Five Grain Pale Ale

brewing

As a follow up to our previous attempt at a richer plae ale, we decided to revisit it and make some improvements. In a recent collaboration brew with Henry Bealby’s Cat Asylum brewery, we brewed an X ale with a high proportion of maize which gave quite a nice dry finish to what was otherwise essentially a full on brown ale, this effect we tried to make use of here. Carapils was also decreased to 5% in line with maltsters recommendations and a higher proportion of vienna malt used in place of 2-row. Slovenian noble hops were used in place of our previous hopping regimen.

Grain Bill

  • 3kg Pilsner
  • 3kg Vienna *increased in place of 2-row as has enough enzymatic power to be a base malt (like in our baltic porter; Cromarty’s Arctic Swell too)
  • 1kg Munich
  • 1kg Wheat Malt
  • 0.5kg Carapils (Adds no flavour or colour, producer recommends up to 5% for head retention and aroma [http://brewingwithbriess.com/Products/Carapils.htm]) *decreased on producer recommendation
  • 0.5kg Rye
  • 0.5kg Oat Malt
  • 0.5kg Maize

Mash temp; aimed for 64.5C ended up with 63C.

Liquor to Grist: 2.5 : 1 (Approx.)

Water Chemistry Modification:

At mash in we added several compounds to adjust the water profile to one kinder to lighter malty ales, we used the base chemistry of nearby beer bar The Hanging Bat as an approximate for our own.

  • 2g NaCl
  • 8g MgSO4
  • 12g CaCl

Result (approximate) in mg/l:

  • Ca+2; 52.6
  • Mg+2; 11.7
  • Na+; 10.7
  • Cl-; 101.7
  • SO4-2; 56.4
  • HCO; 27.376

Boil

Boiled for 90 minutes, with the following fun additions:

  • 60min: 30g Styrian Wolf (11.7AA)
  • 30min: 10g Cardinal (7.99AA)
  • 30min: 10g Styrian Bobek (6.72AA)
  • 10min: 20g Cardinal (7.99AA)
  • 10min: 20g Styrian Bobek (6.72AA)
  • 1min/end: 70g Styrian Wolf (11.7AA)
  • 1min/end: 70g Cardinal (7.99AA)
  • 1min/end: 70g Styrian Bobek (6.72AA)

Post-Boil

We split the batch 4 ways into 10l batches so as to test out the results of 4 different yeasts.

Yeast

O.G: 1.043

  • Windsor
  • London ESB, FG: 1.011, ABV 4.2%
  • DRY-97 (american west-coast)
  • Yeast Bay Brussels Brett Blend, FG: 1.003, ABV 5.25%

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Five Grain Pale Ale by Edinburgh Brewing Cooperative is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.