Cascade pale ale

[Beermonger]

I brought this along to the capital brewer's last meeting and people seemed to like it. I've been asked for the recipe, so here it is...

Calibration Pale Ale, version 2

Description: A very drinkable pale ale. Not too bitter, nice floral and citrus notes from the cascade.

I've only made this version once, and I deviated a bit from the planned recipe, as noted below. My boil is pretty fierce (about 18% evaporative loss in an hour, I think!), so you might need to reconsider the volumes if you have a normal boil.

Batch size: 10 l
Boil length: 60 m
Mash efficiency: 65% (you might want adjust for that!)
OG: 1054
FG: 1010 (actually, this was on day 4; it might have gone a bit lower)
ABV: 5.8% (or more?)

Water: soft Dublin city centre water with 5.8 g of gypsum added to the mash

Grain bill
81.6%  2700 g  Loughran pale ale (on the day I replaced 280 g, 8.5% of total grist, of this with some lager malt that I wanted to use up)
6.5%   210 g  Weyermann Carapils
4.5%   150 g  Castle biscuit malt, 50 EBC
4.5%   150 g  Weyermann Munich I, 14 EBC
3.0%   100 g  Wheat malt, 3 EBC

(NO pilsner malt, despite what I might have said at the meeting. Now there's an idea!)

Mashed at 66.7 C for an hour, mashed out at 75.5 C, drained MLT, batch sparged with 8.34 l at 75.5 C

Preboil: 15.7 l @ 1.043

Boil additions:
All the Cascade added in the boil was 2014 crop 7.0% whole hops.

60 mins:  24 g Cascade (38.7 IBU)
10 mins:  0.5 whirlfloc tablet
10 mins:  22 g Cascade (7.1 IBU)
0 mins:  22 g Cascade (—)

Postboil: 12.5 l @ 1.056

Cooled wort. Pitched 10 g of US-05. Kept in a water bath for the first two days, replacing the water by 16-17 C tap water maybe twice in the first day and once thereafter. So no fancy T control, but the ferment was pretty clean all the same.

On the fourth day, fermentation had slowed drastically and apparent attenuation was 81%. Didn't take a gravity reading after this, but it couldn't have gone much lower. That puts it at 5.5%. It's way too drinkable for that strength.

So on day 4, I dry hopped with 25 g of Cascade pellets.

Forgot about it for a while. Day 18, kegged, crash chilled to 4 C, added 4 ml isinglass liquid, carbonated to about 2.2 vols.

That's it!

I was surprised how well this came out. I didn't think I'd get something this good on the second iteration of the recipe (version 1 wasn't great). Time to make a big batch of it ... and then go on tweakin'...

[Parky]

Fantastic, thanks for sharing 

Such a smooth beer, and so drinkable, the fermentation tasted very clean on this one. The biscuit and Munich are a nice touch and added a subtle roundness to the flavour.

Cheers!

[krockett]

Thanks for the recipe. Made this tonight with fresh cascade cones grown in my back garden.

[Beermonger]

That looks amazing! Let us know how the hop character turns out.

[krockett]

Well I was reluctant to update on the flavour because tbh it wasn't great from the keg. It had this flavour which I've never had in any of my beers - not citrus really, more full on almost herby. I used 300 grammes in a hop stand and 240 for the dry hop. I'm pretty sure they were ripe. They smelled amazing when broken up (I split them all to check for insects) - really skunky-sweet with that proper cascade tang. This didnt come across in the beer though.

This was different to what we usually drink so my missus admitted afterwards that she didnt really like it either as much as most of my beers. We still drank it all fairly quickly though!

However I opened a bottle last night and it was actually lovely. The harshness had faded and it had turned into more subtle character and I could taste the malt properly.

If I do this again I'll be bottling it all and ageing it. Incidentally I was told recently by a guy who did the same that he aged a bottle for 5 years and it was one of the nicest beers he'd ever had.

[Beermonger]

I'm glad the hop character mellowed out a bit. I suppose the hops will fall off more if you age it, but its might be interesting nonetheless. I like the malt character in this recipe (which if I recall correctly is a twist on one of the APA recipes from Brewing Classic Styles); it's not all hops.

I've rebrewed it recently using all Centennial instead of Cascade. It's not ready yet, but I'm thinking of using the recipe as a sort of vehicle for showcasing individual hops (and I suppose combinations of hops). To that end, I'm standardised all hop additions to 25 g except for the bittering addition, which is set to whatever will give a BU/GU ratio of 0.8. I've also switched the bittering addition to a first wort hopping. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

[krockett]

I gave Johnrm a bottle of this this week - he'd have a much more educated taste than me  Might get some feedback from him on it.

One of my favourite beers that I've made (or drank) is the original recipe of Bells two Hearted Ale: 100% Centennial but with opposite editions of what I usually do. I debated whether to make this - but it turned out with absolutely beautiful balance - you could really savour the hops and the malt (we drank it fresh though so it had all the dry hop aroma).

I made the same recipe afterwards but with my usual FWH and massive hopstand and it had none of the subtlety and I got sick of it - it was just full on one dimensional.

the original recipe is here: http://imgur.com/bfITU9X. I use this hop bill now to test new hops varieties - just did this with galaxy.

[Beermonger]

Thanks for the Bell's recipe. Quite a lot of dry hopping there - I must try it as a variation! After a few tastes of the Centennial pale I'm really hoping it mellows out a bit - way over the top centennial. And there's much less dry hopping in it than the Bell's.... but who knows... I'll give it some time.

[Leann ull]

I did that one 12 months ago after drinking it in Washington regularly pitches up second after Pliny nationally there.
I used Pilsner malt instead of pale
It took 2 months to really balance and condition out

[krockett]

Thanks for the Bell's recipe. Quite a lot of dry hopping there - I must try it as a variation! After a few tastes of the Centennial pale I'm really hoping it mellows out a bit - way over the top centennial. And there's much less dry hopping in it than the Bell's.... but who knows... I'll give it some time.

Did you do late/ flameout additions? I didnt like that either.

if you try it as per the recipe let us know what you think.

[krockett]

I did that one 12 months ago after drinking it in Washington regularly pitches up second after Pliny nationally there.
I used Pilsner malt instead of pale
It took 2 months to really balance and condition out

Never tried either of the real thing. Think Bell's is supposed to be almost the opposite of Pliny? Less is more instead of just more?

[Leann ull]

I've had smuggled in Pliny here and in the US. It is a good beer but there is an element of the January sales about it!