AG#8 Summer Pale Ale

[fbsf]

Summer - ha. If it ever bloody arrives.

Well, if it does, this should be ready in time. It's a basic pale summer ale with a good level of bitterness.

4.5kg MO
100g Caramalt
100g Torrified Wheat

Mashed for 90 mins @ 67C, Boiled for 75 mins.

40g Perle (10%AA) @ 60mins
15g EKG (6.4%AA) @ 15mins
1/2 Protofloc @ 15mins
10g Bobek (5.2%AA) @ Flameout
Cooled over 40mins to 25C using copper coil cooler in boiler

500g granulated sugar in FV, mixed with wort, fermented @ 20C with Safale S-04.

I put the sugar in as I wanted a lighter body and crisper flavour than a 100% malt brew (most of my brews with Crisp MO have been lovely, but quite "thick" in mouthfeel, which isn't what I want from a summer ale) but managed to mash at a higher temperature than I wanted to. I also buggered it up by not chucking it in at 15mins as I intended, hence why it went in the FV and got very well stirred in - if nothing else the vigorous stirring should have helped oxygenate it!

OG was 1.052 so should go down to around 1.008 if my normal adventures with S-04 ring true this might end up a little stronger than I was intending, giving me an ABV of around 5.8%. I also got the best part of 25L out of the boiler too.

It's been bubbling away merrily for two and a bit days and seems to be slowing down, so I'll take an SG tomorrow to see how far it has got. It certainly smells nice, and looks very pale - which is what I was hoping for.

 

[pittsy]

great stuff , sounds like a nice beer for summer , lets hope we get 1 of those so you can enjoy this.
:

 

[fbsf]

: Pittsy!

Did you notice the little nod to the wheat in there? :thumb:

 

[pittsy]

i did yes , some folk don't seem to like torri but i've brewed wit beer with and without torri and it was def better with .

 

[fbsf]

Well, 10 days on and it's dropped to 1.010, so we are already at around 5.6%. I'm going to leave it until the weekend, then it's going in the garage for another week to chill and drop out before bottling, although the S-04 has once again done a great job - it's only hazy rather than cloudy even at this early stage.

It's got a very mild flavour - you get the hop flavours but they aren't anywhere as in-your-face as I was expecting given what went in, but the malts come through afterwards very nicely.

Still has quite a sweet aftertaste too. I'm sure it will have a little less sweetness when it carbonates, and given it's likely to be served a little chilled should balance out nicely. Defo a beer for the ladies as well as the gents, this one.

Better get cleaning my stash of empties. I put them all away clean, but think it good practise to give them another soak before bottling time.

Question is, do I do a EKG/Bobek hop tea for the bottling bucket? I might do half the bottles with, and half without, and see which ones I prefer.

Thinking aloud, I've got a Coopers APA and Cervesa kit to do. I'm thinking of bunging both of these together with 500g light DME to make another decent summer brew, and re-use the S-04 yeast cake from this one to save the packets of coopers yeast. Always handy to have a couple of spares!

 

[pittsy]

defo hop tea if its a little thin on expected hop punch , :thumb:

 

[fbsf]

How much do you reckon for 12L of beer - 10g of bobek and 10g of EKG, or is that too much?

 

[pittsy]

well it seems folk use around 20g ish for a 23l so maybe 7 or 8 g of each would do it .

 

[fbsf]

I was thinking that.

But then, if I'm going to hop tea half the batch as an experiment, I might as well go for it. 10g of each into the cafetiere for 10 mins. That should do it...

 

[fbsf]

Ok, that didn't quite go to plan. The day before I was going to bottle this brew, I contracted a nasty form of gastroenteritis, which put me out of action for nearly two weeks.

So it was in the bucket for nearly 4 weeks. I was a little nervous, but my goodness it's clear, and had dropped to 1.009, so 5.7% abv!

To save mucking around, I batch primed with 180g sugar and the hop tea made from 10g each of EKG and Bobek, instead of doing half with the hop tea and half without.

A little taster was had, and it's really lovely - malty, bitter and hoppy. The hop tea was certainly worth doing.

Just got to leave it in the warm for a couple of weeks then out into the garage for a month, and it should (just) be ready for my birthday at the end of May!

Note to self though, need to get some more 500ml brown bottles. I ran out half way through and ended up using some 275ml San Miguel bottles. Very easy to de-label, but twice the work in bottling due to the size!