Pangborn Pale Ale (Drop Top Clone)

Steep grains @ 155 degrees F for 60 minutes in 3 Gallons:

8 oz of Crystal Malt -40L
8 oz of Victory Malt

Bring to Boil-

Add 3 lbs pale DME (60 minutes)
Add 1 oz Centennial Hops 10% AA (20.2 IBU) (60 minutes)
Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops 5.5% AA (2.5 IBU) (15 minutes)
Add 3 lbs pale DME (15 minutes)
Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops 5.5% AA (.4 IBU) (2 minutes)

Cool wort and add to primary with 2 gallons of cold water. Pitch yeast and starter when wort is 70 degrees. Ferment schedule and bottle.

Tastes quite a bit like Widmer's Drop Top Amber Ale

Thanks for posting the recipe! I think I'm actually going to give it a shot tomorrow and see how it turns out.
Has anyone else had any luck with this one yet?
Drop Top is among my favorite beers so I'm excited to experiment with a recipe close to it.

I think my beer was sweeter because I only had about 70% attenuation. I think if you're attenuation is higher it'll be drier and might be very different. Please let me know what you think, I'm tweaking this one currently with some different hops. I personally like my pales to be slightly sweeter.

Well, been a little over a week now in primary. I'm down to bubbling once about every 28-30 seconds. I'm hoping to bottle this weekend depending on the schedule. I'll let you know how it turns out once I get to that point. I'm with you, I like my pales to be a little bit sweet. That's basically what I'm looking for as a good starting point.

I think it really depends on your partial mash temperature. If you keep the temp up it should leave more unfermentable sugars in the wort to come through the final product.

I got this in the bottle over the weekend. I was really surprised with how good it tasted before it had been carbonated and aged a bit. I'm pretty excited for the results in a couple of weeks.

I tried this one again but I bumped the 40 to crystal 60 and it's starting to get the right color.

A few noob questions on this. The temperature of 68 is that the temperature of the wort or the ambient air temp? And also the times listed for adding ingreidients, are thos from the starting time of the boil or how many minutes until the boil is finished? Does that make sense?

elscorcho: While I can't help you on the first question (I would think the temp in the fermenter wouldn't be far from the ambient air temp, assuming the latter was constant...), I'm pretty sure the times listed indicate time until the end of the boil, since I'd assume they are in chronological order.

I've been looking at this recipe thinking about making it for my first attempt at beer (Drop Top is one of my favorite beers). After steeping the grain for 60 minutes, do you sparge it at all, or top off the water?

Partial Mash brewing doesn't seem much more ambitious than extract brewing...am I setting myself up for failure making something like this my first attempt?

Thanks and sorry for the noobish questions!

First, just a quick update on how the brew turned out. I was a little nervous at first since there wasn't a whole lot of traffic on this thread, but no worries, this beer turned out great! Thanks a ton for the recipe, it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I'll probably be brewing a second batch in the next couple of months. I've had a number of friends try this one as well. (All of them beer drinkers and Drop Top lovers). I've had comments ranging from "This is better to me than the real thing!" all the way to "Can you teach me how to brew so I can make this?". Anyway, thanks for the recipe.

Ok, I'm no pro, but I'll take a stab at a couple of your questions:

elscorcho said:

The temperature of 68 is that the temperature of the wort or the ambient air temp?

Click to expand...

I can't say that it would make a ton of difference since after a day or two the liquid should be pretty close. Personally, I didn't worry too much about the temp. I just put the wort in my carboy and tucked it away in the closet for a few weeks.

elscorcho said:

And also the times listed for adding ingreidients, are thos from the starting time of the boil or how many minutes until the boil is finished? Does that make sense?

Click to expand...

The times listed are listed by the amount of the boil time left. I've only brewed about 7 or 8 batches now, but I just go with a 60 minute boil unless I read something different in the recipe I'm following. Most all of the recipes I've seen online list boil times as time remaining in the boil.

Jahgru said:

After steeping the grain for 60 minutes, do you sparge it at all, or top off the water?

Click to expand...

I sparged a little bit. Generally for a brew like this I'll end up sparging with maybe 2~4 cups of water.

Jahgru said:

Partial Mash brewing doesn't seem much more ambitious than extract brewing...am I setting myself up for failure making something like this my first attempt?

Click to expand...

I think this is a pretty good choice for a first shot at a partial mash. This one is fairly straight forward and yields a solid beer.
Just make sure you plan ahead and pay attention to your times (so you prep your ingredients ahead of time, etc), you'll be just fine.

Not to put down your recipe or anything but I don't see how this could possibly taste like Drop Top. Your recipe looks like a classic American Pale Ale. Drop top is a Amber with totally different ingredients.

If you want to make a Drop Top clone you should use what Widmer uses in the recipe and tweak the amounts.

from their web site:
bitterness
20 IBU
alcohol by volume
5.0%
original gravity
12.25° PLATO
malts
PALE, CARAMEL 10L,
EXTRA SPECIAL, HONEY MALT
hops
ALCHEMY, SIMCOE