Smuttynose Brewing is bottling their newest offering Homunculus today. This Belgian style offering heads for shelves in July.
Homunculus is a hoppy Belgian-style golden ale. A special Belgian abbey yeast left an alcohol content of 9.9% abv. The grain bill is very simple: 2-Row, Weyermann Carahell, and some cane sugar to lighten the body. Bravo hops are exclusively used for a moderately aggressive 45 IBUs while all the late boil additions are Sterling.
So far so good, but Homunculus’ real moxie comes from its dryhopping. We infused 150 barrels (4650 gallons) with 176 pounds of Nugget hops and 264 pounds of Sterling hops. That’s nearly 3 pounds of hops per barrel of beer! It’s safe to say that you can expect an aroma explosion when you finally get some in your glass.
What is a Homunculus? There are several different definitions that come from psychology, alchemy, and preformation. The word itself is Latin for, “little human.” As you can see from the label art, we were captivated by the preformationist usage of the term. The name was discovered during a brainstorming session. We didn’t want to call the scaled up brew by its original name, so out came the thesaurus. We saw “homunculus” was a synonym for “gnome” and the rest, as they say, was history.
Style: Belgian Strong Pale
Availability: 22oz bombers
Arrival: Mid-Late July, 2011.
9.9% ABV
