New Pale Ale Recipe

I just came up with a recipe for a pale ale that I wanted to get some advice on to see if I could improve. This is my first time creating a recipe and also my first time attempting a partial mash.

5 gallon batch
1 lb wheat malt
1 lb crystal 40
1 lb munich
0.5 lb victory
1.5 lb 2-row
6 lbs light DME

Mash at 152 for 60 minutes

Boil for 60 minutes, adding the DME with about 20 minutes remaining.

Hop schedule.
1 oz Columbus 20 minutes
0.5 oz Amarillo 10 minutes
0.5 oz Centennial 10 minutes
1 oz Columbus 5 minutes
1 oz Centennial 0 minutes
1 oz Cascade 0 minutes

Wyeast 1056.

Any tips or advice would be great. Thanks.

Wow 13 different ingredients for your first recipe - pretty complicated.

Do you not have the capability for mashing all the grains at once? If not - just go, IMO, 8lbs light DME and .5lb - 1lb of crystal40.

Where is the bittering addition? With those hops you listed, I would just add maybe .75oz columbus at the beginning of the boil, and maybe stick to centennial or cascade at the last 10 or 5mins and cascade after flameout. Your adding a bunch of different ones and they're just gonna blend with each other. The less you use, the better you'll be able to tell which adjustments to make in future batches to improve it.

If this is your first recipe on your own, keep things simple - you don't need a bunch of different hops to make it taste awesome.

1056 is great, btw.

I'm using a 5 gallon cooler to mash in, but my brew kettle only holds about 4 gallons so I'm limited to a boil size of about 3 gallons.

I wanted to use as little extract as possible so that I could feel like this was a true partial mash and not just an extract with some specialty grains.

As for no bittering hop addition, that came from advice from a fellow home brewer who said he tried a pale ale with similar hop additions trying to balance big malt flavor with lots of hoppiness and very little bitterness. Thoughts?

wyobrewer1 said:

I just came up with a recipe for a pale ale that I wanted to get some advice on to see if I could improve. This is my first time creating a recipe and also my first time attempting a partial mash.

5 gallon batch
1 lb wheat malt
1 lb crystal 40
1 lb munich
0.5 lb victory
1.5 lb 2-row
6 lbs light DME

Mash at 152 for 60 minutes

Boil for 60 minutes, adding the DME with about 20 minutes remaining.

Hop schedule.
1 oz Columbus 20 minutes
0.5 oz Amarillo 10 minutes
0.5 oz Centennial 10 minutes
1 oz Columbus 5 minutes
1 oz Centennial 0 minutes
1 oz Cascade 0 minutes

Wyeast 1056.

Any tips or advice would be great. Thanks.

Click to expand...

How bitter are you wanting it? What about sweetness? That recipe sounds like it will have ALOT of residual sweetness to it. Doesn't seem that it would be that balanced. More sweet than anything.

Personally, I would just mash the 2 row, munich, crystal and wheat. I'd drop the victory. The Victory would be good in there, but your tossing a ton of grains with little hops. It'll be really nutty and roasty, and then creamy and have a huge body, and residual sweetness in there. Probably not what you were going for I'd imagine.

If you want the Victory, I'd do some 2 row, Victory, and some wheat if you want it.

I would also reduce the wheat to 12oz or less, and drop the crystal back to 8-10oz. That much in there with the extract will make it really hard for you to get the beer down low in gravity to dry it up a bit.

From there, if you want to toss hops at it late, go for it. I would do a 60min addition, which would have you add less, and add more of it late from 15-0 min. You benefit from getting enough to bitter the beer to your liking, and then would gain the hoppiness and aroma from the later additions.

I agree with FATC1TY's recommendations on the grain bill, but I think the hop bill is fine the way it is. Hop bursting is the way to go if you want big hop flavor/aroma while keeping the bitterness smooth and enjoyable. I would even recommend adding an ounce or so of Cascade or Amarillo for dry hopping.

Thanks for the advice....unfortunately I had already been to the brew shop by the time I read it. I realized I didn't have a bag big enough to fit 5 pounds of grain so I'm doing 6lbs DME, the the crystal, victory, Munich and also decided to do a half pound of rye for the hell of it. I figured this is all an experiment anyways why not?

Also decided I would do 0.5 oz of magnum hops at 60 minutes just in case it ends up too sweet like you guys are saying.

Had a bottle last night after a week and its delicious. Definitely some sweetness, but plenty of body and its got some good hop flavor to it, although not a ton of aroma like I was expecting. FG came out at 1.013.