In Colorado

... is where I am at the moment. I have a chance now to taste a local "Colorado" beer. I saw in the latest Zymurgy (I think), that there is a brewery called Breckenridge. I wanted to try one of their IPAs or APAs, but the local liquor shop only had a Vanilla Porter, and one other one that I forgot the name of.

So, I decided to go with 5 Barrel Pale Ale from O'Dell Brewing in Fort Collins, CO. First, the aroma seemed a little stale, so I checked the date, and it is 061507, which means it is almost expired. I suppose. There is no noticeably distinct hop aroma or flavor in it, so I suspect a huge blend. Ok, so on the bottle it says that they run it through a hop-back, and that 4 hops are added in the boil. I would expect much bigger aroma, but again, the beer might be old. It tasted fine, fairly similar to SNPA. I am not a BJCP judge or anything (yet), so I will not go through the ratings for aroma, flavor, appearance, etc...

The Ordinary Bitter

turned out pretty well. The FG was a little higher than I wanted (1.016). This was completely out of my control because the extract brand/make determines this, not myself. If I would have mashed this, it would have dropped below 1.010, as have most of my previous brews. This was due to low mashing temperatures, and the use of US-05 (previously US-56).

I ended up having to use a packet of US-05, because I did not make a starter on the WLP002. After almost 24 hours, there was little if any airlock activity, so I could not risk things, and pitched the cal ale yeast. I do not think this was a problem, because the yeast is fairly flavorless, and there is also a whole vial of "50/50 alive/dead" WLP002 to add some of the correct flavor in there.

The beer has turned out good. This has to have been my fastest turnaround ever as far as the "boil->bottle->drinking" time is concerned. The whole process was 2 weeks. Not bad in my opinion.

The only thing i wish that could have gone better is the MoreBeer Marris Otter extract finishing out a little drier. I know that US-05 can attenuate 80%, at least... so it is the extract that has the problem.

BTW, the beer tastes great, I carbonated it a 1.3 volumes CO2.