Pale ale help

Beer Recipe Design
1

Im just starting all-grain brewing, and im looking for a really good session pale ale. A fruity note to it would be nice something good for the spring season. I would love to hear all your great recipes.

Thanks

2

Keep it simple to start would be my advice. Some times I have made the grain bill overly complex and regretted it. I would go with 95-100% Pale Ale malt with maybe just a few small additions of specialty (maybe a tich of Caramel 60). A little biscuit or victory maybe, but remember a little goes a long way.

There are many different substyles of PA so the one you are shooting for would tell you which yeast / hops to use and how much (hops).

You should definately be able to get a fruity character from a good british PA yeast, but I’ll leave it to some of the other yeast experts to give you a recomendation. I have used Wyeast’s London ESB with decent results.

3

I threw a recipe together. I would like to Dry hop in secondary but I don’t know what hops to use. Any advise or tweaks are welcome. I was shooting for something fruity.

8lbs 8 oz pale malt 2row us
12oz biscuit malt
8 oz crystal

1oz cascade 60min
.5oz citra 20 min
.5oz amarillo 5min

4

I like to dryhop with the same hops used late in the boil. For your “crystal” something in the 15L - 37L (carastan) would be good.

5

[quote=“jadedude289”]I threw a recipe together. I would like to Dry hop in secondary but I don’t know what hops to use. Any advise or tweaks are welcome. I was shooting for something fruity.

8lbs 8 oz pale malt 2row us
12oz biscuit malt
8 oz crystal

1oz cascade 60min
.5oz citra 20 min
.5oz amarillo 5min[/quote]
.5oz amarillo dry hoped

6

Your ingredients suggest you are going more for an American style PA than British. So what you have down looks fairly solid. I might switch the numbers on the biscuit (to 8oz) and crystal(to 12oz) though. But again that is just me.

If you are looking for some nice golden caramel color I might go with Caramel 60 - otherwise the carastan mentioned above (25-30) works great.

My personal preference tends toward the British Ale style

Base Malt = Marris Otter or Golden Promise

Hops = EK Goldings / Fuggles

But generally I tend to go for European Hops Character over North American and that is just personal preference.

7

I’d drink your beer. The one question I have is your Amarillo. Not really the use of it, because that is perfect, but rather your access to it. They are tough to get so check availability before setting your heart on them.