Deschutes Brewing Co. Red Chair IPA
I’ve been homebrewing for a few years now, about a year less than the time I’ve spent getting to know the world of beer(s). At first I was operating pretty much in the dark, following recipes to the letter and figuring out how to conduct and understand each step in the brewing process. After a couple of years of homebrewing I’d reached a point where I felt pretty comfortable with the basics, enough to be able to formulate my own recipes and see how they’d turn out.
In particular, it was shortly after I began brewing IPAs that I really began to understand how the final beer in the glass was influenced by when you added hops during the brewing process. I began to understand the role of bittering hop additions (early in the process) versus late-hopping and dry-hopping. The different options you had for when to add the hops and which hops to use was totally exciting, especially for someone enamored with West-Coast style IPAs.
Eventually I hit upon an approach that I came to like a great deal: a primarily late-hopped IPA. By adding the large majority of the hops within the last 20 minutes of boiling the wort, and then dry-hopping in earnest, the result was an IPA that prominently featured the aroma and flavors of hops, without overwhelming the palate with bitterness. I’m all for a crazily bitter IPA here and there, but I really liked this style. Heavily hoppy, but very drinkable.
And so I was excited during our trip out west to get to try Deschutes’ Red Chair IPA, their latest addition to a series of hop-centric beers they call the Bond Street Series. All that I’d read about Red Chair left me with the impression that it was very similar to the style of IPA I had come to enjoy brewing so much on my own. The description on their site reads, “You will find no cloying, mouth puckering bitterness here. In its place a straight up succulent citrus punch to the nose…To say that the seemingly contradictory elements of caramel maltiness and citrusy hops get along would be an understatement; they coexist in blissful harmony.” Definitely a beer that I was excited to try as part of our somewhat beer-centric cross-country road trip.
Shortly after our arrival in Spokane we ran into Red Chair on tap at the spot we went to for dinner, and my expectations were fully realized. The beer was great, and went really well with the meal we had that evening. A couple of pints later I was convinced not only of how good the beer was, but also how much it did indeed resemble the beers I’d been brewing. So at some point while we were in Portland I picked up a bottle to bring home with us to taste later, long after we’d returned from our trip.
Red Chair IPA was first brewed this past Spring, and is available from Deschutes from May to September. It weighs in at 6.4% with 55 IBUs.
It pours amber with a slight chill haze, a fluffy white head, and lots of lacing. The nose has prominent notes of citrus and pine hops, with a little dry malt as well. But really, the nose is mostly hops. The palate has layers of citrus and herbal hop flavors, underscored by warmingly sweet caramel and bready malt flavors. There is very little bitterness, it really only shows at the edges of the palate, helping to make you conscious of the hoppiness but not overwhelming the beer’s balance. Instead, the hop flavor is really well integrated with the malty profile. The beer’s only real bitterness comes into play on the finish, with herbal and pine hop flavors and bitterness really dominating. The malt takes a backseat here, letting the hops take center-stage.
All things told, this is one yummy beer. Well-balanced, but in a way that really showcases the hops that went into it. Very drinkable, and very inspiring. I came away from trying this beer with a desire to try out a new variation of my late-hopped IPA – one that used some darker malts to beef up the beer’s maltiness and balance out the hops a bit more. Let’s face it, any IPA-loving homebrewer has to have an arsenal of hop recipes to call upon!
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