Northwest Pale Ale

[WillieBananas]

Hello Everybody, Been brewing off and on for a couple of years now and last spring I finally made the jump to all grain! Well after taking the winter off I am in the planning stages for the spring. When I first started extract brewing I made a lot of mistakes, one was designing my own recipes before I was ready. There were some god awful brews made in those days, they were indeed dark times. I blame it on my trade, I'm a chef. I think I felt "Hell I can make damn good food, I can make damn good beer!" Ahhh arrogance.... Well I took a different approach with all grain. I bought "Brewing Classic Styles" and made a good many of Jamils recipes. Over the winter I've been working my way through "Designing Great Beers." Anyway can you guys take a look at this recipe? I used the criteria set in Ray Daniels section on Pale Ales. I'm looking to make this Ale similar to Deschutes Red Chair. Thanks!

 

[Nugent]

Welcome to the wonderful world of all-grain. It's no end of thinking, deciding, thinking again, changing your mind, starting over .... I love it.

Really like the recipe. In my experience, Victory, which is 'similar' to biscuit malt, can tend to dominate the maltiness quite a bit and I have dialed back its proportion in the overall grain bill a bit over the years. That being said, I do like it; especially, when the hopping balances it out. I think that this will be a very tasty pale ale.

I hear you about the cooking logic vs. brewing logic. I've always felt that my love of food and cooking has helped make me a better brewer, but the reasoning between one and the other doesn't always work. While certainly not the world's biggest optimist, I look at beers that I don't really like as mysteries to solve. Has helped keep me interested even in the darker days of the hobby.

 

[chickypad]

Looks good to me too. What OG and mash temp are you targeting and what yeast? I agree that victory can have a toasty/drying effect, especially in a mostly base malt beer that's on the bitter side, but that's not necessarily a bad thing depending on what you want.

 

[aprichman]

If you're going for something like Red Chair I think your hop bill isn't enough. I would probably do a dryhop of at least an ounce.

A pound of victory malt is probably a bit much too.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'm looking to make this Ale similar to Deschutes Red Chair. Thanks!

Deschutes describe their house yeast as a high-floccing English yeast that they ferment cool (<65F) for most of their beers. So take your pick, there's no shortage of commercial yeasts matching that description, but 1056 isn't one of them...

 

[Nugent]

Apparently Deschutes uses WY1187 for Mirror Pond. Probably the same for Red Chair. 65F is at its low end, which explains some slight British yeast character, but not piles of esteriness.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Apparently Deschutes uses WY1187 for Mirror Pond.

What's your source for this? I've seen various guesses on the internet without anything definite, it seems there's a good chance that they use the Ringwood multistrain - but that doesn't mean 1187 is the best match, in the same way that you wouldn't choose gherkins if you had to clone a hamburger using just one ingredient.

If you're fermenting cool it's probably not going to make a huge heap of difference, which is why I suggested using just any high-floccing British strain, fermented cool.

 

[WillieBananas]

If you're going for something like Red Chair I think your hop bill isn't enough. I would probably do a dryhop of at least an ounce.
QUOTE]
Thanks for the input everyone. If you notice I already did have a dry hop schedule in the recipe, 1oz on day 5 and 1oz on day 7. As for the Victory I will take it down a bit. From the suggestions I will change Yeast to Wlp041 Pacific Ale yeast, it seems to fit what I'm going for.

 

[aprichman]

Wow don't know how I missed that dryhop!

 

[WillieBananas]

Hell great minds think alike!

 

[WillieBananas]

Shooting for OG 1.067. Wlp041 @ 66F