I brewed a pale ale on 5/28 5# MO 5# 2row 8oz carapils 8oz crystal 40 hops .5oz centennial 60min 1oz simcoe 10min .5oz centennial 5min 1oz amarillo 1min 1oz citra 1min yeast us-05 final gravity was 1.012 I kegged it on saturday but not fully carbonated. When I taste it it has a strong fruity flavor. I don't know if its the hops or it did ferment hot the first day it got up to 74 and 68 for the rest of the first week. Is it because hot fermentation or hops? What time of fruit flavor do you get from warmer fermentation with us-05? I hope hops so it can fade or I can keg-hop it with a piney hop to balance it.
Amarillo and citra are both very fruity, and fermenting warm with US-05 can also give fruity flavors, the bulk of it is probably from the hops though.
´ it did ferment hot the first day it got up to 74 and 68 for the rest of the first week. ´ I have fermented at this way you did for several times and didn´t get a very fruity flavor, i don´t know amarillo and citra(they are not available here) but i suspect these ones could be the culprits.
Thats good its just the hops. They should fade soon, it's a young beer. I might keg-hop it with some Simcoe or Centennial
All of the above + your first guess (US-05 @ 74*F)...getting it nice and cold (after fully carbed) and upping the carbonation should help disguise the fruitiness.
This is true. My last APA that was hopped heavily with Simcoe gave off quite a lot of orange and pineapple juice aromas and flavors.
Interesting, two folks posted that Simcoe provides fruity tastes. I have personally only gotten pine from Simcoe. I would normally have just chalked this up to each person perceives tastes differently but koopa recently posted: “For a high alpha acid hop, Simcoe is relatively low in cohumulone and can give you nice pineapple and/or pine notes mainly depending on which farm it was sourced from.” So, it appears that Simcoe will vary in the flavors that it provides based upon which hop farm it is from. This appears to be a prime example of terroir affecting hop flavors. Is there any way of determining the origin (hop farm) of the Simcoe hops we obtain? For example, does Hop Union only obtain Simcoe hops from the ‘piney’ hop farm? Cheers!
My experience with a beer similar to this, was fruity for about the first 2-3 weeks then the fruit disappeared.
74 might be a little warm for the first couple days. If that was ambient room temp then the beer could have been up in the high 70's during initial fermentation when you tend to get a lot of fruity esters.
I guess I need to brew more single-hopped beers, because I always thought the fruitiness was coming from the Citras and Centennials I was pairing with the Simcoes.
