Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

Pours a light yellow color with chill haze. A solid 1.5” of foamy white head sits on top and leaves copius amounts of lacing as it fades away.

Aroma

Even cold, you can get a strong waft of the aroma from several feet away. The aroma consists predominately of pine, diesel and sweet fruit.

Taste/Mouthfeel

Medium in carbonation. The taste consists of a mix of sappy pine and diesel with just a touch of sweetness from the Vienna malt. The finish has a moderate bitterness with a small amount of sweet fruit. It has a fairly dry finish, but it’s not bone-dry.

Impressions

I personally find this beer very drinkable. It’s not overly sweet and the bitterness helps improve drinkability. This is the first batch that I used Abstrax hops. I had some trouble doing the oxygen free transfer, so only a limited amount of the clarifying agent and Abstrax hops extract made it into the keg. That likely explains the appearance, since it’s been in the keg for a month now. Despite that it’s very flavorful. I need to get the correct size tubing so I can do a better transfer of the Abatrax hops and clarifying agent for the next batch. I’m looking forward to continue experimenting with the Abstrax hops products.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

Pours crystal clear with an inch of white foam that has good retention. There are visible carbonation bubbles and the beer has a light straw color.

Aroma

The aroma can be smelled before the glass gets close to my mouth. It’s a mix of white grape and lime.

Taste/Mouthfeel

Medium - high carbonation. As detected in the aroma, it kicks off with the white grape, followed by a mix of lime and breadiness in the finish. It’s crisp and extremely easy drinking.

Impressions

For this version, I used 3oz of dry hops, 1oz of which was cryo. I think I could dial this up even more (say 4-5oz) and still get a refreshing pilsner without it being too over the top hoppy. Really pleased with how this batch turned out, it’s perfect for summertime.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

Pours a cloudly, pale yellow color. There is a little clarity, but the haze is still pretty prominent after 3 weeks in the keg. It produces an inch of sticky white head that leaves a good amount of lacing on the inside of the glass.

Aroma

The aroma is really bright and can be smelled from a mile away. I get lime, pineapple and a hint of berry.

Taste/Mouthfeel

Moderate in carbonation with a crisp and dry finish. Citrus and pineapple up front followed by lime through the finish. Has a fantastic moderate bitterness that leaves you wanting another sip.

Impressions

This by far one of my favorite West Coast IPA batches I’ve produced. The aroma and flavor are almost exactly what I was hoping for. This is the first batch where I used the hop dropper and didn’t introduce any O2 at all into the beer after fermentation started.

I attribute the haze to a few factors. First, I didn’t use any clarifying agent in this batch. Second, I used a massive dry hop that is two times what I normally use. Despite cold crashing and dumping the trub/hops twice, it’s still has a haze to it. If it stuck around long enough it would eventually clear up in the kegerator, but I don’t expect I’ll find that out.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

Pours a pale and somewhat cloudy straw color. You can see through it, but the clarity isn’t great. It produces an inch of white fluffy head that has great retention and leaves sticky lacing as it fades.

Aroma

The aroma is bright and tropical with plenty of citrus and pineapple.

Taste/Mouthfeel

Moderate carbonation with a crisp and dry finish. Similar to the aroma, you get the tropical fruit up front, but mid-taste you get a touch of pine. The flavors play well with one another. The finish has a small amount of bitterness, just enough to beg another sip. The bitterness is not as apparent as some recent batches, but I wouldn’t consider that a negative in this particular beer.

Impressions

This batch finished at 7.4% abv with a final gravity of 1.010. I had a lot of problems kegging this beer. I carbonated it in the unitank but when I went to do the closed transfer I ended up stirring up the remaning hops and trub. It took me several days to finally get it kegged. I think that accounts for some of the clarity issues compared to previous batches. That being said, this beer is really tasty and I’m happy with how it turned out. This was my first time trying out Nectaron and I liked how it played with Citra and Simcoe.

• Built For Me V1 Recipe
• Built For Me V2 Recipe
• Built For Me V3 Recipe
• Built For Me V4 Recipe [Recipe for this post’s comparison]
• Built For Speed Clone Side By Side Comparison V1
• Built For Speed Clone Side By Side Comparison V2
• Built For Speed Clone Side By Side Comparison V3

For this batch, the head brewer/owner, Mike Hunsaker, reached out to me over email and graciously provided notes on the actual recipe. I adapted the recipe to work with my system and scaled it as needed. Some stand out differences from the actual recipe versus my previous attempts were:

• 90 minute boil with dextrose added.
• While predominantly pilsner, there is a small amount of Vienna malt (~15%).
• Way fewer hops in the boil and a much larger dry hop charge.

