It was a dark and raining morning...Redemption Harvest Ale

I brew a fair number of beers that I don't blog about - basic bitters, pale ales and the like which have nothing special, funky or unusual about them. Crowd-pleasers for BBQs, camping, etc. Today's beer is one of these, but I'm blogging it anyways for two reasons: 1) I feel the need for some redemption after my series of disastrous brews, and 2) I'm doing a harvest (wet-hop) ale, using the last of this years cascade harvest.

It was a bad year for the hops - too wet, too cold (the combination of which destroyed my Goldings), and one Cascade plant got decimated by mites. But, despite that I've got ~8oz of dried cascades in the freezer, and close to that sitting on my drying rack after a very wet morning spent picking hops. I'm planning on putting 250 g (over 8 oz) of wet hops into this beer, but even so, I should have about that much left over - after drying giving another 2.5 or so ounces of dried cascades for the freezer.

The one point I want to make before hitting the fold is how I guesstimated the alpha acids in the wet hops. Wet hops are about 6 parts water and 1 part dry-weight. So the 1% alpha acid number used in the recipe is equal to the average alpha acid content of dried Cascade hops (6%) divided by the wet:dry ratio (6X).

Recipe and notes below the fold.

2014 Redeption Harvest Ale

American Pale Ale

Type: All Grain	Date: 09 Sep 2014
Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 l	Boil Time: 60 min
Boil Size: 25.49 l	End of Boil Volume 21.84 l
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 4.25 kg Canadian 2 Row Pale Malt (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 88.8 % 0.45 kg Caramel Malt - 40L (Briess) (40.0 SRM) Grain 2 9.5 % 0.09 kg Black Malt - 2-Row (Briess) (500.0 SRM) Grain 3 1.8 % 16.00 g Warrior [16.00 %] - First Wort Hop 4 36.1 IBUs 50.00 g Wet Cascade [1.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 5 3.5 IBUs 50.00 g Wet Cascade [1.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 2.9 IBUs 1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 7 - 50.00 g Wet Cascade [1.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 2.1 IBUs 50.00 g Wet Cascade [1.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 9 1.2 IBUs 50.00 g Wet Cascade [1.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 10 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg Safale American US-05 Yeast 11 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.052 SG	Est Final Gravity: 1.009 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.7 %	Bitterness: 45.7 IBUs
Est Color: 14.5 SRM
Mash Profile
Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge	Total Grain Weight: 4.79 kg
Sparge Water: 15.92 l	Grain Temperature: 21.0 C
Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C	Tun Temperature: 21.0 C
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE	Mash PH: 5.20
Mash Steps Name Description Step Temperature Step Time Mash In Add 14.62 l of water at 71.1 C 64.4 C 75 min
Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (3.05l, 12.87l) of 75.6 C water
Mash Notes: Simple single infusion mash for use with most modern well modified grains (about 95% of the time).
A US-style PA/IPA made with fresh-picked home-grown cascade "redemption" because this is meant to make up for the infected brews produced lately... Brewing Notes: -Hit mash dead-on; 64.5C. Lost ~1C over 75min -Drained mash; added sparge water at 80C to bring mash upto mash-out temperatures -250 g of wet hops = over half of what I picked. WOW!!!!!! -actual OG = 1.054 -lost ~2L to mass of hops
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