Summer Ale

7/13/2010

Brewer's Best Summer Ale

Start date: 7/4/2010                        keg date:                             drink date:

BG: 1.052             FG: 1.018                             ABV:  4.46%

Hop Bittering units: 18-20

Ingredients

3.3 lbs Pilsen LME

1 lb wheat DME

1 lb pilsen DME

8 oz Carapils grains

1 spice pack- dried orange and lemon peel

.5 oz bittering hops

.25 oz flavoring hops

.25 oz aroma hops

1 pack of yeast

Process

·         boil 2.5 gallons water

·         Steep grains for 20 minutes

·         Add malt to boil

·         add bittering hops and boil some more

·         add flavoring hops and spice pack

·         terminate boil and add aroma hops

·         transfer to fermenter

·         ferment for about a week, take hydrometer reading when fermenting is done

·         keg it

Comments

This was a standard boil process again.  The new wrinkle was the spice pack.  It smelled delicious.  It was dried chips of orange and lemon peel.  We discussed adding real fruit to the boil, but we'll save that for when we create our own brew from scratch.  We don't even know if adding fresh fruit would work.  Research time!  After we transferred to the fermenting bucket we let it cool in the fridge overnight because it wasn't cooling down to 70 degrees quick enough.  Due to our brews being kind of weak so far we didn't add as much water to the bucket this time.  It's only a 4 gallon batch, but hopefully it'll be a little stronger.  Our specific gravity was above the listed range and it ended up being 4.46% ABV, which should be good.  After about a week we kegged it.  It is in the big fridge now waiting for us to consume it.  We obviously want to crack it open before the summer ends.  

This Summer Ale was another average homebrew.  It was definitely drinkable and refreshing, but not like a Sam Adams Summer Ale.  This average-ness is getting kind of frustrating.