American Pale Ale

[Robrew]

So planning my next brew as IsMise's recipe looked good. .

Ingredients:
1 coopers australian pale ale
500g of crystal (caramalt) EBC 25
1kg light dry malt extract
60g of cascade
Safale US-05

Im going to start by bringing 4 litres of water to the boil then steeping the 500g crystal malt in a muslin bag for 30 mins. then bring this to the boil again. I will start with 20g of cascade at 30 mins then 20g at 15 mins and 20g at 5 mins. This 4 litres will then be added to the fermenter and the dry malt extract will be added to this. the wort will be topped up to 23 litres. the yeast will be added to a cup of water at 23c and left for 15 mins. this will then be stirred and when the temp is 20c it will be pitched to the wort which will be at 20c hopefully as well.

So if anyone has any experience, tips or advice to give me before I start this one, it would be great 

[brenmurph]

HI Rob, Hope I dont come across patronising. I know you are new to using grains so careful not to boil the bag with the grain. The grain shouldnt be boiled just steeped/ mashed as far as I Understand it.
Boiled grain is like stewed tea only worse.

Recipe sounds good .....tell kevin.
I had a pint of O Haras Winter star yesterday in the pub and i read on their leaflet its winter ale with a little orange peel . Ive used lemon & orange peel in a pale ale with great effect in a beer i hav in the competition. O haras the feckers must have got my recipe!

Tip......... I left the peel in primary, ust ordinary christmas cake fruit peel from the supermarket in a 100g tub.
To play around with this idea just brew your proposed brew ( it sounds good) but when u bottle why not play around a little? ideas include put a t-spoon of this fruit peel in a couple of bottles and when it comes to drinking you can compare the bottle without and the bottle with the lemon in it. \that way you can bring both bottles to our next brewday for sampling and it gives you a way to americanise your beer by adding some extra citrusy notes. The fruit peel adds some citrus and something FRESH to your beer, worth a try, and as always its worth making a few tweaks if only to a couuple of bottles at bottling time to allow compare and contrast of the same brew but with a little twist to a few bottles. this really helps your understanding of beer flavours and outcomes. 
You can do the same with any herb/ spice/ hop. At bottling time why not just add a single pellet of hop, a few chilli flakes, a sprig of heather, a sprig of thyme or other herb, a tiny bit of corriander or cionnamon, a single whole clove or even a single whole hop flower which will look great in a pale ale in a clear bottle. So as u see the list is endless, brew your brew as normal but always experiment with a few bottles to gain experience of noticing different flavours, its amazing how a simple addition like a clove can change a bottle of beer ( for better or worse you decide at the end of the day)
Hope this helps, Brendan

[Kevco5]

I done something similar with the coopers Australian pale ale and it turned out very tasty!

I did it slightly different though;
Coopers Aussie pale ale
Coopers malt extract amber
250 grams carapils
50gms cascade
50gms nelson sauvin
Us-05

Steeped the grains at 65C to 70C for 30 min
Boiled 25gm of each hop for 15min
Dry hopped with 25gm of each for 7 days

Keep an eye on the water temps during steeping, too high a temperature can result in the extraction of tannins
Personally I would go without the 30min hop addition as the kit will already have about 20ibu and use 30gm at 15, dry hopping with the other 30gm, that's entirely your choice though!
It's a good kit to play around with and cascade will go very well with it!

[Blueshed]

no need for a new thread as i have the same kit.

planning my next brew and have the Coopers APA and going to add some grain and hops.

i have the following to use

1kg of pale ale  http://www.homebrewwest.ie/brewferm-barley-malt-pale-ale-7-ebc-1-kg-1492-p.asp
1kg of chocolate - keeping this for dark ales and stouts.
1kg of marris otter
.5kg of wheat whole grain

2 cans of LME from HBWest

1kg of light spraymalt

Fuggles
cascade
Galena
Dana

teabag hops - EKG and Challenger.

my plan is to use the kit with 500g of spraymalt and add

200g of the whole grain malt crushed
200g of pale ale malt
25g of cascade
1 tea bag of EKG

let me know is this ok or should i change something.

[ColinC]

Looks good Rob but make sure you dry hop. I made a very similar brew to Is Mise - I dry hopped in secondary & he didn't.

It made a massive difference to the finished beer & non-homebrew drinkers all voted in favour of the dry hopped version. It defo won't do any harm to throw a couple of handfulls into secondary as well. But make sure you mess around a bit - as Bren said its the only way you find out what works.

Look forward to tasting this one at the next meet! 

