As the year slowly rolls into summer, I'm on track for the biggest brewing year I've ever had. I've been focusing on pinpointing brewing/recipe faults internally and the best way to do that is rebrewing the same recipe over and over again repetitively. This has created some fantastic house beers, including Raven, 3 Brewers Pale, Cucuy, Gail, 21, Sorachi Ace, Janet's Brown and Old Glory IPA. Putting all this time and dedication to creating house staples is rewarding on the brewing side, but having the same batches of beer on draft can be tolling on my taste buds. My spirit of exploration was set aside in the pursue of brewing knowledge. Over the next couple of months I am going to set aside the repetitive learning side of brewing and try some new recipes that I've been wanting to brew.
The idea of brewing Cedar aged IPA is something I've been toying with for a while now. Every time I walk into a cigar shop, whiffing the Spanish Cedar mixed with the Tobacco's earthy aroma's have planted the seed for a IPA aged on Cedar. Its the quintessential adult candy store aroma. Adding hops into the mix is challenging prospect. I wanted to go with Mosiac hops, but testing a new hop in this type of beer might be a bit overwhelming. After talking to Danny at DeeperRoots Brewing he lead me in the direction of using Simcoe for this batch.