Partial Mash America Pale Ale

Today I thought I would go over a recipe for an American Pale Ale. The process for making this brew is called partial mash as the malts that I will used were already created in extract form as either a powder or a syrup. A few pounds of the specialty grains were steeped in the hot wort to add additional flavor and other properties that add character and body to the beer.

To start, I heated up 2 gallons of water. Depending on the type of beer you wish to make, and the hardness or softness of your tap water, you may need to treat your water or default to using bottled water. Since this is a topic that I could write an entire post about, let’s just say I used spring water for this recipe. After reaching a temperature of 155⁰ F, I soaked the grains which include crushed Light Crystal, Aromatic and Cara Pils malt in a muslin bag for 30 minutes.

After removing the bag, I then added my malt extract making sure to continuously stir to avoid scorching the malt.

Once completely dissolved, I added my bittering hops. As this in an APA, I used a few ounces of Cascade hops. (Since there are several types of hops that have been used for thousands of years, each with a different taste and aroma profile, I will be devoting a post at a later date to discussion of the different types). After adding the hops, I raised the temperature of the wort and boiled for 60 minutes. During this time I also add additional hops for flavor at 50 minutes into the boil along with Irish moss to aid in clarification.

Once my boil was completed, I used a wort chiller to cool the wort down to a temperature between 70⁰ F and 75⁰ F. To cool it down even more, I add 3 more gallons of water that I refrigerated an hour before I started brewing. With the wort now well chilled, I transfer it to my fermentor and add the yeast. I chose a liquid American Ale yeast strain from Wyeast Labs and dry hopped a few more ounces of Cascade before closing the fermentor and installing the airlock. After the airlock bubbles slowed to 2-3 minutes apart, ( About 13 days) I transferred it to a 5 gallon Cornelius keg pressurized to 30 PSI for 24 hours then lowered to approx 12 PSI for an additional 5 days.