Mountain Pale Ale

Many have asked about our home-brew experience, so I decided to blog a short photo-essay on the process.  I make about two batches a year, for our friends & family gatherings.  As far as food crafts go, home-brewing is "easy" once you have all the basic tools and plenty of confidence in how to accomplish each step in your own kitchen.  You'll need to know a lot about sanitation, too, in order to achieve consistent results.   I suggest you consult our friends at THE BEVERAGE PEOPLE up in Santa Rosa, for some great kits and resources to get you started..  They also sell stuff for wine and cheese making as well.

Husband Michael and his brother, Tom, introduced me to home-brewing about 22 years ago with the Christmas gift of a brew-your-own-beer-in-a-plastic-bag-kit.  Easy enough, but produced mixed results since the bag didn't really hold in all the carbonation you want for a nice ale.  Several years of tasting, testing and learning the ropes with a local brew-club has enabled me to turn out a predictable and very tasty pale ale.

MOUNTAIN PALE ALE

Make a "Mini-Mash" with a pound of roasted malted barley grain (Caramel Malt) steeped in 1.5 quarts of hot water.  Strain to yield the sweet liquid which will be boiled up into "wort". 
The spent grain can be fed to the chickens.

Boil 2 gallons water with dry malt extract powder and the liquid strained from the mini-mash

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Hop Pellets of the Cascade variety are added during the 60-minute boil for bittering flavor

More hops are added for flavor and aroma during the last 5 minutes of the boil

The cooled "wort" is poured into a fermenting pail and  clean cold water is added to bring volume to 5 gallons.  When the wort is about 90'F, brewing yeast is added, the lid affixed with an airlock, and fermentation begins. Within a week or so, the finished beer is siphoned off ("racked') and either bottled or kegged.  If bottled, it must be bottle conditioned for several weeks to develop the carbonation.  If kegged, the carbonation can be applied and the beer is ready to enjoy as soon as it gets cold enough!

INGREDIENTS for Our
MOUNTAIN PALE ALE


5 # Briess Light Dry Malt Extract
1# Crystal Malt (40L) in 1.5 qt. water for mini-mash
1 oz. Cascade Hops (5 IBU) for 60-min. boil
1 oz. Cascade Hops for Finishing
(Other hop varieties may be used to a calculated target of 20 IBU)
1 pkt. Nottingham Brewing Yeast, rehydrated into a starter

Makes 5 gallons


Happy Octoberfest!