It's an American style IPA inspired by a recent trip to the US.
So I state a personal opinion and you question whether I know what beer it was and what style? Interesting. Keep in mind you don't need to be a prolific active member on AHB to know about beer.
Hey Brenos, I read FourStar's post as asking if you knew what beer or style the mystery Holgate beer was, not if you knew what style, etc. the RoadTrip is. He stringed it off the back of his saying he liked the RoadTrip then used the word, "even".. I can absolutely see how easily it can be misinterpreted.
To answer your question Revox, I had it at The Local Taphouse Spectapular in St Kilda in a taster paddle as I think my 3rd or 4th taster.
I assume you guys had it either there as well or Beer Deluxe? Maybe Mrs Parmas?
Yeah cool, I ask because I had friends down at the Hop Spectapular who tried it and liked it, but found it hard to give the beer a detailed look in the myriad of highly hopped beers. So the reviews were akin to good, "Nicely hoppy without being aggressive, not too sweet or crystal malty, well-balanced, clean. Definitely more balanced and approachable than extreme."
I had it on draught at the bar. Was told it was from the very first RoadTrip batch approx. 7 weeks old. Hops were bright, balanced well, great bittering hit right up front (taking a stab at 55+ IBU?) that sort of settles down after the 4th or 5th sip (palate adjusts). Clean malt finish (with the signature Holgate stamp in bill) but very much subdued to really let the hops shine.
Interesting thing on the Emerald Hill ReVox. In addition to no jacketing, word on the street was that these guys 'custom built' a fair bit of their own gear - a fundamental flaw being that their 400L tanks were flat bottomed, not conical. A bit of a boo-boo.
People I spoke to who used to go to their brewery when it opened on Fri nights said they would take a 19L cornie keg or two at the most of beer out at a time from the tank - which was fine when the beer was fresh, but they were draining such small amounts with no way to properly remove the yeast from the flat tank bottom due to the incorrect design :blink: And the low turnover of beer meant the stuff would sit there for some time - on the yeast. :icon_vomit:
In otherwords - Emerald Hill beers became renowned for Autolysis on quite a few occasions. Fine if you got the fresh beer before it set in, but bad news if you got the two month old stuff.
Jeeze, the amount of stories I've heard about EH and process is astounding. The 400L flat bottomed tanks is another to the list! I'd been in there a couple of times but to be honest with you, never noticed their primarys were flat-bottomed! I was told they picked up most of their gear from the dairy industry, and the kettle in particular was custom built.
Just found this on their still operational website:
Yeah, no way you're going to effectively drop yeast with that slope.. EH's bottom looks akin to an inverted glass carboy (where similarly the fermentap folks thought the pitch was sufficient to drop- it isn't, and fermentap is no longer avail afaik).
Sad to see breweries like EH disappear from the landscape (they're closed now, gear sold off) - but I guess when you're setting up a brewery it's important to get the design right if you want to make the good stuff.
Hopper.
It is a shame EH is no longer doing business. Profit margins are so ridiculously tight with excise (and general cost of doing business as a small producer in Australia) that an oversight like flat bottom primary tanks, no jacketing, etc. are hard to rectify on no-string. Clearly, if they had the dough and personal resilience they could have just purchased 3 new (or used) jacketed primes designed for the brewing industry, and wore the first wave of negative feedback with their beers (with the direction that hey, we've acknowledged it and we're doing something about it). But hell, they didn't even mill their own grains down there.. first purchase might very well have been a motorised grain mill :blink:
Cheers
reVox
h34r: haha. Im in the same BJCP course. BTW, i know what diacetyl tastes like too, i didnt detect it in the true south (although people do detect it on different levels). I just finished a keg of my own that had some diacetyl, Still tasted good though, atleast if you like sweet butter. :icon_cheers:
