Brewday 01/11/17 Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone

Using up free hops

A local microbrewery kindly offered my homebrew club some surplus hops, obviously we took advantage of this and found ourselves in possession of a substantial amount (by homebrewing standards) of Northdown and Cascade. After splitting them between us we had to decide what to do with them so it was proposed that we all attempt to brew a clone version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and bring it along to taste at the December meeting. 

There are plenty of recipes online and most of them share a few common traits; A simple malt bill of pale and crystal, and lots of cascade hops.

Recipe:

• 4.5kg Maris Otter
• 0.3kg Crystal Malt 45L
• 24g Northdown 7% (60 min)
• 23g Northdown 7% (25 min)
• 21g Cascade 4.2% (10 min)
• 50g Cascade 4.2%(0 min)
• 130g Cascade (dry hop 6 days)
• 1 pk Safale US05 Ale Yeast
• Mash for 1 hour at 68ºC
• Boil for 1 hour
• 18lt into the fermenter

I've gone a bit over the top with the dry hopping but these hops were pretty old and had a very low alpha acid content.

Results:

Once again the efficiency was disappointing, down at 64%. 

OG 1.054

FG 1.013
IBU 44

ABV 5.4%

I bottled this on the 13th November so it will have over 4 weeks to condition. I hope it turns out well, it certainly tasted good during bottling.

Update 22/12/17

I've been drinking this over the last couple of weeks and it's quite a pleasant drink. Compared to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I find it more bitter and not quite as hoppy but at least it's the right colour!