Brewing up an IPA for a new LHBS Pro-Am competition, feels good to use whatever ingredients I want this time :)

Only downside is that I had to buy all of the ingredients in the store, which means I got reamed over the hop prices. Most expensive batch I've made in years!

Piny/citrusy/tropical hops are a dime a dozen in San Diego so I wanted to go all-in on the new German hop varieties. I was gonna go w/ Hull Mellon, Hallertau Blanc, and Mandarina Bavaria, but they were out of Hull Mellon so I called an audible and swapped in Hallertau Tradition instead. Generally, I'm a big fan of floral/spicy character and these hops are all in that spectrum.

I'll be interested to see how it turns out. The hoppy German lager I did with noble hops just didn't have the big aroma I was looking for, despite my generous use of hops. But again, I *was* using noble hops...

And not able to keg :)