The current beer description from Grains of Wrath:

Light, dry bodied west coast IPA with flavors and aromas of bright tropical fruit, pine and loads of dank grapefruit. 6.7% ABV

Differences from V3

Since Mike Hunsaker provided me with notes on the recipe, I didn’t make incremental changes. Instead I scaled down the official recipe to work on my brewing system. Rather than list all the differences, I’ll point you to the recipe here.

Stats

This batch went perfectly. I nailed all of my numbers and the beer came out to exactly 6.7% ABV, which matches the commercial version.

Appearance

The clone version is extremely clear, but has a slight chill haze. The commercial version is crystal clear. They are identical in color. The head retention is slightly better on the commercial version. They both produce a white head with some lacing, but the homebrew version fades a little quicker.

Aroma

The aroma on these 2 beers seemed to be reversed. The homebrew version has more dank / diesel aromas with some mild citrus. The commercial version on the other hand is more citrus forward with the dank / diesel notes in the background. The commercial version is also noticablly brighter in aroma.

Taste/Mouthfeel

Both beers are light-medium in carbonation. I noticed the homebrew version is also a touch drier than the commercial version. The homebrew version’s taste is a mix of diesel and citrus with some mild pine. The commercial version’s taste is brighter, like the aroma, with citrus up front and background notes of pine and diesel. Both finish with a moderate bitterness.

Changes for next time

It was fun to scale down the recipe provided by Mike. He had some additional notes in there that I wasn’t able to try when I brewed this batch. So for next time I’d like to measure and adjust the pH now that I have the tools to do so.

I may also adjust how I do the dry hop. For this batch I split the dry hops. The first round went in near the end of fermentation for 2-3 days. Then the 2nd round went directly into the keg when I did a closed transfer from the unitank to the keg.

Next time I might try to do 2 rounds in the unitank, dropping the hops each time. Or I may just add them all at once in one single dose then drop them out when cold crashing.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

At 2 weeks in the keg, the beer has a pale golden straw color. It still has a little haze, which should clear up in the keg. It pours an inch of fluffy white foam with good head retention and lacing.

Aroma

You can smell this one from a mile away. Tons of sweet citrus and melon jump out at me. As it warms, the aroma becomes a little more intense.

Taste/Mouthfeel

The beer has moderate carbonation and finishes on the dry side. The taste is really enjoyable. Tangerine, white grape and citrus notes dominate. It finishes with a moderate bitterness.

Impressions

This beer clocked in at 6.3% ABV and is super crushable. It’s refreshing, hoppy and the finish begs another sip. I’m super pleased with how this one turned out.

For the double dry hopping, I dry hopped once in the unitank right before the end of fermentation. For the 2nd dry hopping, I added them directly to the keg. Because of this I didn’t carbonate the beer in the unitank, but instead burst carbonated in the keg. This method of double dry hopping worked really well and I intend to use it in the future on both west coast and hazy IPAs.

You can find the recipe for the base beer here.

Appearance

The beer pours a beautiful purplish ruby red color that is mostly clear. It produces a half inch of fizzy white head that quickly dissipates. There is plenty of visible carbonation bubbles racing to the top of the glass.

Aroma

In the aroma I pick up chardonnay, berry and oak. The buttery chardonnay and berry are more prevelant than the oak, which is more of a background character.

Taste/Mouthfeel

This beer is effervescent and highly carbonated. It’s on the light to medium side in terms of body. The massive amount of fruit added to the secondary contributes a little to the body.

The taste starts with the chardonnay and then is followed by tart raspberries. It finishes dry with lingering oak and juicy raspberries. I’d measure the acidity of this batch around medium.

Impressions

I don’t get any off-flavors from it’s 9 years in the bottle. It’s held up quite well! It’s pretty balanced in regards to the 4 main flavors of oak/fruit/chardonnay/tartness with one not overpowering any of the others.

• Built For Me V1 Recipe
• Built For Me V2 Recipe
• Built For Me V3 Recipe
• Built For Speed Clone Side By Side Comparison V1
• Built For Speed Clone Side By Side Comparison V2

Beer description from Grains of Wrath:

Crisp, crushable West Coast IPA with Simcoe, Mosaic, Strata and Columbus hops. Born with the hammer down, this beer was built for speed.

