Brewing a Pale Ale: A Blogumentary

In this post I will be brewing a Pale Ale and doing my best to teach beginners how to brew. I myself have only been brewing for a couple of years and still only brew with Extract while steeping grains. I will explain the steps I went through but get into more details in other Blogs.

The Pale Ale I will be brewing is my own recipe that I developed by looking online at other recipes. I got my main ingredients by looking up the Widmer Brothers Drifter Pale Ale. I will be using Breiss Golden Dry Extract and steeping CaraVienna, Caramel 40 and 80. The hops I chose differ a bit because of my interest in using the Sorachi Ace hop that was available to me at my local supply store, Southern Brewing Supply in Tampa.

Pale Ale is a beer that predominantly brewed with Pale Malts. Caramel (or Crystal) malts are also very common in this style. Light to Moderate bitterness is normal but not like its counterpart India Pale Ale.

The ingredients I used for this Brew are:

6 lbs of Golden Dry Malt Extract

.5 lbs of CaraVienna
.5 lbs of Caramel 40
.5 lbs of Caramel 80

.5 oz of Sorachi Ace 12AA at 60 min
.5 oz of Centennial 8.8AA at 30 min
.5 oz of Cascade 5.9AA at 5 min
.5 oz of Sorachi Ace for Dry Hopping in Secondary

.25 oz of Irish Moss for Clarifying, add with 10 min

1 pack of WYEAST American Ale II #1272

Now, before any brewing gets started, everything must be CLEANED and SANITIZED. This part is boring and tedious until a batch goes sour and the time and money you’ve spent is wasted. I picked up 2 buckets at Home Depot to used one as a Cleaner with PBW and the other as a Sanitizer with Star-San. For the brewing pot, I use a 5 gal aluminum Turkey Fryer and propane burner. Dump all the equipment you will be using in your cleaner and sanitizer before you get started. To sanitize the pot, add a bit of water to boil with the top on and let the steam take care of everything.

Another good step to take before you start brewing is to get your Yeast Started. I am using a Smack Pack of WYEAST American Ale II #1272. These packs are easy to use. Just smack the nutrient packet that is inside and the pack will begin to swell. Normally, the pack is ready in just 2 – 3 hours, which is perfect because that is about the time it takes to brew a batch. Other methods are to simply throw a dry yeast packet in, or make a Yeast Starter.

Get your ingredients and hop schedule ready. Have everything laid out neatly so you can get to it without scrambling.

Prepare an Ice or Cold Water Bath. You will need this to cool the wort when you’re done boiling. The wort needs to be below 80 degrees before adding the yeast. The longer the wort sits around, the higher the chance of getting contaminated. So you really want to lower the temperature of the wort quickly. (The Wort is the liquid that’s created with the malts and hops before it is fermented with yeast)

After you cleaned and sanitized the equipment, steamed your pot, smacked your yeast, and prepared an ice bath; begin heating 2 gallons of water in your pot and get your grains into a large sack (or cheesechloth) to steep with. (I like to put the cloth over the bag that the grains are in and tip the bag over so the grains flow into the sack without losing any or making a mess.) The Grains should be steeped at 155 degrees for up to 30 mins. So, you will need to heat the 2 gals to 165because after you add the sack of grains the temperature will drop to 155, which is right where you want to be. (To be honest, I overshot the temperature while messing around and taking pictures. If this happens to you, lower the temp by adding a bit of cold water.) Once you get the temperature to 165 add your grains and steep for 30 mins. Every couple of minutes, stir the water a bit and move the grains around. When the 30 mins are up, remove the grains and rinse with warm water by pouring on top of the sack and letting it drip into the pot. Do not squeeze the sack, this will release Tannins that could cause off flavors in your beer.

What I do next is a little different, or maybe a lot of people use this method. I go ahead and turn on my burner to start heating up the pot before I add my extract. From what I have experienced, the DME floats on top until it is stirred in. So, in theory, it shouldn’t burn at the bottom like a Liquid Extract might. Saying that, light up your burner or stove top and then add 3 lbs of the Pale DME. I used Briess Golden Dry that I picked up at Southern Brewing Supply in Tampa. Bring this to a boil for about 5 mins and then begin adding the hops! ( I am only adding 3 of the 6 lbs because of what I read in John Palmer’s How to Brew, which should be read before or during learning to brew.)

Look, the Smack Pack is starting to Swell.

Now that the wort is boiling we can begin adding hops. I have scheduled to add .5 oz of Sorachi Ace and boil for 60 mins. That is why in my ingredients list I wrote 60 mins next to this hop. Add the hops into a small sack and toss them into the wort, its that simple. When 30 mins have past and you have 30 mins left to boil, add the next hop, which I have selected Centennial for its high Alpha and Citrus qualities to contribute to the beer.

After boiling for 50 mins, 10 mins left, add the other 3 lbs of Dry Malt Extract and Irish Moss. Stir it in well.

With 5 mins left in the boil, add the last remaining hop, Cascade. This hop has great Citrus notes and aroma.

After the full 60 mins, turn off your burner or stove top. Now, either you can place your pot in the Ice bath now or you can follow a method I have been using that so far has worked. Pour 2 gallons of cold spring water into the fermenter you will be using. Then, add your wort and follow it up with more ice water I to bring the volume up to the 5 gallon mark. Next, put an ice pack, after sanitizing of course, into the wort to help cool it down faster. I don’t have any fancy equipment like a wort chiller yet. Finally, put the bucket into a prepare cold water bath, I use a big trash can. This should get your wort below 80 pretty quickly.

Take a sample of the wort and get a Hydrometer Reading. It should read 1.052. I will explain how you get this number in another blog.

Once the wort is below 80, cut open the WYEAST packet and pour it in, and stir vigorously. Stirring will aerate the wort which is important for the yeast to grow and turn the wort into drinkable-mind-altering-deliciousness. Make sure everything that comes in contact with the wort is sanitized thoroughly. Finally, put the top on the fermenter and add on the Air Lock. This will allow the carbon dioxide created from the yeast to escape without creating a ferment-a-bomb.

Store the wort in a controlled environment that stays between 70 – 75 degrees. Or, if you have a freezer chest that you have converted into a temperature controlled fridge, set it how you please. For this beer, I set the temp at 65 to allow some esters to show through from the yeast. The lower the temp, the less esters and longer it will take to ferment. If you set the temp too low, then you won’t get any fermentation.

This completes the Brewing process. Further steps in the process will be posted in other blogs…

Epiblogue:

There is no set time to wait for fermentation to complete. It is done when it is done. The yeast will create Carbon Dioxide and make the Air lock bubble rapidly and slow down when fermentation is coming to an end. Take a few Hydrometer readings and when you get 2 or 3 in a row of the same reading then it should be complete. My last reading was 1.012 after a week, which I get a lot using similar recipes so I was comfortable racking into a secondary.

While I racked (transferred) the pale ale into the secondary Carboy, I added .5 oz of Sorachi Ace for Dry Hopping. Dry Hopping is adding the hops to add taste and aroma to the finished beer. This method is very heavily used in many styles. I noticed I had a lot of suspended yeast when I racked. This hasn’t happened to me before. I am guessing that I stirred up the slurry at the bottom of the fermenter. This shouldn’t harm anything, it will settle at the bottom of the Carboy after a while.

PROST!!!!