Summer Pale Ale '15

Our time in Nevada over the past ten months has been exciting, hair rasing, and pretty much an all-out marathon through the end of the school year. Consequently, the last few months have included no time for brewing, borne out in the blog's lack of activity. Placing in a local competition with a couple winter beers a while back was nice, but in the meantime I've actually run out of homebrew on hand; that's not a regular occurrence here! Regular duties wrapped up a few weeks ago, though, finally leaving some time to get the system cranking again ahead of leaving for the summer.

So what's first up, coming back after a dry spell and looking to summer quaffing? Yup, American pale ale. This beer should fulfill several of my needs: moderate alcohol, quick turnaround, hoppy, easy drinking in the heat. Somehow, I think I've managed to entirely avoid using Chinook hops--at least in any meaningful, memorable way--in my seven years homebrewing. That ends here: I'm looking forward to tasting this "rough, piney" hop as it plays with Amarillo.

After talking with a new homebrewing friend here in Reno, I'm also messing with a very short dry hop exposure time here. I added the dry hops to the primary last night and the beer will go into bottles after just a day (and maybe a half) of exposure. (Never mind, it took all week to get to it, so dry hopping lasted about my normal five days.) My previous thought had been that the pellets might not even fully hydrate in that amount of time, but we'll see how it comes out. This is also the first batch on which I used my new pure oxygen setup; just a minute of pure O2 was much more convenient than 45 minutes with filtered air, and yielded a nice strong start. I'll be happy to have my own beer on hand again soon.

Summer Pale Ale ’15

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.048
Projected SRM: 8
Projected IBU: 39
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 75%

Grains
82.1% - 8 lb Vienna
10.3% - 1 lb Flaked oats
5.1% - .5 lb Caravienne
2.5% - .25 lb C60

Hops

.7 oz Chinook (11.4%) (60 min)
1 oz Amarillo (10.7%) (10 min)
2 oz Amarillo (0 min - 150 min steep)
.4 oz Chinook (0 min - 150 min steep)
2 oz Amarillo (Dry hop - 1 5 days)
1 oz Chinook (Dry hop - 1 5 days)

Yeast
1 pkg US-05 (rehydrated)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (0 min)
1 tsp Irish moss (0 min)

Water
Profile: Reno
6 g (7 g) Gypsum
3 g CaCl
3 g (4 g) Epsom Salts
2 mL Lactic Acid (88%)

Brewday: 3 June 2015
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallonsPre-boil SG: 9.2P (1.037)

Water report and chemical calculations from brewersfriend.com, using "light colored & hoppy" setting.

Pure O2 for 60 seconds.
Began fermenting in water bath (68F) by the next morning; cooled bath to 64F. Let water bath free rise to 70F on 6th day after active fermentation began. Removed from water bath—free rise to ~75F—on 9th day after active fermentation began.

Dry hop: 14 June 2015

Bottled: 19 June 2015
FG: 1.012
ABV: 4.7%
Bottled with 4.2 oz table sugar.

Early tasting: 3 July 2015
Still young in the bottle, but so far this beer seems solidly made, with no standout off-flavors. Great Amarillo aroma; however, I don't think I'm really into Chinook. In its best moments, it adds an assertive piney note to the flavor, which can be very interesting; at its worst it gives the beer a rough, muddled, and (dare I say it) somewhat "catty" character. Hoping further age will better meld the hops.