Last weekend I attended my friends’ wedding (thanks for the great party!), to which I had brewed two batches of beer. The first was a Dunkel and the second an American Pale Ale. I brewed the APA back in November with my brew mate, but I seemed to have forgotten to post the recipe and brewday notes. As I wrote in the Dunkel post, I’ve noticed that the most popular beers during these kinds of events are balanced and easy-to-drink beers. American Pale Ales with a relatively mild bitterness seem to be especially popular, so I used the recipe of my own Wedding APA as a base for this beer.

The malt bill was kept simple, with Maris Otter, Munich and Carapils. For the hops, I used up some opened bags of American hops from the freezer. The bitterness ended up a bit on the high side, but it was still suitable for the style. For the yeast I chose my ‘house yeast’ WLP002, which flocculates well and leaves a nice flavor profile. The brewday went quite smoothly and the beer was really popular during the wedding! I will be posting tasting notes of both the beers in an upcoming post!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/jl_ale.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Today I brewed the fourth and penultimate batch of beer for my wedding in August (see previous posts for the Wedding Pils, Wedding Blond, and Wedding Hybrid): an American Pale Ale loaded with Cascade and Centennial. I’ve brewed variations of this recipe several times before (one, two and three), so I know exactly what to expect. The resulting beer should have a hop-dominated aroma, with tones of grapefruit, pine resin and floral perfume, while the taste should feature a lightly bready maltiness together with a citrusy and floral hoppiness that ends in moderate bitterness and semi-dry finish. All in all, it should be a really easy to drink, yet still flavorful beer. The beers have been crowd favorites in the past, so am predicting that this keg will be the first to run out during the wedding.

The malt bill is simple, consisting of Maris Otter, Munich and CaraPils.  These should, together with the relatively high mash temperature (67C) and low-attenuating yeast (WLP002), yield a solid backbone to the beer despite the low ABV%. I aimed for an original gravity just below 1.050, in order to get a beer with around 5% ABV. For the hops, I chose to bitter with Herkules (since I still have some left from a 100g bag), and at flameout I added a large dose of Cascade and Centennial. The bitterness levels should be around 40 IBU, depending on how much the whirlpool hops contribute. I pitched a 1.5L starter of WLP002 after I had cooled the wort down to around 20C. I placed the fermenter in my fermentation fridge and set the fermentation temperature to 18C. I like using ‘English Ale’ yeast in my APAs and IPAs, since I think the esters they contribute go well with fruity hops. The high flocculation is also a bonus. Hopefully this one turns out as tasty as my previous brews of this recipe.

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wedding_apa.xml metric=true cache=-1]

This weekend we will be brewing an American Pale Ale / IPA using only German hops. The German hop growers have been releasing lots of new interesting varieties the last couple of years, and I am really looking forward to trying Hüll Melon and Hallertauer Blanc. I bought some earlier this year, and will debut them in this beer. We decided to blend in some more traditional varieties as well, to balance the fruity tones with some more herbal hop tones. We have a lot of Vienna malt in our inventory, so we decided to use it as our base malt. These will be joined by some Pilsner, Carapils and Crystal 100 malt. We will be trying a new yeast strain as well, Wyeast’s 1217 West Coast IPA, which has been getting lots of good reviews (good attenuation and flocculation, together with a really clean flavour profile). Hopefully everything will go smoothly and the beer will taste good!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hopfenschiessen.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Today I brewed up a 40-liter batch of a relatively simple American Pale Ale. The beer will be served at my friends’ wedding in July, so I aimed for a beer that as many as possible would find enjoyable. This meant a relatively low bitterness, a moderately light body and alcohol content, and a nice hop nose. The malt bill consisted of only Pale Ale, Munich and Carapils malt. I hit a 73% efficiency, which meant that the OG was 1.053. Slightly higher than I had aimed for, but not a big problem. I mashed at 65C, which will hopefully produce quite a light body and dry finish, when fermented with WLP007. We bought a pH-meter recently (Milwaukee MW-102), and this was the first time I used it during a brewday. We have been plagued with some high beer pH values recently, and naturally one cause could be a high mash pH. This was the case, and I had to add a total of 12 g of 80% lactic acid to the mash in order to get the mash pH down to 5.35. The meter seems to have been a really good investment, and hopefully our beers will improve as a result. Post-boil pH was 5.26, which should drop to below 4.5 with a healthy fermentation. I hopped the beer with Chinook, Cascade and Centennial, with a hefty flame-out addition. IBUs should be around 30-35, depending on how much iso-alpha acids were extracted from the flame-out addition. I will dry hop with all three varieties once fermentation slows down. I pitched a 2-litre starter of WLP007, which should leave a dry finish, clear beer, and slight hints of fruit esters to complement the hops. I’m fermenting at 18.5C, for a slightly cleaner finish. I’m really looking forward to sampling this one in a couple of weeks!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rh_wedding.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Today we brewed the largest batch we’ve ever brewed on our current equipment: 104 liters of 1.050 gravity American Pale Ale. To make this large of a batch, we mashed in two different mashing tuns (our new 50L tun and old 32L cooler) with 23 kg of malt (Pale Ale, Vienna and Crystal 100), and boiled in two kettles (50L + 25L). After boiling, we gathered 60 liters of 1.080 wort, which we split 50/50 into two 60L fermenting vessels. After this, we still boiled 45 liters of water, which we also split evenly between the fermenting vessels, to get a total of 104 liters of 1.050 wort. We hopped with a massive 550 grams of Cascade, divided into four additions, and plan on adding an additional 100g of dry hop per fermenting vessel. We pitched 3 packs of US-05 per fermenting vessel and set the thermostat to 18.5C. The wort was tasting promising, and hopefully this will result in a nice and easy to drink pale ale!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hpa.xml metric=true cache=-1]

On Sunday I had yet another brewday and rebrew. I don’t usually like to rebrew recipes, unless it’s for educational purposes, but I got a request to brew some beer for my girlfriend’s sister’s wedding and since the ‘From Seamless To Shameless’/‘Simcade Pale Ale’ beers have tasted really good, I thought I’d reuse the recipe once again. The recipe results in a beer that is a highly drinkable, ‘bulk lager’-friendly, yet still slightly hop-forward. Perfect for the occasion. The brewday went extremely smoothly, and ended up with around 33 liters of 1.052 wort. We are getting quite consistent efficiencies (~70%) now that we have our system dialed in, which is promising. I pitched two packets of US-05, and yesterday the airlock was bubbling along nicely. I’m slightly worried that the heat wave will result in high fermentation temperatures, but luckily our brewing garage keeps quite consistent ambient temperatures of around 18-20 C. I will leave the beer to ferment for two weeks, after which I’ll add the dry hops (80g of Simcoe and 30 g of Cascade). After a week of dry-hopping I’ll transfer the beer to kegs.