Monday, June 8, 2009

"Meetification" Pale Ale


Craig, the head brewer at Sixpoint, had the great idea of getting all the Sixpiont brewers and interns to meet up once a month to share a homebrew they made, with a planned beer theme for each month. Craig, Evan and I picked a style or theme for each month for the next year, and we will have a tasting once a month and share recipes. With our trademark creativity and almost gymnastic use of the English language, we're calling it the "Homebrew of the Month Club".

Here is the planned schedule:
June: Pale ale
July: "Worker's Ale": 4% or less ABV beer brewed with Sixpoint ale yeast
August: Saison
September: Belgian Golden ale
October: Belgian Dubbel
November: Fruit or vegetable beer
December: Christmas/spiced beer
January: Single-hop IPA
February: Imperial Stout
March Wood-aged or smoked beer
April: Lager
May: Wild Ale

I brewed my pale ale submission for June yesterday, which we should be tasting at the end of the month.
This is a seriously back-ended hop schedule with a tiny 60 minute hop addition, and all other hops added in the last 20 minutes of the boil. I will probably dry-hop it too. I'm hoping to get a bright blast of the orange / tangerine flavor from the Summit addition, without the funky garlic/onion quality that is supposedly a product of adding it at the end of the boil. If it comes out like I want, it should be in the same vein as Mike McDole's "Pliney Lite" or Lagunitas New Dogtown Pale Ale.

"Meetification" Pale Ale
Recipe is for 6.9 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post boil, all-grain
O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.011 ABV 5.8%  IBU's 48

8.5 lb. 2-row American pale malt
1.5 lb. Glen Eagle Marris Otter
8 oz. Victory malt
6 oz. British Crystal 70

5 gr. Summit pellets 18.5% AA (!) 60 min
28 gr. Summit pellets 18.5% 20 min
28 gr. Centennial pellets 8% 15 min
28 gr. Cascade pellets 6% 0 min
14 gr. Amarillo pellets 8.6% 0 min
Dry hops:  1 oz. each Centennial and Amarillo pellets, in the keg (in bags)

Mash: 4 gallons H20, 152 for 60 minutes (fell to 145 over that time). Raised to 170 over 25 minutes.
Sparged with 5 gallons water at 170
Collected 6.9 gallons at 1.048 = 84% efficiency.

Boil as noted, with additions of Whirlfoc at 15 min. and Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.
Chilled, racked to carboy, and added pure oxygen for 75 seconds. Pitched an appropriate-sized starter of Wyeast 1056 at 69 degrees. Fermenting at 68 degrees.

Racked to keg on 6/24/09.  Still very yeasty, but tastes promising!

Mineral additions: I still haven't had the time to study and prep on the water additions with John Palmer's calculator, but I added 1 tsp gypsum, 1 tsp chalk, and 1 tsp. "Burton salts", about half in the mash and half at the start of the boil. I added the chalk to attempt to increase the mash pH, but it would not increase past 5.0. So I guess I have to deal with it next time.

4 comments:

hopshead said...

I like that you chose lunch meet from the BN as inspiration for the name of your pale ale.

Seanywonton said...

Oh yeah...one of my favorite shows.
I'm planning on making labels for this and sending some out to the BN crew.

JPcoyote said...

I'm working with Brokelyn.com, a new blog about budget living in Brooklyn. We recently ran a post (http://www.brokelyn.com/dear-penny-is-it-cheaper-to-make-your-own-beer/) about home-brewing in Brooklyn, and we linked to Fourth Avenue Brew, among a couple of Brooklyn brewing blogs.

Go and take a look at either the home page or the brewing post (both above). We're constantly featuring cheap and free things to do around the borough.

Seanywonton said...

JPcoyote,
Thanks for the mention. I'll keep an eye on your blog.