Spiral Galaxy H1N1

A few weeks ago I brough H1N1 back with me from San Diego. I was well enough to work, but was told to stay home, just in case. As my wife and son were away, evenings were pretty quiet, so what else to do but brew?

I was going to call this H1n1ken, but a mixture of trying a hop I've never used before (Galaxy, from Australia) and listening to too much Hawkwind made me choose Spiral Galaxy H1N1. The guys in work are alredy calling Swine Flu beer, and will probably be afraid to drink it... For a few seconds at least.

I've done rolling hop additions before for American style pale ales, trying to build up more hop flavour and aroma, but this is the first time I went with both rolling and late hopping, only starting to add the hops 30 minutes before the end of the boil. The aroma in the first week fermenting was beautiful. Lots of citrus action, and really quite fruity notes too. I'm bottling the beer right now (I hate this damn job!), and the aroma lost a lot of the potency, but still carries the same notes. Next time I'll do it with ahop with a slightly lower alpha acid content to see if more hops will keep the aroma where I want. 15% is pretty massive. The beer reminds me a little of the helles in one of the local brew pubs, but with a lot more passion fruit. Let's see how it tastes in a couple of weeks.


Spiral Galaxy H1N1



Size: 25.0 L
Efficiency: 84.73%
Attenuation: 80.0%

Original Gravity: 1.050 (measured)
Terminal Gravity: 1.010 (measured)
Color: 21.11 EBC
Alcohol: 5.24%
Bitterness: 35.4 IBU

Ingredients:
2.48 kg Pale Ale Malt
2.0 kg Munich Malt
580 g Wheat Malt
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 30 min
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 20 min
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 15 min
1 tsp Irish Moss - boiled 15 min
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 10 min
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 5 min
10.0 g Galaxy (15.0%) - boiled 0 min
Safale US-05