Stone Levitation clone question

[Inkleg]

Strange I have a few beers with that exact same flaw too.

[Kealia]

Hahaha, no surprise on that or that it is a solid beer. Glad it worked out for you!

[Kealia]

*bump*

I brewed this again (almost) 2 weeks ago and will be checking the gravity (for kicks) and dry-hopping tonight.
Simcoe+ Amarillo.....yum.

I'll post an update later - but damn, I love this beer.

[Inkleg]

but damn, I love this beer.

Agree with ya there. Out of all the repeat beers I've brewed I've done Levitation the most. Just a danm good beer with great hop combo.
Mitch Steele knew what he was doing when he left Citra out of it.

[Kealia]

Haha. I've brewed this so many times that I've played with the hops a number of times using Nelson Sauvin, Mosaic and yes - Citra in some versions. I think the grain bill is great with just about anything.

I somehow deleted my hydro pic from last night but the gravity is at 1.016 which should be my terminal gravity unless it gains another point or two in the next 4 days - which I don't expect. This will be the strongest version because I had such good efficiency on this batch - coming in at 5.25% currently. Previous versions were more in the 4.5% range and I even had one that was 3.8% which was still really good.

I plan on cold crashing on Tuesday and keggig on Friday/Saturday. I have until then to finish one small 2.5G keg of my Nelson/Mosaic Pale Ale.

[mashani]

I pretty much got everything here to make this again too... but will use my farmhouse blend again since I've got another 4oz and that turned out great last time.

[Kealia]

So....this beer is not what was expected. I followed the same recipe as before but this beer turned out murky, more brown than red and with a very muted hop presence. I'm going to pull a pint tonight (I', only 4-5 in) and post a picture. I also sent a few bottles out to some of the fools here to enjoy and got similar feedback from those that have tried it at this point.

The only 2 things I did differently this time around were:
- Pitching more yeast
- Mashed at 150 instead of 156

As a result, this batch finished at 5.25% instead of the normal 3.8% - 4.5%. Now, I would have expected it to be less sweet, with MORE hop presence than before, but that's not what I got. It did taste a bit more like a brown ale as well as looking like it, too. I wonder if I somehow grabbed some wrong grains when I built this out - or mis-measured something.

Like I said, I am going to pull a pint tonight and then consider gelatin fining it to clear it up, then hitting it with a keg hop of some Amarillo and Simcoe.

More to come - this is far from over.

I think it's important to share out failures/issues even more so than our successes.
So right now this is filed under: WTF?

[Beer-lord]

I've only done this once and mine was not up to snuff but I used gelatin and blamed it on that. Doubt that was the problem but that's all I did different on that beer. Looking back thru this thread I realized I'm not a fan of US-04, and had to keg hop this to make it taste better as it was bland. That was also the time many of my beers were finishing higher than they should have.
Guess I should brew this again but I don't think I'd use 04. Prolly would use 007.

[Inkleg]

So which recipe is this. The one on page 7 or page 8? Looks like the grain bill is the same, but page 8 is not Levitation hop bill or yeast. Which might help explain some things.

[Kealia]

I used the one from page 7........gelatin is blooming right now.

[mashani]

Was it a high floc yeast? (fwiw, S-04 is, and it might take out some of the hop character that something more powdery would leave in).

Also, although I think drying out a beer west coast like is nice for piney and grapefruit like citrusy hops, I have found (at least to my tastes) that leaving a bit more residual sweetness is good for more tropical fruity/juicy kinds of hops. The touch of sweetness brings out the fruit.

[Kealia]

It was WLP007 - same as most times I brew this. This is what the beer looks like (which actually looks a lot more red in this picture than it does in person).


I'm posting this to compare to post-gelatin which I will pull tomorrow).

[Kealia]

I pulled a pint last night and what a difference the gelatin made. Not only is the beer clearer (as expected) but it is now more red than brown, tastes crisper and the hops actually come through instead of being so muddied.

I don't know what was causing "issues" before but the beer is now much closer to what it should be then before.

This picture was taken outdoors whereas the last one was indoor, but it does show the difference in color and clarity:

[Beer-lord]

I guess the yeast in suspension caused the color change and taste change. So, though my 2 gelatin beers were definitely hop muted, it appears your removing the yeast in suspension allowed the hops to wake up.
Good on ya!

[BlackDuck]

Nice save!!! Glad the extra step worked out for you.