Pale and Hoppy
I always try to keep a good range of ingredients in stock so I can brew at short notice. I also tend to have recipes created in advance which (although usually subject to last minute tweaks) gives me the ability to brew some beer when the opportunity arises. This was case at here when despite it being half term the rest of the family were out all day and I only had a couple of hours of work to do. I had the ingredients to make a nice hoppy pale ale so I got the mash on early, nipped out to work, and was back after 2½ hours to finish the brew.
I recently bought some Motueka hops and yeast from Crossmyloof Brew Supplies who I believe are a contract brewer who also repack hops and yeast to sell to homebrewers at very competitive prices. I had never dealt with them before so I was interested to see how the ingredients performed, especially the yeast which was their US Pale Ale Yeast.
Recipe BIAB
- Mash for 150 mins at 67°C
- Boil for 60 minutes
- Mash water volume 29.3lt
- 2.7kg Maris Otter
- 0.5kg Munich Malt
- 200g Flaked Maize
- 200g Wheat Malt
- 100g Crystal Malt 45L
- 100g Carapils
- 15g Northdown 60 mins
- 12g First Gold 15 mins
- 50g Motueka whirlpool 20 mins
- 33g Perle dry hop 4 days
- 1 pack Crossmyloof US Pale Ale Yeast
- Recipe in Brewers Friend
Results
I pitched the yeast at 20°C which was about as low as I could get it during the UK's current never-ending warm spell. I also put the fermenter in a pan of cold water wrapped in a damp towel to try and keep the temperature down during fermentation which was fairly successful, the temperature stayed at around 21°C. Fermentation was very quick, the gravity reading was down to 1.010 after 3 days. I bottled the beer after one week.
OG: 1.040
FG: 1.008
ABV: 4.15%
The beer was pretty cloudy when I bottled it and the yeast was not as flocculent as others I've used, the yeast cake after fermentation was not as compact as usual. In fact bottling took far longer than usual with blobs of yeast blocking the bottling wand. I think the warm weather has affected the fermentation. However it seems to be clearing up in the bottles so hopefully it will end up as good hoppy pale ale.
