First batch · 20 litres · all grain
House Pale Ale
The recipe to learn on. A clean two-row base, enough crystal to give it a spine, and Cascade doing what Cascade does. Forgiving of most beginner mistakes and good enough to keep brewing.
Original gravity
1.055
at 72% efficiency
Final gravity
1.013
76% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
5.5%
by volume
Bitterness
33 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
8.3 SRM
16 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
5.00 kg
0.25 kg per litre
Brewed to American Pale Ale, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
Fermentation temperature. Held at 19C this is clean and hop-forward; allowed to free-rise to 24C it tastes of banana and solvent, and no amount of dry hop will hide it.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pale two-row malt | 4.30 kg | 2 L | 37 ppg | 86% |
| Crystal 40L Body and a light caramel note. More than this and the hops stop cutting through. | 0.45 kg | 40 L | 34 ppg | 9% |
| Munich malt | 0.25 kg | 10 L | 35 ppg | 5% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cascade The only addition that matters for bitterness. | 32 g | 6% | 60 min | 21.2 IBU |
| Cascade | 25 g | 6% | 15 min | 8.2 IBU |
| Cascade | 30 g | 6% | 5 min | 4.0 IBU |
| Cascade Flameout. Steep 15 minutes below 80C to keep the aromatics. | 40 g | 6% | 0 min | 0.0 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Heat strike water and mash in at 66C for 60 minutes.
- 02Sparge to your pre-boil volume and bring to a rolling boil.
- 03Add hops on the schedule above. Keep an eye on the first fifteen minutes: the hot break is when boilovers happen.
- 04Chill to 19C as fast as you can, aerate well, and pitch.
- 05Ferment at 19C for a week, then leave it two more days for the yeast to clean up after itself.
- 06Package at 2.4 volumes of CO2. Drink it fresh; this beer is at its best inside a month.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 66 C for 60 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 72.3 C
- Strike volume
- 15.0 L
- Boil
- 60 min
- Ferment
- 18-20 C
- Carbonate to
- 2.4 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 120 g
- Yeast
- American AleSafAle US-05
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 2.4 volumes this one needs about 120 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99