I figured it would work really well with Amarillo and Simcoe. The aromas of ripe stone fruit, the touch of pine. I loved what it brought to my Oxbow Grizacca clone, and after the debacle with that beer (a leak of some sort drained most of the keg in the keezer, shortly after I had started drinking it), I wanted to try it again, and soon. Galaxy crossed my mind as well, but in the end I settled on Azacca. I strongly considered both Nelson and Mosaic, but as much as I loved both, I had used them in the Blazing World clone. I wanted to go with something great, one of the popular, new/newish varieties that I've brewed with, and therefore had a bit of experience with. But I had never used them together in an Amber, so I thought this was a great chance to try them in a darker beer. which ones? After a lot of thought, I decided that I absolutely wanted to use Amarillo and Simcoe, mainly because I'm a big fan of Alpine Duet, an IPA that uses equal amounts of both I've tried to clone that beer twice ( here and here), and these hops really do work well together. Three varieties, max, were what I wanted to use in this beer. I've brewed a lot of hoppy beers in 2014, and I still had quite a few varieties from the 2013 harvest. I had a LOT of ideas about which hops to use in this beer. in my opinion, it all works perfectly for this style of beer. Lots of Maris Otter, almost 15% Munich malt, and then a little bit of Roasted Barley and Carafa II. I enjoyed the Blazing World clone so much that I went with the exact same malt bill it makes a deep-red colored beer, with a really great malty sweetness that works fantastically at supporting a very hoppy beer. So that's exactly what I aimed for with this beer. I want beers along the lines of the last couple of hoppy Ambers I've brewed, namely the Modern Times Blazing World clone and Maine Beer Co. it's got a great malt character, and the hops ARE there, but I want more in my Red IPAs. Now that I HAVE had a lot of hoppy beers, I can confirm that Celebration isn't a supremely-hoppy beer. I know for a fact that beers I found hoppy a few years ago would no longer taste as hoppy to me now when you've had some great hoppy beers, you can get spoiled quickly (otherwise known as the lupulin threshold shift). I have no idea if this is true I suspect that it's more likely that people have changed.
Every year there are some people who inevitably complain that Celebration isn't as hoppy as it was last year. I considered a lot of styles, most of them hoppy (of course), and, inspired by the type of beer Sierra Nevada Celebration is, I decided to go with a hoppy Amber Ale, aka West Coast Amber, aka India Red Ale, aka - and according to the new BJCP guidelines, the "definitive name" - Red IPA.īut I wanted this beer to be more than Celebration. All this being said, I decided this year to brew a "Christmas beer" not a beer that is dark, strong, and heavily spiced, but simply a beer that I could give away for the holidays.