Differences from V2

I’m going to break down the differences into 2 categories since I had a lot of equipment upgrades since the previous iteration. Starting with the recipe:

• Dropped the pale wheat that I had added in V2 and went back to the malt bill of V1.
• Changed mash rest temperature from 152F -> 149F.
• In addition to Mosaic and Simcoe, I also added Columbus and Strata. I also adjusted the hop additions to spread out each hop evenly in the boil and dry hop.
• I used the Hoppy water profile in brewfather which resulted in the additions of some salts to my tap water.

Since my previous batch I’ve made 2 equipment upgrades that may have had some impact on the finished product.

• Switched to an all-in-one electric brew system.
• Switched from an SS Brewtech Bucket for fermenting to a SS Brewtech Unitank 2.0.

Stats

Since I am still getting used to the new electric brewing system, my efficency was much lower than planned. For this system I really need to double mill the grain to get better stats. This resulted in the ABV of the homebrew version coming out to 6.2% vs the commercial version which is 6.7%.

Appearance

The appearance was the biggest difference this time around. I forgot to adjust the dump valve in the up position before cold crashing the beer so it ended up with a bit more haze. Granted it’s still very young, so I imagine it will clear up a bit more while in the keg.

The commercial version is crystal clear and they both produce the same fluffy white head that has good retention. Putting aside the haze of the cloned version, they do have very similar color, being a very pale straw color.

Aroma

Straight from the fridge, the commercial version has a mix of diesel and citrus aromas. The diesel character being more prominent. The homebrew version has similar aromas, but it’s the citrus character that stands out more.

As both beers warmed up, I noticed the differences starting to fade and they became very similar in aroma.

Taste/Mouthfeel

The commercial version has medium (plus) carbonation, while the homebrewed version’s carbonation is a little less bubbly. The commercial version is very crisp and features more of the dank/diesel flavors I picked up in the aroma. The citrus flavor shows up in the finish along with a pleasant bitterness.

The homebrewed version was a little brighter in flavor with more citrus than the dank/diesel flavors. It is also incredibly crisp and refreshing with a pleasant bitterness.

Similar to the aroma, as these beers both warmed up the taste differences became less apparent although not as much as the aroma. The biggest difference is the commercial version was a little more complex with different flavors coming in waves while the homebrewed version’s flavor was more consistent throughout the taste.

Changes for next time

I ended up really liking the cloned version a lot. I think if I had to make changes in order to arrive at a more similar product to the commercial version, I’d probably only modify the hops schedule. I think I’d use a little more Strata as late additions and cut back a little on the Mosaic hops.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

Pours a light orange color with mild haze. A 1/2” of white head sits atop the beer and leaves some decent lacing as it settles.

Aroma

The aroma consists of orange, guava and a hint of pine.

Taste/Mouthfeel

The beer has a medium amount of carbonation. There is a bit of orange and more pineapple in the taste. Light notes of pine and resin along with a moderate bitterness show up in the finish.

Impressions

This batch was my frist time trying out Vic Secret hops. They ended up pairing very well with Galaxy. This brew day was a disaster, so I’m pleasantly surprised that the beer actually ended up being tasty. I made a lot of mistakes in this batch, including forgetting to dump the trub, so I’m not surprised the beer wasn’t crystal clear out of the gate.

As of writing, this beer has been on tap for about 3 weeks. I noticed that initially I didn’t enjoy the taste, but now it’s tasting much better. So perhaps it just needed a little conditioning. Will keep that in mind when sampling future batches.

Recipe for this post can be found here.

Appearance

This imperial IPA pours about half an inch of creamy white head. It has good retention and leaves plenty of lacing on the inside of the glass. The beer is quite light in color, more of a straw color. It’s not hazy, but it’s also not cystal clear.

Aroma

The aroma from this one can be smelled from a few feet away. Pretty strong pine and resin with a touch of orange and sweetness. While not smelling boozy, the alcohol is apparent in the aroma.

Taste/Mouthfeel

A medium amount of carbonation with a light and crisp finish. The beer coats the inside of your mouth and will likely destroy your palatte for the evening. Sticky and resinous hop oils with a candied orange like finish. There is a hint of alcohol in the finish as well.

Impressions

I don’t brew imperial versions of beers often as 5G is a lot to go through. This being a special occasion, I made an exception. I find this to be really tasty, dangerously so! I had to rush this beer a bit due to scheduling conflicts, so I wasn’t able to cold crash it for as long as I wanted to. That likely accounts for the more hazy appearance.

I’m not sure I would change much about this besides giving it more time to cold crash (likely at least another day). This blend of hops gave it all the qualities I like in a hoppy beer so I’m very pleased with the result.