Since we have quite a backlog of posts waiting this will be a fruitful writing day. This post relates the beer we made last Saturday. The recipe is an altered version of the APA that Palmer has in his book. The original recipe name is: “Lady Libery Ale”, some malts were changed, but otherwise the recipe is the same. Ingredients and process below. Batch size is 19L.

Grain

• 3.2 kg Halcyon Pale Ale (Fawcett) Original recipe calls for “British Pale Malt”
• 227 gr Crystal 60L (Actually 55L Finnish Crystal malt)
• 227 gr Amber malt (Fawcett)
• 227 gr Munich malt (Type 1) (Weyermann)

Hops

• 14 gr Northern brewer (60 min boil)
• 14 gr Cascade (30 min boil)
• 28 gr Cascade (15 min boil)

Dry hopping

• 14 gr Cascade

Yeast

• WLP060 American Ale Blend (Original Recipe called for WLP001 California Ale) Changed due to lack of availability

Mashing

The recipe specifies a 60 min mash at 68°C but we did it for a bit longer since I forgot to hear up the sparge water.

Boiling

60 min, normal boil. 10 min hot break boil before adding first hops.

Unusual/special ingredients 

• 1 teaspoon of dry irish moss as a clarifier
• 1/2 teaspoon WLP yeast nutrient
• 1.2 litre yeast starter made with spray malt at roughly 1.040 gravity. 2/3 of the yeast were used, 1/3 was saved.

Fermenting

• No specification but will be done for about 2 weeks
• Secondary is still up in the air, it might be that we dry hop in secondary 15 litres and bottle the remaining 4-5 liters.

And that’s the recipe! this recipe was done with our new equipment (on which I will post later on, and in detail). The overall experience was good, no major problems, except with the shitty thermometer we have which has become completely unreliable. Other than that we got the aim OG which was around 1.044-45.

Lessons learned

No lessons per say… just realised the advantages of making a starter. This beer didn’t really require it since the gravity was below 1.050, but we made it anyways. I have got to say, its the strongest, fastest, most active fermentation we’ve had so far. It started in less than 12 hours and has been going on for almost 3 days. This kinda makes me think starters should always be made… but let’s see, it’s not always feasible to do so due to timing and general availability.