Citrahtanum - Hop Bursted Pale Ale

I've been doing a bunch of half batches this winter, so I can brew on my stove and this is one of my favorites! I wanted to do a tasty West Coast style pale ale. Something sessionable with an intense hop flavor up front, and a clean bitterness in the finish. I gotta say I am pretty happy with how this beer turned out. An intense citrus character, which initially was like a grapefruit bomb, but as the beer gets some age on it is starting to become more lemony and I am starting to get a nice honey-like malt character in the beer. As I was hoping, the bitterness is quite manageable and drops off the palate quickly. I've got no medals to back it up (don't enter contests....yet), but pale ales and IPAs are my favorite style, and I would be more than happy if I bought this from a commercial brewer. It tastes like an IPA but everything about it falls into BJCP style guidelines as a pale ale, except the IBUs which are over by 9 pts. (all calculations according to Beersmith of course.)

Water profile used- Ca: 75.8; Mg: 18.6; Na: 2.5; S04: 80.1; Cl: 25.1; HC03: 119.1

Brewed on Christmas Day. Used BIAB method. Mashed in at 152°F. Sacch rest for 60 minutes. Total boil volume of 4.5 gallons. Added a bit of sugar to bump the ABV a smidge but mostly to dry the beer out. With 74% brewhouse efficiency, OG: 1.048 w/o sugar. Boiled sugar in 4 cups water and added at high krausen. The 1.057 OG noted above is just what Beersmith gives me when I add a half pound of sugar to the recipe, not sure how accurate that is. Primary for 4 weeks @ 60°F, bottle conditioned to 2.1 volumes of CO2 for 3 weeks @ ~70°F and she's good to go. This should be quite easy to bump to a five or ten gallon batch, just keep the percentages/IBUs the same. In fact I intend to brew a full batch of this when the weather warms up a bit.

Ingredients:
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Amount Item Type % or IBU
4.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 72.73 %
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 9.09 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 9.09 %
0.25 oz Citra [13.40 %] (60 min) Hops 22.8 IBU
0.50 oz Citra [13.40 %] (10 min) Hops 16.5 IBU
1.00 oz Ahtanum [5.20 %] (10 min) Hops 12.8 IBU
0.50 oz Citra [13.40 %] (1 min) Hops 2.0 IBU
1.00 oz Ahtanum [5.20 %] (0 min) Hops -
0.75 oz Citra [13.40 %] (0 min) Hops
1.00 oz Citra [13.40 %] (Dry Hop 3 days) Hops -
1.00 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days) Hops
0.50 lb Cane (Beet) Sugar (0.0 SRM) Sugar 9.09 %
1 Pkgs Safale S-05 (Fermentis) Yeast-Ale

BTW the beer isn't actually as dark as it appears in the photo, it's more of a golden/orange color than copper....I'll try to get a photo in natural sunlight next time I crack one open for a better representation of the coloration.

Looks nice. I have a pound of Citra waiting to be used.. unfortunately I don't have any Ahtanum.. hmmmmm.

I really need to start doing some half batches. It's just too damn cold here right now to get a good boil going outside.

This sounds awesome. I might use this as my recipe for Single Hop IPAs.

Here we go, this is a better representation of the color.

Beautiful man. How long did it take to chill outside? I've been pondering taking advantage of old man winter here, and saving myself one less thing to clean (chiller).

Can't say for sure, I think it was around 2 hours to get to 65°F. Although I reckon a 5-gallon batch would take considerably longer.

How long did you dry hop for? The entire length of primary?

Didn't even find this recipe when i was looking for a citra ale. I went with strat thru marshalls one but couldn't get loose leaf cascade so i went with ahtanum. My final recipe ended up being almost identical to this but no carapils which has obviously worked a treat for you looking at those pics. I'm a week off bottling so i should have a snap to put up for comparison at some stage. Probably wont be quite as clear as yours mind