[Robrew]

@blueshed: ye I would use the kg of spray malt and the 500g of wheat malt as well as the coopers can for your sugar,  then a mixture of hops at different times such as cascade at 15 mins and fuggles at 5 mins, then dry hop with one of your hop teas . I would tell you to just try and be experimental with this one and make sure that the ingredients work well together, and you should have a really nice beer . If you would like to try a different yeast other than the coopers yeast I have a spare Safale US-05 and Danstar Nottingham yeast that you could use if you want as I heard they are good yeasts 

@Brenmurph: great ideas Brendan I never thought of experimenting at the bottling stage so I may hold back a few bottles for experimentation  , and also ye, I have recently read up about how high temperatures are bad for grain so thanks for the heads up  , I will bring a long the experimental bottles of this brew to a home brew meeting and we can see what they are like 

Also I have went around all day looking for a cooking thermometer to keep my steeped grains at 60-70c but could not find the right thermometer at homebase, tesco, argos,homestore, b+q etc. So I will wait until tomorrow to find one and hopefully get this brew underway

[IsMise]

Good stuff Robrew, I would second most of the comments above. Do take on board what BrenMurph sez, I haven't tried that degree of experimentation yet, but will in the future. Also, ColinC has it spot on, he dry-hopped his similar brew while i did'nt, huge difference in flavours.
Let us know how you get on, looking forward to sampling that soon! Good luck 

[brenmurph]

Lads, all the bits like ph meters (4 euros) ph paper (1 euro for 50 papers) water hardness meter (13 euros) digital probe thermometers ( 10 euros) and loads of other handy cheap tools are available on ebay from china. A little dearer from UK. Its good to build up some good gear over time.

For those new to grain I'd like to dedicate a brew day to help people understand the important points like testing water ph, hardness  and temp control using the above simple but effective gear.  Lets call it a workshop looking at the important points of a good reliable grain brew without actualy worrying about what we brew....we can focus more on the do's and dont's of the processes.
If anyone new to grain wants to get together I'll do the workshop in Kildare and help yis out with some technical tips in laymans terms. Ill even do handout with key points and we can also use the beersmith software and make yis familiar with this.

get a group of new to grainers ( say 6 max) and Ill do the evening for yis

[brenmurph]

You'll have to mash (i.e. hold at 66C for an hour) the pale malt, not just steep it.

I agree lads.
this does not mean you need a fancy mash brewhouse.
I have a beer in the competetion that i mashed in a 2 gallon pot on the stove.
I done a 1kg of grain all you need is to know the basics of nashing (dont over heat it more than 70c)

Ok a one-gallon pot add water at about 75c till you have a porrige m,ade from your cracked grain. Remember if the porrige goes too thick add more water at 70c or thereabouts. I like a sloppy porrige not a thick glupy one.

If on an electric cooker the No 1 simmer setting is usually enough to hold 70c in the pot if you stir gently occasionally and if temp is heading up past 70 just move pot off for a coupke minutes. You do need to keep an eye on mash temp!!!
Keep an eye on the temp you may need to go up to No2 setting but my cooker works perfect on number 1.
Another idea is to get your mash up to exactly 65-67c on the stovetop and then put the pot in a prehgeated oven which is set at 67c.
Stir gently every 5-10 mins to mix the heat evenly.
30 mins to an hour will produce plenty of malt liquid.

key is keep mash at 60-70 degrees if you average that a half decent malt will result
Strain through a sieve or colander and pass the liquid through the grains 2-3 times till your liquid looks clear not murky.
Take this liquid away seperate. Rinse (sparge) the grains with water at 75-80c to rinse more malt sugar and  you will have more sweet liquid to use (wort).

Now you have to boil the wort in the pot and add hops as per your desired recipe.

Thats a partial mash on the stove top, its not very technical and I can tell you I have a lovely dark lager from it. A one gallon mash beer and not much mess! I normally use my 3 gallon brewhouse but I was bored one day and tried the above.

If you doing a kit or extract and want to add grains as in this topic its a great way to learn mashing and add some freshness to your kits.

Hope this helps....all explained if yis take up the mash workshop offered in above post.

regards Brendan

[Robrew]

so brewed this up just there and the caramalt crystal were steeped at 62-64c for 30mins then brought to the boil and hops added for 15 and 5 mins (30g cascade) , smelt great and then added to the DME and coopers can, pitched yeast at 21c (US-05). so all in all a good brew day. will try experiemnt with a few bottles as Brendan said at bottling time  . just have to wait until then :

[Blueshed]

made my brew this morning

1 Coopers Aussie PA kit
500g of light spray malt
200g of marris otter
200g of pale ale
100g of whole wheat
30g of cascade
1 Challenger teabag

i crushed the wheat whole grain before i used it.

the grain was steeped in 2 lts of water at a temp of between 60 and 70
this was done in my oven for 1 hour and added the cascade for the last 15mins.
did a 22lt brew and got an OG of 1038/36

[Robrew]

@blueshed, will definitely be looking forward to campare more of our beers, this one smells good from the fermenter so I am looking forward to tasting it

[LordEoin]

I recently brewed this kit too with:

APA kit
1kg LDME
300g Carapils
30g Cascade + 30g Amarillo (steeped, 30 min , in water off the boil)
US05

Simple, fresh and tasty.

[Robrew]

so the krausen on the APA has never gotten very large maybe an inch tall but been consist for 2/3 days, I used US-05, im just wondering has anyone else ever had a Krausen like this??

[LordEoin]

Every krausen is different, even with the same yeast.
Unless it smells like fox-pee and sprouts mushrooms, it's probably all good