Oaked Pale Ale proposal

[panacea]

Hi guys,

I'm just finishing up my first homebrew, and for my next 5 gallon brew I'd like to do something a bit more interesting. I know that most people recommend doing standard recipes for the first 5 brews, but I'm interested in experimenting a little sooner than that .

My next batch is going to be an oaked pale ale. To create it, I found the ingredients for Firestone's award-winning Pale Ale, but with no ratios. Fortunately I was also able to find the OG, color (degL), and IBUs. I put the ingredients into Promash, and using common ratios found from other popular recipes, I was able to find a balance that matched Firestone's OG, degL, and IBUs. From there, I converted the recipe to partial mash (using this guide), and substituted ingredients available at my LHBS, to come up with the recipe below.

Can someone please sanity check these ingredients to make sure they add up correctly? Also, any suggestions on hop schedule / substitutions?

Thanks!

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Partial Mash:
- Briess 2 Row (1.8 L) - 2 lbs (Would actually prefer Gambrinus Pale 2 Row, if available)
- Dingemann's Cara-Pils (7.5 L) - 0.5 lb
- Briess Munich (10 L) - 0.5 lb
- Crisp Crystal (50-60 L) - 0.4 lb (Would prefer 40L, 0.5 lb)

Extract:
- Scott's Pale Malt Extract - 5 lb

Hop Schedule:
- Chinook 1oz (60min, bittering)
- Cascade 1/2oz
- Centennial 1/2oz
- Fuggle 1/2oz
(Not sure on hop timing yet, but I would like significant dry hopping.)

Yeast:
- Danstar London Ale Dry Yeast

Notes:
- 1oz-2oz oak chips added to secondary for 10 days, possibly steamed in bourbon

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Thanks again! And if anyone has any links on creating a hop schedule, or suggestions on pairing the hops with the bourboned oak, I'd really like to have them!!

Jon

 

[cweston]

I would go with 1 oz oak chips, soaked for about 20 minutes in bourbon (or water + bourbon), then steamed with the soaking liquid.

If you don't soak them, you get a super-strong oak flavor which takes months to mellow, which might be OK for an imperial stout or something, but I'm assuming you want to drink this before Christmas.

You're recipe looks fine: I would add the Centennial for 15 minutes, the fuggles foe 2 minutes, and dry-hop with the Cascade.

Or, combine the three and then add 1/2 oz of the mixed hops at 15, at 2, and for dry-hop.

1/2 oz is a fairly subtle dry-hop. With the oak aroma, I might consider upping that to a full ounce.

 

[panacea]

Thanks CW! I'll definitely take your advice on the hops.

As for the yeast, do you think using the Danstar London Ale dry yeast will be sufficient? Or should I fancy it up with some specialty liquid yeast?

 

[david_42]

The Danstar should be fine. Dry yeasts tend to be neutral and clean, which is what you want for a pale.

 

[drengel]

i would definitelt dry hop with an oz., and i think fuggles would work better with the oak, but i'm not sure. in any case i'd go with either fuggles or the citrusy hops, but not a combo. never used that particular yeast strain, so no comment other than i usually use liquiid, and when i did some with dry yeast a few months ago as an experiment it was almost too neutral, and with an english style i like some good 'english-y' esters in it, but that london ale dry yeast probably is fine since it says it's a london ale strain. otherwise it looks pretty good. just don't go ov erly hopppy cause EPAs lean more towards a balance than hop oriented APAs.

 

[panacea]

Thanks guys. I've dropped the bittering hops to 1/2 oz, and stepped up the dry hops to 1oz. Drengel, thanks for the suggestion of not mixing hops. I cut out the cascade and I'm going to do 1/2oz of Fuggle at 30 minutes and 1/2oz of Fuggle at 5 minutes. That leaves all the 1oz of centennial for dry hopping. From what I've read, Fuggle is more of a mid-boil hop and Centennial's a lot like Cascade, therefore great for dry hopping.

BTW while at the LHBS this evening (purchasing the aforementioned ingredients) I picked up White Labs California Ale yeast instead of the dry yeast. I was reading all the talk about yeasts in this forum's sticky thread and it made me want to try it out .

Wish me luck this weekend!

 

[alemonkey]

Good call. IMHO using good liquid yeast is one of the best things you can do to improve your beer.