Another day pale ale

When you have failed a couple of times in a row, it can be pretty hard to pick yourself up and find the motivation to try again. This wasn’t really the case this time, even though I had two failed batches behind me (Sequoia and Middle day pale ale) I was eager to brew again and get things right. I won’t rest until I have a good house recipe for an American pale ale, so I went for another one of those.

This time I decided to go pretty pale, with just 6% caramel malt, and a bit more hops than the last batch, including dry hopping with Amarillo and Cascade. The brew went fairly well I think. The mash temperature dropped a bit for a while, but I caught it in time (I hope) and raised back up again. The only other mistake I noticed was that my pre boil gravity readings were unreasonably high, I think I’m going to take them another way the next time, and stir more. Because of my high readings, I didn’t worry about squeezing out the last drops of sweet wort, and my OG ended up a bit lower than expected.

At bottling, it turned out the attenuation also was a bit lower than expected, but the FG sample tasted fantastic. Really hoppy and nice. Also, I really don’t mind a 4,8% beer instead of a 5,3% one, but I want to hit my target values.

Tasting

I’ve literarly gotten mixed impressions from this beer. The first bottle I tested was pretty watery and had some earthy tones to it that I didn’t like. This was just one week after bottling, so I didn’t judge it too hard. When I tried the second bottle after another week I was pleasantly surprised by a nice hoppy aroma, and pleasant citrusy flavor tones. It still felt a bit watery, but with these fresh qualities to it felt more refreshing than thin. A thirst quenching summer ale perhaps?

The next bottle had more of the earthy character, but the fourth one was fresher again. I think there might be a correlation to how well chilled the beer is. When it’s cold it has the fresh citrusy taste to it, but when it’s only been quickly cooled more of the earthy tones come through.

This is not a perfect result, but the beer is definitely enjoyable. I don’t mind the lower alcohol contents, but I would definitely want a bit more body and more flavor in the beer. It would be interesting to brew the recipe again and see if I can improve it with proper mash temperature control.