The Nightman Cometh Part 2.

Huge-ass bag of whole leaf Citra hops, they smelled amazing.

On November 5th 2011, myself and Amsterdam Head Brewer Iain Mcoustra brewed the Nighman on Amsterdam's production system.  We kept the recipe as close as possible to the homebrew version, the only changes were dropping the small amount of Victory malt, and using Amsterdams's house yeast, WLP 007.  They even had 2011 whole leaf Citra express shipped in from Washington, as they didn't have any in stock.

When we checked the gravity of the first runnings we discovered that there had been an error in calculating the amount of malt we needed.  We made a decision on the fly to reduce the batch size to ensure we hit our target starting gravity.

Our starting gravity was 1.083, and the beer finished at 1.017 for an ABV of 8.6%.

On December 2nd we bottled the Nighman in 500ml bottles, ending up with 26 cases of 24 bottles.  It was sold exclusively at Amsterdam's on premises retail store for $4.00 per bottle.

Tasting

The end result was quite similar to the homebrew version.  The Citra and Chinook combine to create a candy-like aroma, with a hint of roastiness. The main difference was Amsterdam's version was a fair bit roastier than the homebrewed Nightman. This lead me to believe that perhaps Carafa III was used instead of the de-husked Carafa Special III.

Below are the reviews from RateBeer, and Beer Advocate;

The Nightman Cometh - RateBeer
The Nightman Cometh - Beer Advocate

Lynn's Take


"Its like wasabi.  It has some spice, it goes right to my nose."