Sunday, May 8, 2011

National Homebrewing Day - a new pale ale in primary!

CBC (Columbus Brewing Company), one of our local Columbus, OH microbreweries celebrated National Homebrew Day by giving out free wort and inviting folks to come out, setup, and brew up a batch using the wort, and do their own tweaks as far as yeast and hops. They also gave Ryan and I a most excellent tour of the facility and answered a ton of questions for us.

The suggested use of the wort was a pale ale recipe that called for WLP002 English Ale Yeast and 3.5oz Goldings with a 90 minute boil. They used 50% Pils and 50% Maris Otter for the mash, and they guessed the OG at about 1.052ish.

Well, here were my tweaks... I used WLP005 British Ale Yeast, since the LHBS ran out of the WLP002 that was bought up by all of the other festival goers. I used 3 oz of Kent Goldings leaf and 0.5oz of Fuggles pellet, both lowish (4.4ish) alpha acid hops.
I also decided to up the ABV and OG by adding 4 lbs of cane sugar to the boil, and tossed in Whirlfloc 15 mins before the end of boil. After the wort cooled, I took an OG reading before pitching and aeration - it was 1.086 - yowza! If I end up with a FG somewhere in the 1.012-1.014 range, I'm estimating this to finish up at about 10% or more. If I dry hop it, it may be not unlike Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA.
I also didn't make a starter, I went according to the White Labs recommendations on the label and pitched the tube directly. With that high of an OG, I'm sure a second tube or a starter wouldn't have hurt, but I figure the ferment will eventually get going.  I'm kind of excited, as this will be our first pale ale. 10 free gallons of wort between Ryan and I? Not a bad start to a Saturday.