Ordinary APA design

[Orthobrewsky]

Due to space considerations, I must choose between a hoppy pale ale and a nice, low-gravity offering, such as ordinary bitter. I like to always have something low gravity on tap and my delicious Reaper's Mild is running out before long. So, how crazy does this look?

Type: All Grain
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.15 gal Brewer: Ed
Boil Size: 6.71 gal
Boil Time: 70 min
End of Boil Volume 5.77 gal Brewhouse Efficiency: 66.00 % (No Sparge)
Final Bottling Volume: 5.15 gal


Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
6 lbs 12.0 oz Weyermann Pale Ale Malt (3.0 SRM) 77.1 %
12.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) 8.6 %
12.0 oz Rye Malt (4.7 SRM) 8.6 %
8.0 oz Munich Malt - 6L (6.0 SRM) 5.7 %
0.50 oz Perle [8.00 %] - First Wort 70.0 min Hop 5 18.1 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 6 9.0 IBUs
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 7 2.5 IBUs
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 min Hop 8 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) [23.66 ml] Yeast 9 -

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.039 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.5 %
Bitterness: 29.6 IBUs
Est Color: 5.2 SRM

 

[daksin]

It looks delicious. My personal preference says to over hop it, with an extra half oz at 5/1min, or add in a dry hop, but it looks great as is. It will definitely be more APA than OB. You could sub the pale malt for an english pale malt like Maris Otter or Golden Promise for more of a cross between the two. If you ferment the S-04 low, it will be super APA clean, and if you go more towards the mid 60's (I like 66) it'll be a little more british-estery.

 

[Orthobrewsky]

It looks delicious. My personal preference says to over hop it, with an extra half oz at 5/1min, or add in a dry hop, but it looks great as is. It will definitely be more APA than OB. You could sub the pale malt for an english pale malt like Maris Otter or Golden Promise for more of a cross between the two. If you ferment the S-04 low, it will be super APA clean, and if you go more towards the mid 60's (I like 66) it'll be a little more british-estery.

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking of a dry hop addition and wasn't really sure whether I should stick with that yeast. I've got some S-05 and Notty; what do you think of those with this? I was planning to mash around 153.

 

[daksin]

They're both great yeasts- both excellent for APA as they ferment extremely cleanly as long as you treat them nicely. Personally, I prefer US-05 because it's slightly less finicky about temperature, although it does not flocculate as well. No matter what yeast you use, make sure you control fermentation temperature tightly (ESPECIALLY WITH THE NOTTY- it needs to be cool). 153 should give you a nice dry APA- just the way I like it.

 

[Orthobrewsky]

I brewed yesterday and it ended up as follows. The 1 lb of 3 SRM pale malt was just because I wanted to go ahead and use all the regular 2 row I had in stock and, when I was thinking I'd go ahead and do a sparge on this one, I didn't need anymore to hit my gravity, but then I decided "yes, I do want to no-sparge this afterall" so I added a pound of base malt. The darker Munich was a similar thing--I had 10 ounces of this in stock since nearly a year ago and wanted to use it. The Chinook mash hop was just because I had a little left over Chinook leaf hops from other brews and thought I'd just throw them in there.

lBrewhouse Efficiency: 69.40 %
Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
5 lbs 6.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 59.7 %
1 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) (3.0 SRM) Grain 2 11.1 %
1 lbs Rye Malt (3.0 SRM) Grain 3 11.1 %
10.0 oz Munich Malt - 12L (12.0 SRM) Grain 4 6.9 %
8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5 5.6 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 6 5.6 %
0.25 oz Chinook [11.00 %] - Mash 60.0 min Hop 7 1.9 IBUs
0.50 oz Perle [8.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 8 17.2 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 8.5 IBUs
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 2.3 IBUs
0.50 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 min Hop 11 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) [23.66 ml] Yeast 12 -
1.00 oz Cascade [6.20 %] - Dry Hop 6.0 Days Hop 13 0.0 IBUs

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.041 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.041 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.8 %
Bitterness: 29.9 IBUs
Est Color: 4.7 SRM

I hit my target gravity on the nose, as I have been doing just about all the time in the last half year or so. However, I had more runoff than I had planned. I'm guessing this has to do with my new mash tun component, illustrated and explained for your amusement below.

Two weeks ago, for my first RIS, I got stuck a few ounces into voulauf. It kept doing that, even while stirring. I had almost resigned myself to taking the whole thing out and fixing my manifold, but I decided to bang on it for a bit. It would flow a bit when hit; finally, it flowed a lot and kept flowing with a good bit of grain coming out with it. Still, this time, it cleared on vorlauf and I succeeded in sparging slowly. When I was cleaning up, this is what I found:


Yes, I was just draining through two holes and the grain bed did all the filtering. I decided I was tired of using that manifold anyway.

So, I made this one:




You can see I already banged it up a bit, but I got stuck at around 2 gallons, upon which I manually dug up that grain bed and stirred the mash for a few minutes, and then it got very slow again around 5 gallons, upon which I just poked the grain bed in the center and sliced the top of it, accepting a somewhat faster (but still slow) drain.

At last I hit my full volume and more. It looked like this:


After my final victory, I just couldn't take a break, though I was way overdue for lunch. So, I snacked on what I had on hand:


It was wholesome.

I pitched S-04 into 63 degree wort and I've still got it on that temp. Here's how it looked this morning:



That's the RIS next to it, still lingering in primary.

Thanks again for the advice. I took a look at your blog; it sounds like a nice nano brewing adventure you've got going on there. Happy brewing.