After about 4 days the krausen had fallen but the beer still looking like it was churning away, on day 10 that activity had been gone for a solid 72 hours so I threw the carboy into the fermentation chamber and cold crashed for a few days before kegging. That's right, I didn't check FG. In fact, I rarely check FG until after I keg and package my beers. When I bottle, I will certainly make sure everything is finished, but I've never had issues this way. Once kegged/carbed up, I tried the beer and wasn't really blown away with it. It was an easy drinker for sure, solid yeast character, a touch of banana/fruitiness, some spice but no really clove (which I actually dug a lot), but it was lacking a bit of a punch in flavor overall. Luckily I had a bunch of orange infused vodka from when I was going to do a smoked breakfast beer so I added a 1/4 teaspoon to a pint and tried that. And that made a huge difference. The touch of orange made it like a very pretentious tasting Blue Moon, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I dumped in about 1/2 cup total into the keg and was happy with how everything came together.

I brought the Nordic Wheat and the West Coast NEIPA to the Jamboree, branding the IPA as San Diengland IPA. People came back for both beers throughout the day so I considered both of them a success. There were a lot of non-IPA drinkers (weird, I know) there that were quite pleased that our homebrew club (W.I.Z.A.R.D.S.) had a good variety of non-IPA/hoppy beers: raspberry Belgian single, rhubarb and regular saison, a nice rich porter, and Munich helles. I did have one guy tell me that my IPA was the best beer that they had the entire day, which was really awesome since there were like 300 beers on tap (while he didn't look like he sampled all 300, there were a few that did!).

Would I brew this beer again? You know, I probably would. The more I drink the beer, the more I like it. The yeast character was good, not truly hefe, not truly Belgian, but a good mix of both. I would probably get a bit more out there with the hops though and punch it up with a dry hop. I really dug the Idaho 7/El Dorado in the WCNEIPA and I could see that combo working here. Since this beer base will be my sour base, I'll be brewing 11 gallons of this once a year, so next year I'll get a chance to make those changes and see how that goes.