Shotover India Pale Ale - rediscovering the fuggle

Our Shotover/Plot 16  6% IPA has been in the bottle for 30 days now and is showing tremendous character.  Completely unprimed when bottled, the beer is showing a moderate carbonation with the head rising slowly to form a thick cream like top and a wonderful hop aroma.  I don't feel that old but the aroma and taste of this beer must be a bit like stepping back in time.  It is a clear copper colour with a striking but smooth bitterness on a big malt base which I expect to subside into one complex integrated flavour as the beer ages.  It will go on sale from the brewery door from the end of the month.  The Plot 16 batch is already on sale in the cafe at Modern Art Oxford in Pembroke St.

This beer contains masses of Oxfordshire fuggles and one of the big surprises for me is the character these traditional hops have delivered.  In common with many young microbreweries we use several "big flavour" hop varieties from South Island New Zealand and NW Pacific USA albeit always combined with English hops.  Jens Eiken (former technical brewer at Carlsberg and Molson Coors Burton) visited the brewery a few weeks ago and kindly sent me an article he had written on hop bitterness for Brewer and Distiller International Magazine with particular attention to the type of bitterness that different varieties of hops deliver (all to do with the hard resins.) Amongst Jen's "super premium" category of hops that deliver a smooth bitternes is our old and trusty friend the fuggle.  The hopping rates we used in this IPA would deliver a theoretical IBU in the 70's.  The beer is indeed bitter but not in an unpleasant way and should develop nicely over the coming weeks.

All experiments deliver something useful.  Apart from brewing a characterful and unique limited edition beer it has given me a new respect for one of the oldest hop varieties around - and it grows right here in Oxfordshire!