A pretty good American Pale Ale

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Tony1951

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My last brew - based loosely on a couple of Greg Hughes recipes but seriously adapted has turned out really nicely. It's a hoppy, fresh ale that is going to go down a storm with my boys at Christmas. Lest Child Line feel concerned, the 'boys range in age from 28 - 35, so you can discard images of young lads in drunken chaos being led astray by a terrible parent.

I think one part of the hoppy success of this came out of an accidental problem that left me unable to drain my boiler through the hop filter. It was completely blocked and in disgust, I decanted the whole contents of the kettle, wort, trub, and all the hops into the brewing bin and just pitched and brewed it out until a fortnight had elapsed. I didn't expect much, but it is rapturously good - not grassy at all, just banging with Centennial and Citra flavour and smell.

Here is the grain and hop bill and more about 'technique' later:

APA

5.8Kg of Pale Malt (Weyermanns used from Getterbrewed)
145g of Crystal Malt

1 hour 30 minutes mash starting at 69C and cooled to 66C after ten minutes.

Magnum Pellets 32 grammes (13%) @ 60 minutes.

Wirflock tablet @15 minutes.

Citra Pellets 15 grammes (13%) @10 minutes
Centennial Leaf (10.3%) @10 minutes

At the end of the boil cool wort to 80C
Then add:
Citra Pellets 44grammes (13%).
Centennial Leaf 45 gramme (10.3%).

Leave at 80C for thirty minutes then cool rapidly to pitching temperature.


Decant whole kettle to fermentation vessel.... Weird I know. You will have a lot of trub and hops in there. I had 23 litres of volume at this point.

Pitch US05 and ferment for two weeks at 20C, irrespective of the fact that it will finish earlier.

After straining off hops and trub I managed to bottle 20 litres of beer. The ABV is about 5.8%.

This is a really nice beer in spite of my unorthodox method of leaving all that hop debris in the fermenting vessel. The lads claim it is the best yet. REALLY love teh tang of Centennial. Perfect bitterness for us here and quite a strong ale.
 
My last brew - based loosely on a couple of Greg Hughes recipes but seriously adapted has turned out really nicely. It's a hoppy, fresh ale that is going to go down a storm with my boys at Christmas. Lest Child Line feel concerned, the 'boys range in age from 28 - 35, so you can discard images of young lads in drunken chaos being led astray by a terrible parent.

I think one part of the hoppy success of this came out of an accidental problem that left me unable to drain my boiler through the hop filter. It was completely blocked and in disgust, I decanted the whole contents of the kettle, wort, trub, and all the hops into the brewing bin and just pitched and brewed it out until a fortnight had elapsed. I didn't expect much, but it is rapturously good - not grassy at all, just banging with Centennial and Citra flavour and smell.

Here is the grain and hop bill and more about 'technique' later:

APA

5.8Kg of Pale Malt (Weyermanns used from Getterbrewed)
145g of Crystal Malt

1 hour 30 minutes mash starting at 69C and cooled to 66C after ten minutes.

Magnum Pellets 32 grammes (13%) @ 60 minutes.

Wirflock tablet @15 minutes.

Citra Pellets 15 grammes (13%) @10 minutes
Centennial Leaf (10.3%) @10 minutes

At the end of the boil cool wort to 80C
Then add:
Citra Pellets 44grammes (13%).
Centennial Leaf 45 gramme (10.3%).

Leave at 80C for thirty minutes then cool rapidly to pitching temperature.


Decant whole kettle to fermentation vessel.... Weird I know. You will have a lot of trub and hops in there. I had 23 litres of volume at this point.

Pitch US05 and ferment for two weeks at 20C, irrespective of the fact that it will finish earlier.

After straining off hops and trub I managed to bottle 20 litres of beer. The ABV is about 5.8%.

This is a really nice beer in spite of my unorthodox method of leaving all that hop debris in the fermenting vessel. The lads claim it is the best yet. REALLY love teh tang of Centennial. Perfect bitterness for us here and quite a strong ale.

