Belgian Pale Ale

Yesterday we brewed 10 gallons of our Belgian Pale Ale. A friend from school is just starting to get into brewing beer, so we invited him to come see all grain and help brew a batch of beer. That way, he can see what we do, and then get 2-cases of beer out of it.

This time, we went back to the original recipe Elise wrote in 2009. The last batch we split the crystal malts into a combination of 60 and 10, instead of just crystal 60. Elise's recipe also calls for Amarillo and Cascade hops, whereas the last one used Saaz, a European hop. We're still using the same yeast, the Westmalle strain, so it will be interesting to see how different this new one is from the previous batch.

Side Notes: the steam beer is on tap and is carbonating. It's probably 85-90% there, and should be fully carbonated by the middle of next week. We will be kegging the brown ale today and will be dry hopping in the keg. We'll keep the keg at room temp for a week for the hop flavors to get into the beer, and then we'll put it into the fridge. Because the fridge is so cold, the hop flavors will last a lot longer in the beer, but they'll also take a bit longer to peak, which is why we are giving the hops a week at room temp. In the 7-10 days we'll also keg (and dry hop in the keg) the Double Pale ale. Looking forward to trying both of those beers on tap!