Mapleshade I2PA

On the day of C3PA's bottling, I brewed another batch (Mapleshade Imperial IPA). At the advice of Brewmaster's owner, I decided to bring C3PA into balance and add some more alcohol. To do this, we used the same recipe, but with 2.5 gallons malt extract, up 0.8 gallons from the C3PA's 1.7. This turned out to kill C3PA and created another beast entirely. At first I was very disappointed with the results: a medium bodied, darker, sweet, malty ale. Hop flavor, while discernible, was easily balanced by the malt and the sweetness was very disappointing. This beer is beginning to come of age as of 2/27, a full 2 weeks after kegging/bottling. The sweetness is not as dominant, and the flavors are becoming more complex. It has strayed away from a session beer, as the alcohol is indeed increased. 3 pints does a good job of knocking me out on a weekday. While this beer is growing on me, my next batch will be back to C3PA's original recipe, but I'll boil the first addition of Chinook for an additional 30 minutes (for a 90 minute boil total). This should bring the bitterness to a near intolerable level...just what I'm after.

Mapleshade I2PA is far from dead though, I'm gonna tweak this recipe too and morph it into what it should be. I'll increase the Chinook boil as well in this one, maybe sub a little of the extract for some grain (more Munich?), and maybe add another hop variety. I'll also be out of my Pacman yeast, which is no longer available, and have to sub for another strain (Northwest?). This recipe is going to take some tweaking, but should be really good and complex. Seems like it's going to age really well too, I may add a couple of bottles to the cellar, see what it's like in a few months.


Here you can see the difference: Mapleshade I2PA on the left, C3PA on the right.