be fun to see how the beer changes as the dry hop time increases.
Eric says:
I am really going to have to go and try to find some Damien. I have a hop addiction that is out of control. Would love to try this. Also, I hope your BSiH ends up turning out well with all those extended hopping. Let us know how it turns out.
October 25, 2011 at 12:28 am