So... What is it?
The Pale Ale is one of the most common and popular beer varieties on the planet! typically a golden sometimes amber coloured ale with low to moderate bitterness, a balanced malt profile and hop forward flavours and aromas. Typically sitting between 4.2%-5.5% ABV its a very drinkable and sessionable style of beer.
What's ours like?
This particular recipe is designed to be a really quick and easy brewday for people who have never brewed before or have only just gotten into home brewing. It allows you to combine all the ease of extract brewing, with an element of all grain, requiring minimal start up costs, equipment and ingredients, but providing you with the ability to really make this recipe your own and make some awesome homebrew pale ale! Coming in at 4.7% it sits in the middle of the ABV scale for the style. On the hops side we use Galaxy for a fresh, tropical, citrusy, passionfruit flavour profile, balanced by a light malt base for easy sessionable drinking.
Batch Size & Stats
- 24L (6.3 gal)
- Starting gravity – 1.040
- Final gravity 1.004
- ABV – 4.7%
What ingredients?
Equipment required
- large cooking pot (anything between 4-20L (1-5 gal) will work)
- hydrometer
- measuring cylinder
- Stellarsan
- mixing spoon
- 2 hop socks or grain bags
- fermenter (a regular food safe sealable bucket will do)
- airlock
- bucket tap (optional but very useful)
- about 24 750ml (25 oz) bottles OR 44 500ml (17 oz) bottles
- PET bottles & resealable flip top bottles are both good options
Water
- 30L (7.9 gal) for a 66°C (151°F) mash (you can use our strike water calculator to find your ideal strike temp)
Malts:
- Pale ale extract Kit – (we used Coopers pale ale, but any pale ale extract will work!)
- Medium Crystal Malt – 200g (7 oz) - 30 mins soak at 70°C (158°F)
- dextrose OR dried malt extract (id recommend DME over dextrose) - 1kg (2.2 lbs)
Hops & whirlfloc tablets
Galaxy
- 40g (1.4 oz) - 20 minutes soak at 70°C (158°F)
- 20g (0.7 oz) - dry hop 2 days before bottling (Optional!)
Yeast options & bottling sugar
- Yeast packet from the extract kit (what we did!) - Ferment at 18°C / room temp (64.4°F)
- 11g US-05 – ferment at 19°C (66°F)
- 11g S-04 – ferment at 18°C (64.4°F)
- some regular table sugar OR carbonation drops for carbonating your finished beer
Step by step process
Before starting!
Wash all your pots, buckets, bottles and anything that will come into contact with your beer with a solution of stellarsan (easy to use and you dont have to rinse) or dishwashing detergent (just make sure you thoroughly rinse off if using detergent), we want yeast to grow not bacteria!
Step 1 – Milling
- Mill grains to medium crush (set mill rollers to a gap of approx. 1.00mm / 0.039 inches)
- Just keep in mind roller gap settings are not universal so as you brew more batches you will find the ideal crush size for your setup
- Alternatively if you don’t have a grain mill you can order your grains crushed from most homebrew stores, both online and in person
Step 2 – Mashing
- pour 200g (7 oz) of crushed Medium Crystal Malt into the hop sock / grain bag
- in a pot measure out a portion of your 22L (5.8 gal) of water - anywhere between 3-10L (0.8-2.6 gal) will work fine (just note its easier to keep more liquid at a stable temperature than less liquid)
- heat up your pot of water to about 70°C (158°F), drop your grain bag into the pot and start your stop watch for 30 minutes
- check the temperature of your pot every now and then and turn the heat back on if needed to keep it around 70°C (158°F) - just make sure when your heat is on the grain bag doesnt sit at the bottom of the pot or it will burn! so keep stirring and stop the bag from touching the bottom of the pot while the heat is on!
Step 4 – Hop Additions
- In your other hop sock / grain bag pour in 20g (0.52 oz) of Galaxy hops
- when your stop watch is at 10 minutes drop your hops into the pot, they will soak in there with the grains for the remaining 20 minutes
- once soaking has gone for 30 minutes total remove both the hops and grains and turn off your heat source
Step 5 – Making the wort
Wort is the sugary syrup made from grain sugars and water which will be fermented into beer! to make your wort for this recipe follow the below
- open your extract kit and scoop/pour out all the syrup into your pot of hot water (remember to take both the grain and hop bags out first!) and stir the mixture until the syrup is fully dissolved
- it helps to pour some hot water in the tin to get some extra syrup out!
Step 6 – Cooling / topping up the water
- now pour both your wort and the remainder of your unused water into your fermenter to bring it up to a total of about 24L (6.3 gal)
- Dont fill your fermenter right to the top! beer foams up when it ferments so make sure you use a fermenter big enough to leave 30% head room! (for this batch a 30L (7.9 gal) fermenter will do)
- now take a gravity reading with your hydrometer by gently dropping it into your wort and giving it a spin, record this number, this is your Original gravity and it is how we will determine the final ABV (alcohol percentage) of your beer!
- just note hydrometers are calibrated to work at 20°C so if your wort was hotter or colder than this when you take the reading use our correction calculator
Step 7 – Yeast Pitching
- check the temperature of your wort in your fermenter, once it has reach about 18-21°C (64-70°F) pour your packet of yeast into the fermenter
- now seal your fermenter and remember to pour a little bit of water into your airlock to make it air tight
Step 8 – Fermentation & dry hopping
- Allow yeast to ferment over the next two weeks (aprox)
- if you would like you can add some more hops into the fermenter around day 7, we added 20g, just open your fermenter, throw your hops straight in and close your fermenter
- after about 7-10 days take a small sample of beer from your fermenter into a measuring cylinder and drop in your hydromter (give it a spin to bubbles dont push it up and ruin the reading)
- record this reading, and take the same measurement the next day, when the reading is the same 3 days in a row fermentation has finished!
Step 9 – Bottling
- It's time to bottle your beer! add about 5-7 grams (0.17 - 0.24 oz) of priming sugar or 1 carbonation drop to your bottles to carbonate your beer if you are using 330-375ml (11 - 12.6 oz) bottles, double this for 750ml (25 oz) bottles
- now allow the residual amounts of yeast to ferment that little sugar addition over the next 2 weeks inside the bottle to carbonate your beer. After that its steady to drink!
