Fall of the Legend

There’s a well-worn sports movie plot that we all know by heart. The old champ gets pulled out of retirement for one last shot at glory before fading into the graceful immortality of a beloved hero. Despite Hollywood’s insistence that the lead always wins, reality usually intrudes rudely.

Think Brett Favre ending all of his post “retirement” seasons with a fatal playoff-ending interception. What then happens when a homebrewing hero returns to his kettles after a couple of years exiled to slumming with his friends? That very thing happened when former BA homebrewer extraordinaire and friend Jonny Lieberman fired up his system. Ever since a sudden move two years ago, Jonny has had no room for his brewery. The behemoth 100-quart mash tun, the kettles, the pumps and Sanke fermenters bounced in itinerant fashion, until now, when he has convinced a friend with spare room to not only store the gear, but to fire it up.

To get him off his duff and celebrate his triumphal return, he needed a masterful recipe, and it happens to be a variant on one of the last we brewed together. Shortly after the inauguration, we knew we wanted to brew a monster of a DIPA for the upcoming Southern California Homebrewers Festival (SCHF—aka the thing we spend all our early-year brew time on).

What we ended up brewing was a deeply satisfying beer, The Audacity of Hops. It was split into two portions—one in glass, one in a 10-gallon cornie keg. Each got a slightly different dry-hop profile, but in essence the same beer—until we tasted them. The portion from the cornie keg, for whatever reason—airspace, sunlight, magical mote fairies trapped in the steel—was geometrically/exponentially/logarithmically more bitter than the carboy version. That piece became “The Audacity of Aretha Franklin’s Hat” for the intimidating chapeau she wore as she sang “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Served at the SCHF, the keg kicked in an hour’s time as you heard the crowd murmur, “Try the Hat.”

Flash forward to present day minus a few months, and Jonny, not prone to repetition except in the face of awesomeness, decided to split the difference and repeat the Hat, but with wheat, an idea kicked around after the first sips of v1.0. Sure, he could have started simple, but when you’re the king of “Apple Pie” beer, why bother?

Right from the get-go, the story of a hero’s return went horribly pear-shaped. Missing parts, missing tools, forgotten procedures and cursed out borrowers of parts all consumed precious hours. Hard on an experienced hand used to speeding through the day like a greased, meth-fueled bobsled.

The final insult came when it was time to keg. At this point, the beer had been sitting in a keg on mass quantities of hop pellets for weeks. The pellets did what they always do; dissolve into a green pressure relief and poppet-clogging gunk. What should have been a quick pressure release and transfer to a clean keg turned into a beer thunderstorm as suds and hops rained down on everyone. In desperation, the brewers even took turns lapping at the torrent like parched kindergarteners at the water fountain. So much for the triumphal march! To be fair to Jonny, I’ll admit that when I took care of TAAFH Prime, the same damn thing happened to me, minus the lapping. Only I managed to lose a mere 3 gallons to the shower.

Let’s hope that for JL, this return starts like Jordan’s baseball “career” and ends like his perfect championship fadeaway with the Bulls. (Let’s ignore the whole Wizards period.)

The AUDACITY OF HOPS (ARETHA FRANKLIN’S HAT)
For 5.5 gallons at 1.098, 11 SRM, 221 IBUs (theoretical) – 90-minute boil

Malt/Grain/Sugar
10.0 lb. domestic 2-row malt
6.0 lb. Maris Otter malt
1.0 lb. Carapils
0.12 lb. chocolate malt

Mash
Saccharification rest at 152˚F for 60 minutes.

Hops
1.0 oz Centennial | 8.6% AA| whole – mash hops
1.0 oz Amarillo | 10.0% AA | pellets – first wort hops
1.5 oz Warrior | 15.4% AA | pellets – 90 minutes
0.5 oz Newport | 11.1% AA | pellets – 90 minutes
0.5 oz Simcoe | 11.9% AA | pellets – 45 minutes
0.5 oz Amarillo | 10.0% AA | pellets – 30 minutes
0.5 oz Columbus | 13.6% AA | pellets – 30 minutes
0.5 oz Columbus | 13.6% AA | pellets – 10 minutes
0.5 oz Palisade | 8.1% AA | pellets – 10 minutes
0.5 oz Columbus | 13.6% AA | pellets – 0 minutes
0.5 oz Palisade | 8.1% AA | pellets – 0 minutes

Dry hop with at least 2 ounces of your favorites. One batch got Simcoe and Centennial, another got Columbus and Amarillo.

Yeast
Wyeast 1056 / WLP001 / US-05

Notes
Ferment for a week. Dry hop for two. Transfer and be careful of the hop residue from this one. To make Jonny’s v2.0 beer: Sub in 4–5 pounds of wheat into the 2-Row / Maris Otter mix. ■