Yesterday we brewed the Summer Pale Ale mentioned a couple of posts ago. The recipe basically stayed the same, but we upped the 90 minute and 30 minute Chinook additions to 20 g each, in order to get some more bitterness. We managed to boil off a little more wort than expected, so ended up with around 25 liters of 1.055 wort instead of 30 liters of 1.050 wort. Oh well, guess this will be more of a IPA than an APA. We managed to screw up slightly with the flameout hop addition, as normally I always use mesh bags for whole hop cones, but this time I tried adding them freely into the wort. This of course meant that some hop debris made it into the pump, which jammed while we were transferring the wort to the fermenter. Luckily it jammed with just a couple of liters left in the kettle, meaning we didn’t lose much wort. Lesson learned, always use hop bags during the boil. We pitched with a healthy dose of WLP002, and adjusted the ambient temperature to 16 C. Hopefully it won’t be too low for the yeast. We mashed at 62.8 C (145 F) for an hour, follow by 15 minutes at 68.3 C (155 F) and 15 minutes at 76 C (169 F), to produce a highly fermentable wort. Hopefully this will become a tasty brew to drink during the hot summer days! We bottled the Amarillo Hefeweizen as well, and it tasted quite promising. The aroma was dominated by banana and lemon, and the flavor was surprisingly light. Will see how this one turns out in a couple of weeks!