Pale Ale: Where do we go next?

Tonight, for the first time, Jon and I brewed a 5 gallon batch of beer at my house.  Ever since we started brewing, we’ve done so at Jon’s place.  There was one time when we started here, and then one of Jon’s kids got sick, so we moved the project back to his house, mid-brew.

Tonight’s recipe was a pretty simple pale ale: two-ish pounds light malt extract, half pound two-row malt, half pound crystal-I malt, two ounces cascade hops (half ounce at 60, 45, 30, 18 minutes), one ounce first gold hops (third ounce at 5, 2, 1 minutes).  Gravity should be somewhere around 1.050 (given that this was the first time brewing at my house, we didn’t have all of the equipment we needed – namely the hydrometer) and IBUs should have ended up around 40-45.

Now that the wort is fermenting in my dusty hole of a basement the question is this: do we stop with a  simple pale ale or do we try to make it something more?  My initial plan had been to make a rhubarb and Szechuan peppercorn pale ale.  Jon thought that the spice from the peppercorns might not make for a summery beer, and felt we should just make a rhubarb pale ale.  Given that we have a week or two before any extra ingredients get added to the secondary, please feel free to leave a comment below and let us know what you think we should do.  If you’re lucky, and the final beer turns out alright, we might just share some with you.

Beers consumed tonight with a surprising level of sobriety by the end of it all: Cameron’s Auburn, Granville Island English Bay Pale Ale, Muskoka Mad Tom IPA, Beau’s Mates with Dates, Unibroue Blonde de Chambray, and Two Bays Brewing Pilsner.  We ate hamburgers, potato salad, buckwheat salad, lemon meringue pie and macarons.

A Tale of Two Beers

The whole point of a blog is to start it, make a bunch of posts, then forget about it for a while, right?  If that’s the case, then I’m a great blogmaster.  But I did think it was time to post something new since it has been almost a full year since my last post (thank goodness you’re a leap year, 2012).

Central Experimental Pilsner

It took us about two years but we finally got around to it. Two Bays has finally made a lager.

© John Harrison 1982

Moules de célébration

This post makes reference to home brewed beer, but it’s not about home brewing.  Don’t be discouraged.

Apple Cider Fermentation

It might be a bit late, but I started a couple of batches of apple cider this morning in the hopes that one of them might be ready in time for Christmas.  At the moment they are both basic and identical recipes.  A week or so from now I’ll add some extra ingredients and they’ll likely end up being significantly different but at the moment they are pretty indistinguishable.

Mead by hand

Even though I bottled a batch of mead in April, I had two cases of the stuff sitting in my basement without labels on them.  Christmas is coming up and I figure some of them will be going out as gifts, and having visited a couple craft sales recently I had the itch to do something a bit more handmade than I had previously.

Tasting notes

A quick note about where a couple of the beers are at.

Frankenbrews

Two days after Halloween Jon and I set out to make a couple of one-gallon batches but hadn’t really planned what we were doing beforehand.  The result?  Possibly one deformed ESB and a monster of a dark beer.

Adventures in All-Grain: Mexican Chocolate Stout

With an afternoon of Thanksgiving cooking behind me, I decided to tuck into a couple of hours of brewing this morning, after a decent breakfast of leftovers.  Jon was at the cottage and I was in the mood for something a bit more experimental, but not necessarily the type of beer that you want five gallons of, or at least not right at first.  Armed only with high hopes, I decided to try a one-gallon batch, using the all-grain method.

Celebration Ale Do-Over

If at first you don’t succeed, then brew, brew again.