Birallee Beer & Brewing: Pacific Pale Ale

Tuesday 18 June 2024

Pacific Pale Ale - All Grain Recipe

Foreword

We've produced a couple of beers that haven't turned out recently - more specifically, they are way too bitter and really lacking any hop punch or aroma. We're thinking the culprit here may be excessive sulfate levels in our water profile (using the Brewfather Hoppy water profile), so for our next batch we're going to make a fairly simple "Pacific Ale" recipe - aptly named as a nod to the original Stone & Wood Pacific Ale that features galaxy hops and wheat malt.

Simplicity is the name of the game here, so we've got a basic malt bill consisting of mostly pilsner malt, with a bit of malted wheat thrown in as well. We originally planned to use Galaxy hops, but as they were out of stock from our local homebrew shop, we've substituted Simcoe instead, along with Mosaic hops for some fruit forward and citrusy hop flavours and aroma, and some leftover Nelson Sauvin in the dry hop. We buy hops in 100g packs, so our Simcoe and Mosaic calculations use whatever is leftover from the boil hops in the dry hop, hence the seemingly random values here.

Importantly, to address the suspected water chemistry problem (ie. sulfate level), we've grabbed the recommended profile from award-winning Australian brewery, Black Hops - as specified in their water chemistry blog post on their website. They've kindly shared the water profile they use for their Pale Ale, so we figured we'd give it a go to see how it works for us.

This profile has 150ppm of sulfate - significantly less than the 270+ppm rate that the Brewfather Hoppy profile had us using. With 50ppm of chloride, this gives us a 3:1 sulfate:chloride ratio that should still present a bit of bitterness, without being too overpowering and still letting hop flavour and aroma shine through.

Vitals

Batch Volume: 22L
Boil Time: 30 minutes
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%

Original Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 1.011
IBU (Tinseth): 29
BU/GU: 0.60
Colour: 6.5 EBC
Expected ABV: 4.9%

Mash

Temperature: 65°C - 60 minutes
Mash Out: 75°C - 10 minutes

Fermentables

4.3kg - Gladfield Pilsner Malt
0.4kg - Gladfield Wheat Malt

Hops

30 mins - Mosaic - 11g - 12 IBU
10 mins - Mosaic - 10g - 6 IBU
10 mins - Simcoe - 10g - 6 IBU

Hopstand 15 mins @ 80°C - Simcoe - 20g - 3 IBU)
Hopstand 15 mins @ 80°C - Mosaic - 15g - 2 IBU)

Dry Hop - Simcoe - 70g - 3 Days
Dry Hop - Mosaic - 64g - 3 Days
Dry Hop - Nelson Sauvin - 18g - 3 Days