subject: How to Brew A Pale Ale [print this page] How to Brew A Pale Ale How to Brew A Pale Ale
What is a Pale Ale?
The beer typePale Ale comes in two traditional variations. You have the English Pale Ale and the American Pale. It is the origin of the ingredients that makes it either English or American. If you use English malts and hops, you are brewing an English Pale Ale, and if you are using American malts and hops, you are brewing an American Pale Ale. The beer ischaracterized by its use of pale ale and caramel malts, that gives the beer its distinctive golden-yellow to copper color and malty taste, with a caramel notes. The hops used for brewing Pale Ale gives the beer a medium bitternes and hops taste.
The Target Values For A Pale Ale
When you are brewing a Pale Ale, you must be within the values in the style guide you see below. These are your target values when you are designing a recipe.
OG:1.044 - 1.056
FG:1.008 - 1.016
Color (EBC):11 - 30
Bitterness (IBU):20 - 40
Alcohol (Vol%):4.4 - 5.3
Make sure you have all the beer brewing equipment ready before you start to brew.
A Pale Ale Recipe To Begin With
I have made a simple Pale Ale recipe for you. The amount of ingredients in the recipe is for one liter of water. This means, that if you have 20 liters of water in your kettle, then you must multiply with 20. The Ingredients are as follows;
Pale Malt (7 EBC): 160 grams/liter
Cara Crystal Malt (120 EBC): 40 grams/liter
Northdown hops (8.4 Alpha%): 1 gram/liter
Fuggle hops (4.0 Alpha%): 1 gram/liter
Yeast: You can pick any yeast suitable for ale
The brewing process is as follows;
Heat the water to 68C and add all the malt
Stir and maintain the temperature at68C for 60 minutes
Raise the temperature to 73C and keep it at73C for 30 minutes
Seperate the mash from the wort with your strainer
Sparge the mash with73C water untill you have the equivalent volume of wort in the kettle as you had water to begin with (1 liter in this case)
Raise the temperature to 100C - boiling
The total boiling time is 60 minutes from you add the first wort to you begin cooling the wort
First add 1 gram/liter Northdown for 60minutes total boil time
Then add 0.8 gram/liter Fuggle for 30 minutes total boil time
Then add 0.2 gram/liter Fuggle for 15 minutes total boil time
After 60 minutes of hopping the beer, start chilling the wort
When the wort is reaches fermentation temperature, pour it to the sanitized fermenter bucket
Add the yeast and keep the fermenter bucket at fermentation temperature
When the fermentation has stopped, transfer the beer to a sanitized fermenter bucket for secondary fermentation
Add sugar to carbonate the beer to get the desired CO2 pressure and then bottle the beer
These ingredients, and this process of brewing Pale Ale, gives you these values;
OG: 1050
FG: 1012
Color (EBC): 27
Bitterness (IBU): 30
Alcohol (Vol%): 5.0
As you can see, these values fits perfectly within the range of the target values for brewing aPale Ale.
