Fortunate Islands from Modern Times Brewing in San Diego has quickly become one of my favorite beers. A light (5% AV), hoppy pale ale that uses a large percentage of wheat in the grain bill (somewhere around 60% wheat). They use Citra and Amarillo as their hops. Thankfully, the person they consulted with for this recipe (
The Mad Fermentationist) is very open about his recipe and process in brewing this beer. I tried to stick as close as I could to that, however I used Citra and Mosaic hops. The flavors from Mosaic hops are listed as citrus, pine, blueberry, earth, herbal, mint, bubblegum, lime peel, black pepper.... depending on the conditions they are in. Amarillo (used in Fortunate Islands) are describes as floral, citrus, and tropical, so there is some overlap, but it won't taste exactly like Fortunate Islands no matter how close everything else is.
The recipe was as follows:
Grains & Yeast:
57% Wheat malt
38% 2-Row
5% Crystal 15L (Fortunate Islands uses a pretty hefty dose of Vienna malt)
Safale-05 dry yeast
Hops:
Bittered with 0.6 oz of Magnum at 60 min (48.2 IBU)
0.5 oz of Citra and 0.5 oz of Mosaic at flame out
0.5 oz of Citra and 0.5 oz of Mosaic after a 15 min rest before wort chilling
Dry hopped with 1oz of each, for 10 days @ ~65-70F.
Water:
I built the water from distilled, so that I could keep chloride low and sulfate high to accentuate the hops as much as possible. My scale is not very sensitive in weighing down to the gram (new cocaine-level measurement scale on its way!) so the numbers could be off, but the ratios should all still be the same.
Ca: 91
Mg: 10
Na: 0
Cl: 76
SO4: 159
Cl/SO4 ratio: 0.48
Mash:
I had to add 2mL of lactic acid to the mash to hit the correct pH with such light grains being used. My crappy pH paper didn't really test well (it's gotta be 8 years old now), or I may have hit too low of a pH. Overall it didn't really affect my efficiency much as I hit 70% which is fine for me. pH meter is on its way thankfully too. The mash temp started around 152 but fell to roughly 147 by the end... not bad, I was shooting for a more fermentable wort anyway.
Fermentation:
More of a lag time than I've had recently as I pitched the yeast around 3pm and didn't see any outright visible signs of fermentation until the morning. Not the worst ever, but probably a lag time of around 9-12 hours. Kept the temperature of the water bath I had the carboy immersed in at a pretty constant 63-65F (thanks to the help of my wife on days I was at work). Next time I will shoot lower though, around 60F. Did not get a final gravity (forgot at bottling) but pretty sure this thing attenuated out nicely to probably about 1.010 or so, giving me a final ABV of around 5.5%.
Tasting #1 (not very long conditioning at fridge temps)
After 3 weeks carbonating, and about 4 days in the fridge it pours a hazy dark straw color, very slight tint of orange when held in outside light, but a dull brownish when indoors. The head is very frothy and stable. In the smell you pick up a lot of citrus, a little bit of pine, and faint grain. When coldest, the taste starts out with a slight astringent hop character which really smooths out once it sits about 10 minutes. The combo of malts and hops here have a slight juicy character I love but don't often find in beer. At this point it hasn't cold crash filtered itself enough yet... still lots of polyphenols (tannins) giving off a definite "green" beer taste. I think the yeast is still quite dense in solution are also adding to the "unclean" flavor. Needs more time in the fridge.
Further Tastings:
After about a week in the fridge there was still too much yeast and tannins lingering in solution, not having crashed out and filtered themselves to the bottom yet. However, after 2 weeks, I'm getting a fantastic clean character which allows me to rate this beer as a moderately successful attempt at a pale ale type beer. Pale ales are hard to brew because they need to be clean tasting. This 2 week cold conditioned bottle is expressing a very nice flavor of wheat, citrusy hops also coming through as some stone fruit, and a bit of mint or evergreen (I kinda like but kinda don't like this characteristic). The beer is clarifying quite nicely. Even indoors in low/fluorescent light it's coming through a nice golden, slightly hazy probably due still to some yeast, some polyphenols (from multiple sources including the dry hops). It needs a bit more carbonation. I would go up a half
 |
| 2 weeks @ fridge temps |
volume per liter. However, looking at this as objectively as possible, this beer didn't turn out anywhere near the level of Fortunate Islands perfection (stupid to think it ever would), but it's a beer I could see a moderately successful brewpub offering up on tap. Not great, not bad.
Just off the top of my head, things I need to change for next time are: filtering the first runnings of my mash better, obtaining a more clear wort for fermentation using whirlpooling to sediment out the hops and other break material, and increase the carbonation about a quarter to a half volume (from 2.4'ish to 2.8 or 3) and up the bittering addition at 60min to around .8oz.
