B.The End Brewing Company recently announced their beer plans for 2021, which include an expansion of their canned beer range that promises to bring out a new can every month. Of course, this expanded range includes several new beers, one of which is now available – Urgent Fury India Red Ale, the first in the brewery’s High Desert Hop range that presents hops all year round.
American brewers love to tinker with the IPA style, and India Red Ale (IRA), sometimes referred to simply as “Red IPA,” is one of the older variants. As you can see from the name, it is essentially based on IPA with the color and malt flavors of a red or amber beer. The key is in the hops and malt balance, which brings out more of the caramel malt flavors of an amber ale while maintaining the drying finish and hoppiness of an IPA.
It can be difficult to strike the right balance, and in the case of Urgent Fury, according to the press release, it was “the culmination of over a year of development to produce a beer that presents malt and hops alike”. I contacted chief brewer Zach Beckwith to learn more about this process.
“We probably did six different iterations before settling on the beer,” he wrote via email. “I always look at a new beer as at least four batches to get the beer close to where we want it and then make slight changes from there.”
Urgent Fury was brewed with German Caramunich and CaraRed malts, special drum-roasted malts that have amber and red colors as well as cookie and caramel properties. The hop bill includes hops from Citra, Amarillo, Simcoe and Cascade, which were selected to complement the malts because of their tropical fruit and citrus qualities.
“With Urgent Fury it took us a little longer to get the right hop,” said Beckwith. “We wanted the hops to contrast the malt character at first, so we went with more old school pine hop, but the bitterness was too big and the hops were still being dampened by the malt, so we tried the reverse approach and decided to go in Leaning the malt character with more fruity hops, that’s how Citra got into the mix. “
It has 6.6% alcohol by volume and 70 IBUs and is a deep amber color that is almost brown. Hops dominate the aromas with a mixture of pine and tropical fruits and remind me of passion fruit, sweet citrus fruits and mango or papaya as well as a resinous pine pitch character. There is also a sweet malt flavor with “dark toast” that offers some raisin and toffee.
The taste tends towards hops with a herbal and dried flower bitterness that balances the dark bread crust and toasted muesli with a bit of pine branches in the back. It’s a gentle bitterness that compliments the malt well; Imagine pumpernickel or similar dark bread with caraway seeds, a splash of caramel syrup and spicy greens with a bitter citrus fruit hop.
“We design all of our beers, especially hop-forward beers, with the malt balance in mind,” said Beckwith. “While the trend has been for brewers to use more Pilsner malts in their IPAs, we typically use British based malts to increase the malt depth that we can put hops to when the hop character starts to fade and you always do have another great beer underneath. “
I found Urgent Fury fulfilled that expectation with a welcome piece of malt chew, yet still had plenty of hop bitterness and character.
If you want to compare and contrast other examples of the style, Boneyard Beer recently canned its Skunkape IRA that blends in with classic American hops for grapefruit and pine flavors. It is 6.2% alcohol by volume with 40 IBUs.
Ring the Alarm from Immersion Brewing Company highlights the flavors and aromas of caramel malt with a damp citrus hop. It’s 6.9% ABV and 50 IBUs. And the Oblivion Brewing Company offers Road Ryder IRA with 5.9% ABV and 38 IBUs, a lighter body with toffee malt and earthy hops.
Urgent Fury IRA will be available in canned and draft by the end of the month, and will be replaced by Spot Market IPA in March. It is a good opportunity to try fresh Indian red ale style.
Jon Abernathy is a beer writer and blogger who started The Brew Site (www.thebrewsite.com) in 2004. He can be reached at [email protected].
