My first Oahu-brewed beer

When I left the Parkside in San Francisco, about five months ago, I gave my brewing gear to the other founding-brewer of Parkside Brewing, my friend Scott. Now that I'm settled again, in Honolulu, I wanted to pick up new gear and get back to brewing. As far as I know, the only place to buy beer gear in Oahu is Homebrew in Paradise. I stopped in just a few days after arriving in Oahu, and picked up their kit, which included the ingredients and recipe for their "Paradise Pale Ale." On Monday, December 10, I found the time to brew it, and eight days later I moved it to secondary.

But of course I couldn't leave well enough alone with their recipe, which had a grain bill consisting of 6 pounds of extract and 1 pound of 40L crystal. I haven't done an extract beer since my third or fourth batch, and a single pound of crystal didn't seem nearly fancy enough to dress it up. My beer-snob instincts kicked in. I decided to try to dress it up on my own.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to buy more grains while I was at the shop, and I didn't want to drive back to the shop just for supplementary ingredients, so I started thinking of other stuff to throw in the brew pot, hoping to add complexity without grains. I'm very interested in the idea of using locally-produced ingredients in my beers, in hopes of adding some island flavor.

One thing I've got plenty of access to right now is tangerines. My girlfriend and I are staying with her grandma in Palolo valley, and her grandma has a tangerine tree in the backyard that's covered with fruit--I've been eating two or three every day since arriving. The picture above gives an idea of how many tangerines I'm harvesting each week. (It shows a bunch of lilikoi too, which are the round green things in the picture. I'm planning on using them in a beer soon, and will write more about them then.) With all the tangerines I've got access to, it seemed logical to try to use them in the beer.

The idea I had was that the tangerines could be used to complement the citrus-like aspects of the cascade hops in the "Paradise Pale Ale" recipe. I've heard of orange peel used in certain beers--mainly Belgian Wits--and I wanted to give it a try in my pale ale. Also, after reading the Hana Hou article, in which two of the three interviewed brewers claim honey as their favorite local ingredient, I figured I'd throw some honey in too.

Problem is, I think I went too far with both. Honey was on sale at the local Foodlands grocery store, so long as you bought two pounds. So I bought two pounds and threw it all in after flameout. And five minutes before that I threw in the peels from four tangerines.

The result, which I tasted right before putting it in the fermenter, was a cloyingly sweet liquid that also managed to be exceptionally bitter, in a citrus-pith sort of way. Plus, it clocked in at an OG of 1.100, which is way way way higher than I'd been planning on. Thinking back on it now, I'm guessing I should have just zested the tangerines, and taken it easy with the honey.

Tomorrow I'll post about what I noticed when I transferred it to secondary.