Pale Ale Recipe - Please Critique

After having a lovely Christmas, I decided to use some gift cards to various homebrewing sites to finally take a stab at a recipe I have been wanting to create for sometime. It is a Pale Ale that is a take on a favorite of mine from Seattle. Please let me know what you think. Here is the recipe:

6.00 lb Golden Light Dry Extract (4.0 SRM) Dry Extract
1.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain
0.50 oz Magnum [13.50 %] (60 min) Hops 23.7 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [7.10 %] (5 min) Hops 5.0 IBU
1 Pkgs British Ale (White Labs #WLP005) [Starter 1500 ml] Yeast-Ale
Dry hop with 1oz Cascade for 5 days

Steeping Crystal 20L and Carapils for 30 minutes at 155F
Adding 1lb of DME at beginning of boil and adding rest at 15 minutes left
Boil size 5.75 gallons with 9% evaportation rate
SG = 1.053 - 1.056, FG = 1.012 - 1.014
Primary fermentation for 2.5 weeks, dry hopping for 5 days and then kegging
Approximate ABV = 5.5% SRM = 7.2-7.5, Approximate IBUs = 37.6

I think it looks delicious! I'm brewing a pale ale even as I type this - I used english hops (goldings and fuggles) and an american yeast (US-05), the reverse of your recipe, where you use american hops and english yeast!

Cheers!

Recipe looks great, I just finished Dry Hopping my All Cascade Pale Ale before reading your thread. Doing that and reading this is making me quite thirsty.

looks great!

6 lbs of DME in 5 gallons will give you 1.055 before the addition of the Crystal and dextrin malts, so your OG estimate is slightly off.

Carapils needs to be mashed, not just steeped to get sugars out of it.

Way too much Crystal/Dextrin with 1.75 lbs. Probably want to keep it down to about 0.75 lbs.

The recipe says 29 IBUs, but at the end you say 38 IBUs. Which is the it. You probably want to be in the region of 40.

Calder said:

6 lbs of DME in 5 gallons will give you 1.055 before the addition of the Crystal and dextrin malts, so your OG estimate is slightly off.

Carapils needs to be mashed, not just steeped to get sugars out of it.

Way too much Crystal/Dextrin with 1.75 lbs. Probably want to keep it down to about 0.75 lbs.

The recipe says 29 IBUs, but at the end you say 38 IBUs. Which is the it. You probably want to be in the region of 40.

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I made the calculations with Beersmith. Not sure if its off or not. Any thoughts if it is off or not? I did use a late addition of the DME. How would 1.75 lbs of Crystal/dextrin be too much?

Calder said:

Carapils needs to be mashed, not just steeped to get sugars out of it.

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not true

WrongCoastBrewery said:

I made the calculations with Beersmith. Not sure if its off or not. Any thoughts if it is off or not? I did use a late addition of the DME. How would 1.75 lbs of Crystal/dextrin be too much?

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1.75lbs of crystal is alot (~15%), 20% is the max recommended of the grain bill. if your DME is Briess, I'd ditch the carapils since its already in the extract, and personally I'd use something like vienna instead

as for the IBUs, the 29IBUs listed is without accounting for a late add, the 38 is with the late add.

I changed the grain bill to 0.25lb of Carapils and 0.75lbs of Crystal 40L. Gets me about the same color, which a little darker is fine by me. The carapils was to add a bit more to the head retention and body.

Carapils does add to head retention and body for extract with steeping grains brewing, without mashing. Also, in my experience, you want to use more crystal/caramel in extract with steeping grains brewing than you would with all-grain.

Yep, I think the recipe is just about finalized.

Sounds great to me! I made an apa similar to this over the summer but with simcoe/amarillo hops and it came out great. My og and ibus were about the same though and it was very balanced. I also used some biscuit malt that added a nice bready character.

PS: Great name for a brewery!!!

SchlazzGraft said:

Sounds great to me! I made an apa similar to this over the summer but with simcoe/amarillo hops and it came out great. My og and ibus were about the same though and it was very balanced. I also used some biscuit malt that added a nice bready character.

PS: Great name for a brewery!!!

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Thanks. I hope this one comes out good too.

Looks like a nice recipe. Let us know how it turns out!

I will definitely let everyone know how it turns out. I actually decided to go with 1lb Crystal 30L and .25lbs of Carapils. Its about 16% of the grain bill. A bit more than I wanted but still under the 20% max recommended.

Carapils definitely plays a role even if it doesn't contribute to the fermentables in an extract brew. Its head-retention powers are fantastic!

borden said:

Carapils definitely plays a role even if it doesn't contribute to the fermentables in an extract brew. Its head-retention powers are fantastic!

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Well, its going to be a brew in the constant works. I eventually plan to do this in AG once I finally get all my pieces built. This is more of a test run really.