Brewing a pale ale. Decided to start with something inspired by Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale. There are a bunch of recipes out there, including this one from BYO and Sierra Nevada's own homebrew recipe. According to the former, the latter has since been modified by Sierra Nevada to use different hops.
I decided to KISS. First of all, dry malt extract and a 60 minute boil. Second, nothing but Cascade, just like in the old SNPA recipe. Malt should be ~92% 2 row and ~8% Crystal 60L.
However, when I ordered my 60L Crystal I forgot to check the "mill grains separately" box, and ended up with a bag of several malts mixed together. So I decided to roll with the Crystal 40L I already have at home.
For yeast, something like US-05 would be appropriate. But I decided to try some of the OSLO Kveik I harvested from my cream ale experiment instead.
Volume: 2 gal
Grain:
- 2 lbs Briess Golden Light DME
- 4 oz Crystal 40L
Hops:
- 1.4 oz Cascade (6.3 AA)
Yeast: Bootleg Biology OSLO Kveik
Schedule:
- 60 min: 0.3 oz Cascade
- 30 min: 0.6 oz Cascade
- 10 min: 1/2 whirfloc tablet
- 0 min: 0.5 oz Cascade
Predictions (from brewer's friend):
- OG: 1.055
- FG: 1.011
- ABV: 5.9%
- IBU: 39.43
- SRM: 7.24
First brew in my new 5 gal kettle. Steeped the grains in 1.5 gal of water around 65-75 C. Boil went fine.
After cooling I let the kettle sit for 45 minutes. Wanted to let the trub settle so I could siphon off clear wort. Unfortunately, I only got perhaps 1.2 gal clear worth that way. Ended up with 1.5 gal in total, but definitely took a good portion of trub along for the ride.
I wanted 2 gallon, so this is a bit of a bummer. Lots of hops in this batch, and a much wider kettle than before, so it makes sense that kettle loss is heavier now. I think I'll scale up to a 2.5 or even 3 gal kettle volume next time around.
- OG: 1.057 (Hydrometer)
- OG: 1.059 (Tilt)
Wrapped the fermenter in a blanket and put it in the synth room. A bit warmer in there. Curious to see how fast the kveik ferments out. Dropped in the tilt so stay tuned for a fermentation chart.
Kveik is insane. After 3 days of fermentation, SG seemed to have settled around 1.014. Bumped up the temperature in the synth room a bit and gave it another 24 hours. Then over to a much cooler space to "cold crash" overnight, although I'm reluctant to use that term since it's unlikely to ever get below 10 C. About 18 hours later it's at 12 C.
2 grams of gelatine dissolved in 3 oz boiling water. Cooled and poured into fermenter.
I think it'd make sense to give this beer another week before kegging but I'm also very curious about this whole idea of going from boil to keg in <1 week, so I'll just go ahead and rush this for science. Will give the gelatine 48 hours to do its thing, and then I'll keg.
A bit later than originally planned. Primed with 34 grams (1.2 oz) table sugar in 1/2 cups of water. Assuming 1.4 gal yield after trub loss, that should result in 2.5 volumes of CO2.
Trying to transfer clear wort seems to have paid off. Most of the trub was below the spigot. Poured off 1-1.5 pints until I got clear, mostly trub-free beer. Then into the keg. Hard to say for sure how much I got, but it definitely looked like it could be 1.4 gal, or even 1.5 gal. Harvested some yeast slurry as well. I like OSLO, and want to make sure I have some handy.
Sample tasted great. A very drinkable pale ale. Perhaps a little bit too sweet, but we'll have to wait and see.
Gravity and temperature data from Tilt
- FG: 1.014 (Tilt)
- FG: 1.010 (Hydrometer)
- ABV: 6.2% (Hydrometer)
A 4 point difference between tilt and hydrometer is more than I would've expected. Lots of yeast gunk on the tilt though, so that's probably why. Still love the thing. Really convenient to be able to track SG and temp remotely, without pulling samples.
This is delicious. Very nice pale ale. Carbonation is ok, but could be a tad higher. Malt and hop profile feel similar to SNPA, although I haven't compared them side by side. The big difference is the fruity aroma from the OSLO yeast. Works really well with this style. Delicious!