American Pale Ale

	68^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.016	1.017	1.043	3.4 %

Ingredients

· 6.6 lbs Plain Light Malt Extract

· 12 oz Crystal malt 60 L

· 1 ½ oz Cascade Hops (Bittering Hops)

· 1 ½ oz Willamette Hops (Flavoring Hops)

· 1 packet (6 grams) Muntons Active Brewing Yeast

Brewers Log

Beer Date 08222008: <Day 1>

To brew or not to brew, that is the question … that I have been asking myself for a couple of weeks now. There were a couple of times I almost went to the homebrew store, and once I even had car keys in hand and walked to my car, but decided to be lazy and watch the Olympics instead.

The Olympics have been great, I have really enjoyed watching them these past couple weeks. I find myself up late hours almost every night anxiously watching many of the various sports. I would have never guessed that I would get so into it, but it has been a lot of fun. It started with a gathering of friends for the opening ceremonies, and when I got home and turned on the TV to see fencing. And ever since then most of my spare time has been in front of a TV watching the events. Sometimes I am switching between Olympic channels watching multiple things at once.

Well I decided today that the answer was ‘to brew’ so I headed to homebrew shop, getting there about ½ hour before closing time. I had decided that I wanted to do a pale ale this time, something similar to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I thumbed through the recipe booklet for a while and found a couple of recipes that caught my eye so I grabbed the employee. But it turns out there was a bit of a problem with respect to the availability of some ingredients. The didn’t have the rights hops for the American pale ales, and were missing some of the key ones for the English pale ales too. I looked up a stout recipe, but they didn’t have those hops varieties either L The hops types they did have were mainly for German beers, but they didn’t have the right yeasts for the German beers.

After a bit of discussion they recommend I just pick up a kit because they will come with everything I need. I didn’t really want to thought because it kind of felt like that was cheating. However it is really the same thing as most of the batches that I have done before, except I didn’t have the list of ingredients to choose from and had to make my decision based on a name on a box. Very much like the kits I bought online before.

I went with the Brewers Best American Micro Style Pale Ale.

Washed out brew pot and threw filled with 2 gallons of bottled spring water.

I started rather late in the evening ~ 8:00 or so, so it was a bit too late do brew in the dark, so I did it all on the stove top. As the water came close to the 160 ^oF the directions mentioned I dropped in the grain bag and turned down the head to steep the grains for a ½ hour.

· 12 oz Crystal malt 60 L

Once the grains were done I pulled lifted the bag and let as much water drip out as I could and then threw the bag in a bowl and back the heat to high.

This kit came with canned extract, I haven’t seen this in person before. I have seen pictures in a couple of books, but when I have had liquid malt extract in the past it either came in a vacuum sealed bag, or a big plastic container. The directions recommended soaking the cans in hot water to soften up the syrup before adding. I took a wide pot and heated up some water until it was very hot to touch and then placed the cans in there. I left the pot on the stove top to utilize any residual heat to help soften up the dense liquid in the can.

As the temperature approached 200 ^oF, I fished the can opener out of the drawer and opened up the lids on both of the cans and grabbed a rubber spatula to scrape away the stickiness on the bottom of the lids and add it back to the can. I moved the brew pot away from the head and poured in the extract, using the rubber spatula to get as much of the sweet goodness as I could.

· 6.6 lbs Plain Light Malt Extract

I put it back on high heat and waited for everything to begin boiling. It looked like a nice boil so I dropped in the hops bag. A couple of minutes later it started to foam up, I didn’t notice the hot break before, but since it was boiling I assumed that it had happened, but I guess not because it was happening now.

· 1 ½ oz Cascade Hops (Bittering Hops)

A few minutes after the boil began I was cleaning off the goo from the cans of malt extract, rubber spatula, and whisk whenmy friends who were playing a board game on the kitchen table started to notice the scent of bread. One of them commented that it must be the yeast that they were smelling, but I promptly guaranteed that it was not the yeast as that hadn’t been added yet.

At 55 minutes into the boil, I added the bag of flavoring hops

· 1 ½ oz Willamette Hops (Flavoring Hops)

After 60 minutes of boil time, I removed the hops bags and added 2 more gallons of bottled spring water. I then moved the brew pot into the sink and packed ice around the outside to cool it down as much as possible. I didn’t time it, but it probably took about 20 minutes to bring the temp down below 80 ^oF. With the hops bags, there wasn’t anything to filter out of the wort, so I siphoned directly form the brew pot into the carboy and added a little more water to make it ~ 5 gallons.

I shook the carboy to mix in a bunch of air and then I poured a bit out to take a temp and specific gravity reading.

	77 ^oF	Adj
SPGR	1.042	1.043

Note: The specific gravity is a bit lower then the recipe indicated. The directions indicated it should be between 1.050 and 1.055. If my estimates are correct, this will probably be ~ 4% alcohol, a bit below the projected 4.5 % – 5 %

I poured 1/3 cup of wort into a measuring cup and sprinkled on the packet of dry yeast and let it sit for 15 minute like indicated. Then I took the fork that I sanitized and stirred in the yeast and then poured the mixture back into the carboy.

· 1 packet (6 grams) Muntons Active Brewing Yeast

As with all the prior batches I hooked up my cap and hose running into a bucket of water. But this time I made a slight change. In the past I noticed that the hose fills with CO2 and basically floats above the water, which sort of eliminates the water lock it was supposed to create. I have been meaning to take pocket knife, fishing line and a sinker to force the end of the hose to sit below the water, but I never thought of this before hand, this time I improvised. I walked thought he garage looking for things, but eventually found a large binding clip that wraps around the hose without crimping it. And I clipped it to a butter knife to force the hose to the bottom of the bucket.

Beer Date 09042008: <Day 13>

	68^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.028	1.029	1.043	1.84 %

Beer Date 09122008: <Day 21>

It has been 3 weeks and it hasn’t been bubbling very much lately. Time to keg it. I went to the beer supply shop to pick up another keg because I still have some hefe left in my existing keg. It was very annoying that they didn’t have any conditioned kegs there, so I learned how to condition a keg myself. It was kind of a pain in the a$$.

From what I understand a reconditioned keg is basically just a used keg that has had all the o-rings replaced, the pressure checked and tested the valve mechanism in the posts. So I did all that on my own with a used keg and the o-ring set I bought. The o-rings were crusty and nasty and I had to cut some of them off because they didn’t stretch well enough to come off on their own. I used my house key to test the valve in the posts and hooked up some pressure to listen for any leakage. Everything seemed just fine so I sanitized and everything and continued.

Last time I siphoned directly into the keg, this time I chose to siphon into a bucket first. There was a lot of sediment on the bottom of the carboy, this gave me a chance to try to limit the crud that gets into the keg.

	68^oF	Adj	Orig	Alcohol
SPGR	1.016	1.017	1.043	3.4 %

I don’t have all the keg supplies just yet, so it isn’t hooked up to the CO₂ tank, and there isn’t another line and faucet. I will order those and get them connected ASAP.