A trip to the brewery with some Rascals

Last week our Brewtonic gang Ian, Pedro & Caio headed out to Rathcoole to the Rascals brewery to prepare a newest batch of Sim Simma Hemp Ale.

This is the sixth batch of Sim Simma hemp ale. The concept arose from Ian’s desire to promote hemp and its many diverse uses. He started out researching previous hemp beers before settling on APA as the base style of the beer. His main aim was to draw out the earthy, nutty aroma of hemp seeds.

Step one was to toast the hemp seeds in the pizza ovens in our pub “The Back Page”. They were then blended and added with the malts (pale malts and little caramunich) in the mash tun. To hop we originally used Chinnok & Centennial in the first batch, but found this made the bitterness a little too high. So next time we used Cascade instead of the Centennial, lowered the amount of hops and doubled the hemp seeds which created a much better balance.

So far we still haven’t managed to get the hemp seed flavour to come out as strongly as we would like, but we’ll experimenting with quantities and even different styles of beer as the autumn sets in. The fun never stops. One thing is for sure this is a damn good beer.

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