One word Tony Citra:grin:

Love the stuff glad its turned out good:thumb:
 
One word Tony Citra:grin:

Love the stuff glad its turned out good:thumb:

Yes I love Citra Steve, and I use lots of it, but the Centennial leaf left in the FV seems o have made a heck of a difference. I made another brew with a similar amount of Centennial in a few weeks earlier, and though it is nice, it doesn't have the kick in the gob that this one has having had all that leaf floating on top of the fermenting brew for a fortnight. It is REALLY different and I think the main difference is the long contact time of leaf that was never in a solution above 80c and was cooled after 30 minutes to 20C and left to stand like that (only with yeast added) for a fortnight.

I thought it would be 'muck' but it is very far from it.
 
Yes I love Citra Steve, and I use lots of it, but the Centennial leaf left in the FV seems o have made a heck of a difference. I made another brew with a similar amount of Centennial in a few weeks earlier, and though it is nice, it doesn't have the kick in the gob that this one has having had all that leaf floating on top of the fermenting brew for a fortnight. It is REALLY different and I think the main difference is the long contact time of leaf that was never in a solution above 80c and was cooled after 30 minutes to 20C and left to stand like that (only with yeast added) for a fortnight.

I thought it would be 'muck' but it is very far from it.

Just been talking to Clibit got a long weekend off for a change and was saying its brewday tomorrow, guess whats Stevie is brewing ?:lol:
 
Citra and centennial are both amazing. That sounds pretty much like my perfect beer. I've made a few Pales with these and they've been my favourite beers to date.

Sorry though, I don't think I'll be recreating your 'unorthodox' technique...
 
Citra and centennial are both amazing. That sounds pretty much like my perfect beer. I've made a few Pales with these and they've been my favourite beers to date.

Sorry though, I don't think I'll be recreating your 'unorthodox' technique...

Bet you couldnt Gareth:lol:
 
This is a really nice beer in spite of my unorthodox method of leaving all that hop debris in the fermenting vessel. The lads claim it is the best yet. REALLY love teh tang of Centennial. Perfect bitterness for us here and quite a strong ale.[/QUOTE]

I know this post is a little old now but I've just seen it.
I had a similar experience and since then I came across this:

http://www.port66.co.uk/impact-including-trub-fermenter-end-beer/

:smile:

Cheers.
 
This is a really nice beer in spite of my unorthodox method of leaving all that hop debris in the fermenting vessel. The lads claim it is the best yet. REALLY love teh tang of Centennial. Perfect bitterness for us here and quite a strong ale.

I know this post is a little old now but I've just seen it.
I had a similar experience and since then I came across this:

http://www.port66.co.uk/impact-including-trub-fermenter-end-beer/

:smile:

Cheers.[/QUOTE]

Interesting link bubblehead. When I first saw it, I was expecting that there was some finding which would warn me off fermenting on kettle debris - not at all, it seems.

The only disadvantage I have found so far is that I lose a bit of the fermented volume because there is a few litres of trub at the bottom of the FV. Really, it is only the same volume that would have been swilled out of the kettle so in fact I lost nothing.

I'm still doing this by the way and I am sure the beers are sharper and have more flavour.

Cheers.
 
The first time I used pellets instead of whole hops was a bit of a nightmare because I couldn't filter the "rubbish" out.

The result was as you found , and as the article/experiment found......not "rubbish" as such and certainly not detrimental to the finished beer.

Happy brewing.:thumb:
 
The first time I used pellets instead of whole hops was a bit of a nightmare because I couldn't filter the "rubbish" out.

The result was as you found , and as the article/experiment found......not "rubbish" as such and certainly not detrimental to the finished beer.

Happy brewing.:thumb:

If you stir the trub in the FV when you used pelleted hops, the trub quickly settles into strata and under the top pale cream layer is a sage green one, then a darker cream layer which I suppose is the barley flour and protein debris. It looks rather neat and certainly looks like it is supposed to be a part of a precision food preparation process.
 
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