Patrons 14.06 Fingathing//Can of Whup Ass//Australian DDH IPA

While the hustle of the North American hop harvest is just getting going across the Atlantic, in the UK we’re able to turn our hop buds to the southern hemisphere for a few months as the fresh 2020 harvest selections from New Zealand and Australia arrive in our cold stores. Often, wrongly, overshadowed by the more famous US varieties and their larger acreage, there’s plenty of unique and intense flavours to be found in the Southern Hemisphere. So, for this Northern Sounds collaboration with Fingathing, we’ve put together this ‘Can of Whup Ass’, a DDH IPA to showcase the best of Australian hops. We started with a base of extra pale barley malt backed up with large volumes of naked and flaked oats and some maltodextrin, all there to flesh out the body and bring that desirable silky mouthfeel. In the whirlpool, there’s a small US contribution in the shape of some Citra Incognito, which is partnered with a big addition of Enigma T90, the dankest of the Aussie varieties but also contributor of some prominent passion fruit notes. At the back end of fermentation came a 28g/l dry hop led by Galaxy and Vic Secret, which enhances the passion fruit aroma and brings juicy tangerine, lychee, and ripe tropical fruit.