It has been several months since I brewed up a hoppy beer and I've had to resort to buying commercial which sucks. Time to brew a new hoppy beer I guess. This will be another Pale Ale which will use a small grain bill to get an ABV of around 4% for easy drinking and a generous amount of late flavoring hops.
I have a lot (several lbs) of home grown Cascade hops from a friend of mine which I plan to use for this batch. These are a bit more on the herbal/tea-like side of things than citrus and they have pretty bold aroma. I'm going to bitter with some high AA Columbus, use a combination of Centennial and Cascade for flavoring (via a large 0 min hop) and then go very agressive in the dry hop with the Cascade (6 oz). These amounts have made for a very hoppy beer previously.
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| 6 oz Dry Hop |
To try to get at least a little balance to the beer I'm using a lot of flaked malt in this beer (4 lbs with most being Rye) and will mash at 160 F. I'm hoping the beer will stop fermenting at 1.013 or higher. I'm adding a small amount of light crystal for color as well.
Finally, for yeast I've decided to use the English Whitbread strain which produces a good amount of fruity ester character - this is a second pitch from my recent English Barleywine (which makes the yeast "free" for this batch which I always like). I am going to give the beer 2 weeks of primary fermentation.
So, this beer, with English yeast and hops that have a somewhat English-like character, may straddle the line between and American and an English Pale ale. That is fine for me though since I very much enjoy both American and English pale ale. I can't wait to get it into the keg.
Recipe Details:
- Grain:
- 6 lb Pale Ale
- 3 lb and 6 oz Flaked Rye
- 10 oz Flake Wheat
- 6 oz Crystal 10
- 3 oz Acid Malt
- Hops:
- 2 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
- 2.3 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 0 min
- 2 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at 0 min
- 6 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at Dry Hop
- Yeast:
- Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
- Water:
- 14 gal spring water
- 1 tsp CaCl
- 1 tsp Gypsum
- Batch Size:
- 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
- Mash:
- 160 F for 60 min
- Boil:
- 80 min
- Fermentation Temperature:
- 65 F
- Primary Duration:
- 2 weeks
- Secondary Duration:
- 2 weeks in keg
- OG:
- 1.046 (Target 1.043)
- Efficiency:
- 73% (Target 68%)
- FG:
- 1.020 (Target 1.013)
- Apparent Attenuation:
- 56% (Target 69%)
- ABV:
- 3.4% (Target 3.9%)
- 8/20/22 - Built a yeast starter with 100g of DME and 1 L of water
- 8/21/22 - Brew Day - 3 PM to 7:30 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
- Heated 6.5 gal to 185 F for strike water
- Milled my grain. Added CaCl and gypsum to the mix so I didn't forget
- Moved 5 gal to the mash tun and cycled through RIMS and Grant until the system was at a stable 170 F
- Added the grain. Stirred in well to eliminate dough balls. Let this sit for 10 min to settle
- Cycled the RIMS for 50 min
- Heated 6 gal sparge water up to 185 F
- Fly sparged until 8 gal was collected. Added some extra unheated spring water to the sparge to finish up
- Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 4 gal. Had the wort to a boil after collecting about 6 gal. Added the bittering hops during the heat up
- Boiled for about 8 min to get down to 6 gal (forgot to add the irish moss this time)
- Added the wort chiller to sanitize
- At the end of the boil I cool the wort down to 180 F with the flame still on and added the flameout hops. Let this steep for 20 min. Temperature held at about 180 F the whole time
- Chilled the wort down to 90 F
- Transferred this into the fermentor - let the wort fall a foot to aerate
- Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046
- Moved the fermentor to my fermentation chamber and chilled down to 66 F over night
- 8/22/22 - Pitched the yeast
- 8/23/22 - Fermentation is underway
- 8/29/22 - Added the 6 oz of dry hops
- 9/5/22 - Kegged today. Measured the gravity as 1.020. The beer is pretty bitter with a bit of grassy hop and fruity yeast character.
- 9/30/22 - Tasting Notes - This is a nice easy drinking and flavorful hoppy beer. The hop flavor is nice and it pairs well with the English yeast ester. It definitely has the flavor of an American Beer rather than English with fruity yeast. It has a nice balance between malt and hops and the bitterness is firm but tasteful.
