Filling the rum barrel with Makkurokurosuke v4. The CO2 blanket shows up nicely.

It’s been two years since I’ve brewed this recipe. It was one of my first attempts to clone a commercial beer. Belgo IPA from New Belgium was an amazingly good beer; one that I drank a bit too quickly. After two six-packs disappeared rather quickly I decided it was time to make a larger batch. With some research on line and some brewing experience, I came up with the following recipe and posted it onto homebrewtalk.com. I learned during the brewing of this beer (and the previous few IPAs) that I had some water issues. But, other homebrewers attempted my recipe and produced great beers. I’m pretty happy with having a recipe that other folks have tried and best of all, really enjoyed.

While I do suffer from brewer’s wanderlust when it comes to repeating recipes, I knew I needed to re-brew this now that I’ve dialed in my water process which consists of 100% Reverse Osmosis water and some salts, calculated by Brew ‘n Water spreadsheet.

I’m really excited to try this one now. The only downside is that I don’t have access to Belgo IPA right now to do any comparison. I guess I’ll just have to brew it again once I do. Tough life this. =)