DHB APA

DHB APA is a beer with a little bit of everyone in it.

There are beers you brew because you fancy trying a new hop.

There are beers you brew because someone has challenged you to make something ridiculous.

And then there are beers you brew because you want to put a little bit of your brewing club into a glass.

Enter the Durban Homebrewers APA.

Brewed under contract at Lions River Craft Brewery in Assagay on a beautiful Upper Highway day in August, this was a beer with a slightly bigger brief than your average brew day: create an American Pale Ale that could represent the Durban Homebrewers Club as a whole.

Just under 350 litres later, the club had its beer.

And, naturally, it had hops.

Lots of hops.

A Beer for the Club

The DHB APA wasn’t designed simply to tick the boxes of an American Pale Ale style description. It was brewed for the club, by the club — a beer intended to bring together the different personalities, brewing philosophies and, quite possibly, opinions of the people who make up DHB.

It also needed to be something people actually wanted to drink.

That meant a beer with enough hop character to keep the experienced brewers interested, but with enough balance and drinkability to make it equally at home on a social afternoon at the Homebrewers tap at Taps on Twenty 4 in Hillcrest.

The result is an APA that doesn’t need to shout to get your attention.

Although the hops do make a fairly convincing attempt.

The Hop Department Has Entered the Building

The recipe brings together Southern Passion, Citra, Cryo-Cascade and Amarillo, used at various stages during the brew, with approximately 1.5 kg of dry hops added to the beer.

It’s a combination with plenty of room for tropical and citrus character, and the finished beer certainly takes advantage of it.

The aroma is distinctly fruity, presenting litchi, grapefruit and passionfruit aromas before the first sip.

A Little Hop Nerdiness

For the more technically minded brewer, the inclusion of Cryo-Cascade is particularly interesting.

Cryo hops concentrate the lupulin-rich portion of the hop, where much of the useful resin and essential oil character resides, while reducing the amount of leafy material.

The practical advantage is the ability to deliver substantial hop character with less vegetal matter than a comparable quantity of conventional whole or pelletised hops.

In a beer where the hop expression is meant to be prominent, that’s a useful tool in the brewer’s box.

And with a 350-litre batch, every little bit of efficiency helps.

The Numbers

For those who prefer their beer descriptions with something more precise than “yummy”, the DHB APA comes in at:

ABV: 4.9%
IBU: 33
Batch size: just under 350 L
Dry hop: approximately 1,500 g
Hop varieties: Southern Passion, Citra, Cryo-Cascade & Amarillo

At 4.9% ABV, the beer remains firmly in sessionable territory, while 33 IBU gives it enough bitterness to provide structure and a definite hop-forward impression.

The intention isn’t to create a palate workout.

It’s to make a beer where the bitterness, malt and hop aroma all encourage the next sip.

Which is, frankly, a very dangerous design feature.

Malt That Knows Its Place

While the hops are clearly the extroverts of this particular beer, the malt has an important supporting role.

The finished APA carries a light pale malt presence with a touch of biscuit character, providing enough of a backbone beneath the hop profile without competing for centre stage.

That balance is worth noting.

In a hop-forward beer, malt character doesn’t necessarily need to disappear. It simply needs to provide the foundation from which the hops can work.

Here, the result is light, clean and pleasantly structured, allowing the fruity hop character to remain the star of the show.

Fermentation: Smooth Sailing

The fermentation itself proceeded normally, producing the clean fermentation profile intended for the beer.

No unnecessary drama.

No yeast-related plot twists.

Just a straightforward fermentation that allowed the malt and hop character to come through cleanly.

Which, as it turns out, was probably enough excitement for one stage of the brew.

Because then came kegging.

The Great Hop Blockage Incident

Every large brew day has a moment when the brewing gods remind everyone who’s really in charge.

For the DHB APA, that moment arrived during kegging.

A hop blockage decided that simply transferring several hundred litres of beer wasn’t quite exciting enough. The result was a small but spectacularly aromatic burst of trub being sent across the brewery floor.

There are many ways to describe the aroma of freshly brewed APA.

“Fruity” works.

“Intense” works.

“Why is there hop slurry over there?” is perhaps the most technically accurate.

Fortunately, the beer survived its brief attempt at becoming a brewery-floor installation.

And, importantly, the brewers survived too.

So, What’s in the Glass?

The finished APA opens with a super-fruity hop aroma, supported by a light pale malt presence and a clean fermentation profile.

On the palate, there is an upfront hop bitterness followed by a light biscuit malt character. The hop profile then brings layers of litchi, grapefruit and passionfruit, creating a beer that is expressive without becoming overwhelming.

At 4.9% ABV, it’s light enough to remain refreshing, while the 33 IBU provides enough bitterness to keep things interesting.

It’s the sort of beer that rewards a brewer who wants to pick apart the hop character and think about what’s happening in the glass.

But it also works perfectly well for someone who simply thinks:

“That’s bloody good. I’ll have another.”

Both are legitimate tasting methodologies.

More Than a Recipe

The most interesting thing about the DHB APA isn’t necessarily any one hop, the IBU figure or even the fact that almost 350 litres were brewed.

It’s what the beer represents.

The Durban Homebrewers Club is made up of brewers with different levels of experience, different equipment, different favourite styles and, inevitably, very different opinions about what constitutes the correct amount of hops.

Some brew small batches in the garage.

Some have upgraded their equipment approximately seventeen times because this time they’ve finally found the perfect system.

Some obsess over water chemistry.

Some just want the beer to taste good.

And somehow, all of that fits under the same DHB umbrella.

The APA is a celebration of that.

It’s a beer for the club, by the club, brewed on a scale that most homebrewers would probably describe as “slightly ambitious” and intended to be shared rather than squirrelled away in someone’s garage fridge.

Find It on the Homebrewers Tap

The DHB APA is available on the Homebrewers tap at Taps on Twenty 4 in Hillcrest, giving members and beer lovers alike the opportunity to taste a beer created specifically to represent the club.

It’s fruity.

It’s bitter.

It’s clean.

It’s refreshing.

It’s just under 5%.

And, somewhere in its hop-soaked DNA, there’s a little bit of every brewer who helped make DHB what it is.

So raise a glass to the brewers, the brewery, the hops, the slightly alarming kegging incident — and the simple joy of making good beer with good people.

DHB APA: brewed for the club, by the club.

And yes…

it’s yummy.