What the heck did I make?

HokieBrewer · 10-31-2008, 03:21 PM

My brew session got a little crazy last week, with some classic n00b ideas.

Here's what I did - started off trying to make a classic American Pale Ale.

6# Light LME
1# Light DME
1# Crystal 40

(so far so good)

1/2# honey malt

(wait, what?)

With a weird hop schedule:

.75 oz Cascade pellets 60 min
.25 oz Cascade pellets 20 min
1 oz Ahtanum plug at flame out

Fermenting with White Labs W001 California Ale yeast.

It smells like a freaking gummy bear bubbling through the airlock. My plan is to add a 1/2 pound or so of brown sugar to dry it out, and dry hop the heck out of it with 2oz of Amarillo.

Is this going to suck?

**mmb** · 10-31-2008, 03:43 PM

Estimated OG of 1.058 w/ sugar, 16 IBUs

I wouldn't use brown sugar to feed it. That always goes cidery for me. If you have to feed it, boil up some white table sugar in a few cups of water and add to secondary. I don't think I'd bother though.

Maybe a hop tea to extract some more bitterness? As is, it's going to be fairly sweet. Honey malt doesn't have those caramel flavors that something like Crystal 20 would have. Pretty much just sweet to my pallet.