Pale ale recipe feedback

[three_bags_full]

Hi, folks. New to brewing and new here. Been a lurker for a while, learning a lot (thanks for that).

Looking for a little feedback on a recipe I found and tweaked.

1 pound amber LME
7 pounds light LME
1 pound Crystal 20L
1 pound 6-row
.5 oz Centennial-60 min
1 oz Cascade and 1 oz Centennial -15 mins
1 oz Cascade - flameout
.5 oz Centennial - flameout

The original recipe called for only 7 pounds of light LME and a half pound each of the grains, but I wanted just a little bigger beer. So I added the amber LME (for a little color, too) and upped the grains.

I didn't change the hops.

Am I screwing this up with my tinkering?

Thanks for any input.

 

[Jayhem]

With that recipe and all LME base malt you will end up with a amber or brown pale ale!

Extracts cause the beer to darken anyway so the addition of amber LME will make it really dark.

What I would do is keep the 1 lb of Crystal 20, drop the Amber LME and instead use 1 lb of table sugar to boost he alcohol a bit but keep the beer dry.

Also, I'm not really sure what the point of the 6-row malt would be. You are just steeping the grains, correct? You won't get anything out of a base malt by steeping it, it has to be mashed.

Your hop choice and schedule actually looks pretty good, those are 2 of my standard Pale Ale hops. Save your flame out additions until the wort cools below 160F and then add those hops to the cooling wort, this is known as "hop whirlpooling" or "hop stand" and allows more of the hop aroma to make it to the final beer.

If it were me, I would dry hop the beer after it's finished fermenting with another 1 or 1.5 oz of Cascade to really give it some good aroma.

You should run this recipe through a recipe calculator to determine the OG, FG, alcohol % and hop utilization (IBU's) that are likely to result from your changes.

I use www.brewtoad.com

 

[three_bags_full]

Thanks for the advice.

I had thought about adding table sugar, but didn't really consider how dark the amber extract would make it.

As far as the 6-row is concerned, I guess I need to read that chapter again, huh?

Thanks again for the help, Jayhem.

 

[three_bags_full]

Just ran it through brewersfriend.com's calculator and it gave me 6.0 without the 6-row and 6.5 with it.

 

[Jayhem]

Just ran it through brewersfriend.com's calculator and it gave me 6.0 without the 6-row and 6.5 with it.

Yes, but it is assuming you are mashing the 6-row. If you mash the 6 row and Crystal you would actually get fermentable sugars out of them. If you just steep them you only really get flavor out of them and 6-row isn't a flavor malt.

After you have a few extract batches done look into Partial Mash brewing. All you need that you don't already have is a nylon mesh grain bag and a second 3-5 gallon pot to mash in.