Polishing Off the Pale Ale

"It's a near masterpiece!" he exclaimed while sipping his third bottle of Graffiti Alley IPA. High praise from our friend who normally politely drinks his bottle, but then quickly moves onto something different. The beer I brought to my office were also doing down by the 2 bottles instead of the regular half or thirds. Our last recipe was a great stride in the right direction but onwards we must push forward.

Since our last batch was really good we decided to tweak things very slightly. We want to experiment with the type of dry malt extract (DME) and how they affect the final beer flavour. This next batch will be a repeat of the last one but using Pilsen light DME instead of the amber.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pounds Caramel 40L malt
• 4 pounds Briess Pilsen light dry malt extract (DME)
• 13 liters Toronto tap water
• 2.9 oz Cascade hop pellets
• 7 grams Cooper's ale yeast

Directions

1. In a large stock pot bring the 13 liters of water to 71 degrees Celsius.
2. While the water is coming up to temperate measure out 1/2 pound of the Caramel malt. Add it to a zip-lock back and crush the grain using a rolling pin. Place the crushed grain into a hop bag and set aside.



3. Measure out three quantities of Cascade hops: 1oz, 1oz and .9 oz. Ideally we would have liked 3 groups of 1oz each, but we only ended up with .9 oz for the last group. Place these hops into hop bags and set aside. We only have 3 hop bags in total, so we reuse the one with the crushed grains closer to when we add the final hop addition.


4. Add the hop bag with the crushed Caramel malt once the water has reached 71 degrees Celsius. Steep the malt for 30 minutes and watch the temperature so that it stays close to 71 degrees.


5. Remove the crushed Caramel malt and bring the stock pot to a boil. Keep the crushed grain because it can be reused in cooking.
6. Once the stock pot has reached a boil add one of 1oz hopped filled hop bags. This is the start of the boil.

7. Add the 4 pounds of DME 30 minutes into the boil. Mix thoroughly to remove any clumps.

8. Add the other 1oz hopped filled hop bag 45 minutes into the boil.

9. Add the final 0.9oz hopped filled hop bag 55 minutes into the boil.
10. Remove the stockpot from the heat after it has been boiling for 60 minutes (starting from step 6). Place the stockpot into a cold water bath to cool down quickly. While cooling mix the contents vigourously to oxygenate it.
11. Once the wort has reached 25 degrees Celsius pour it into the fermenter. Sprinkle the yeast on top and cap the fermenter with an airlock.

Notes

• Original gravity: 1.052
• After brewing we found out that one of our hop bags had a hole in it. This means there was a bunch of hop sediment floating around in our wort. We expect that most of it will fall to the bottom of the fermenter, but we may need to find some method to filter the beer before bottling in two weeks.