Challenger Brew

Clint said:

My latest pale ale is a user upper. Mainly lager malt with some crystal,wheat and maybe some carapils. It has citra and cascade...and I'll tell you this...it won't last long!

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foxbat said:

What kind of flavours can you expect to get from a single hop challenger brew?

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chub1 said:

Well that is a very good question. I have not copied the brew dog recipie,but got the idea from there. Guess very light citrus and light floral!
i hope:lol:

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MyQul said:

Not really. I did a brew made with challenger only once. It's a lovely hop but not light or citrus/floral I dont think. I'm not good a describing flavours but it's kind of spicy noble hoppy, maybe green tea?.
I have a pack of 100g of challenger ready to use once I've used up my hallertau mittellfruah

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chub1 said:

Some say it's a really good single hop which just gives a slight orange note!. I really like them for bittering so fingers crossed!.Same as you ,i am pretty inept at describing some flavours.

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MyQul said:

It's defiantley a superb single hop (not sure about orange note, I didnt pick that out but I'm not very good at that kind of thing). When I bought some last time, I used almost all of it for bittering but did one batch as a challenger single hop steam beer. It was really nice. I did a steam beer with it because I had read it's good as a lager hop because of it's noble hop like qualities. It worked well

Mixed with EKG it gives that disctinctive old speckled hen taste. I plan to do both (single hop and mix with EKG) with this new pack

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chub1 said:

Ok ta. Don't like OSH at all to be honest.
I do tend to use Challenger for pretty well all my brews,not all but most.
Might try the Cali Common with them as well.Trouble is i have so many brews written up to do,the list is getting silly long:lol:

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MyQul said:

That's ok because somehow when you mix EKG and challenger the taste completely changes and the resultant mix doesnt taste like EKG or challenger individually but something new (the OSH taste).

I use magnum as the bittering in almost all my brews

I stopped doing a list of 'to do' brews a long time ago as the list just gets longer and longer. I just think about what the next brew is depending on what I fancy at the time and what I have in stock

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chub1 said:

Some say it's a really good single hop which just gives a slight orange note!. I really like them for bittering so fingers crossed!.Same as you ,i am pretty inept at describing some flavours.

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foxbat said:

I hope you can come back and tell us how it turns out. I use Challenger for bittering like just about everyone else but then, like everyone else, I add EKG and/or Fuggles at the later stages and am always scratching my head as to what the Challenger did except to say that the bitterness is "nice". Hmm. The pack I have at the moment is 12.25% AA so if I only use it for bittering then it's going to be around a while yet!

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