Northeast Pale Ale

My beer preference when it comes to both drinking and brewing, generally leans toward farmhouse, funky, and tart, but even so, I still like to get down on a hoppy pale ale every once in a while. The first really good beer I ever tried was Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It fueled my passion for beer, inspiring me to drink and brew better beer, so I'll love it forever. Sierra Nevada set the bar for a good pale ale, and of course, it's still a good pale ale, but in the craft beer world, tastes and trends are always evolving and changing. These days, the attention of the cool craft beer kids seems to be turned to a different type of hoppy beer - the Northeast pale ale and IPA, made famous by breweries like The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead, Trillium, and Tree House. 

Unlike a lot of the hoppy beers in the past where bitterness was king, the new IPAs and Pale Ales are all about showcasing hop flavor and aroma without ripping off your taste buds with hop resin. The Northeast-style beers, specifically, are all about juicy hop flavor and aroma, usually from citrus-leaning hop varieties, a smooth and silky mouthfeel, and a trademark haze or cloudiness. I decided to try my hand at brewing one of these animals. 

After scouring the beer dark web for information, I put my recipe together. From what I gathered, these are some of the techniques needed to get the Northeast-style down:

•  The bulk of the hopping should happen in the whirlpool and dry hopping stages. Go easy on the boil additions and heavy-handed on the whirlpool/dry hops. 

•  Use an English yeast strain. I opted to go with White Labs Dry English Ale Yeast (WLP007) as it's supposedly the strain used by Trillium (and my local homebrew shop had it on hand). Many other breweries apparently use the Wyeast London Ale III strain. 

•  Add a portion (or possibly all) of the dry hops while fermentation is still under way. This has some effect on the flocculation properties of the yeast, resulting in a hazier beer and may also contribute to the perceived "juiciness" of the beer. 

•  Use a sizable portion of wheat or oats (or something similar) to give a silkier mouthfeel to the beer. 

•  Opinions differ here, but consider getting your Chloride-to-Sulfate ratio closer to 1:1. The increased chloride can help round out the flavors, possibly helping out with the "juicy" factor. 

•  Minimize exposure to oxygen. Ideally, you would transfer the beer via CO2 and purge every vessel with CO2 that the beer goes into. (Out of laziness and lack of equipment, I just racked the beer with my auto-siphon, although I did purge the keg before filling it.)

For my beer, I decided to go with Galaxy hops as the star and Columbus as the bittering and backbone hop. I got some help with the hop addition amounts from a BYO article that contained a Trillium Fort Point clone recipe, although I changed mine up a bit, using Galaxy instead of Citra, increasing the overall amount of dry hops, and splitting the dry hops into two additions. I'm excited to see how how this one turns out.


Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 3.7 gal
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 4.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 36.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Fermentables:
80.5% - 2-Row
12% - Flaked Oats
6% - Cara-Pils
1.5% - Crystal 15L

Hops:
.18 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 13.4% AA) @ 60 minutes - 12.4 IBUs
.56 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 13.4% AA) @ 10 minutes - 14.1 IBUs

1.45 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 13.4% AA) @ Whirlpool (30 minutes)

1 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 13.4% AA) @ Dry Hop - Added 3 days into fermentation
1 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 14.8% AA) @ Dry Hop - Added 3 days into fermentation

3 oz. Galaxy (Pellet, 14.8% AA) @ Dry Hop (4 days) - Added after primary fermentation

Yeast:
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast

Water:
RO filtered water - added 5.5 grams of calcium chloride and 5.5 grams of gypsum to the strike water. Aiming for around 140ppm sulfate and 125ppm chloride.

Mash:
Single-infusion @ 153 degrees

Notes:
Brewed on 5/1/16.

65 min mash @153 degrees. Mash pH of 5.47.

After boil, cooled to around 180 degrees, then pitched in whirlpool hops and steeped for 30 minutes.

Cool wort to around 70 degrees and pitched WLP007 Pure Pitch (no starter). Cooled to 65 once fermentation kicked off.

5/4/16 - 10:30pm - added 1oz of Columbus and 1oz of Mosaic hops directly to fermenter.

5/8/16 - Transferred to 12L Spiedel fermenter. Appearance is cloudy. Aroma is great. Taste is good but still a bit on the harsh after only a week in the fermenter. SG is at 1.013. Added 3oz of Galaxy dry hops in a muslin bag.

5/12/16 - Removed dry hop bag and moved fermenter into fridge to crash cool.

5/15/16 - Kegged beer. Targeting carbonation level around 2.6 volumes.

Read More

Growing Hops in Containers

Growing my own hops is something I've been wanting to tackle for a while. Unfortunately, living in the city and renting, rather owning my house, has been an obstacle. I figured landlords and gardeners at apartment and condominium complexes probably aren't super fond of hop vines taking over their landscaping beds, so I haven't been able to try it out in the past. My wife and I finally live in a place that has a decent-sized porch, so I wondered if growing those sticky, little green beauties in pots might be a possibility. I did a little research and found some really helpful info (mostly from this great BYO article by Chris Colby), and it turns out it can be done. Yessss.

Hop plants have pretty serious root systems that need a lot of space to grow and take hold, so planting in the ground is the ideal situation, but it seems that growing in containers can work if you follow some guidelines. First off, you need large pots to allow the roots to grow. I found some large 20-inch pots from Home Depot that will hopefully do the trick. It's also important that the pots have drainage holes so the soil is allowed to dry out between waterings. Otherwise, the roots will get too soggy and rot over time. 

To give the hops bines some space to grow, I decided to put two 6-foot stakes into each pot and run twine around the stakes in a zig-zag sort of pattern. As the hop bines emerge, I will attempt to train them to run along the twine. I went this route so that I can grow longer bines than if I grew them directly vertical, hopefully resulting in more hop cones. As the plants emerge, I will probably run a second string on each set of stakes, making an 'X' pattern all the way up. 

For the hop varieties, I decided to try Cascade and Centennial as they are supposed to be two of the easier varieties to grow. They also are supposed to do well in almost any climate. There are some other varieties I would have preferred to try instead, but since this is my first time growing hops and I'm growing in containers, I figured I have enough going against me, so I'm taking the easy route (hopefully). I ordered my hop rhizomes through MoreBeer and planted one in each pot, a few inches below the surface of the soil. They were planted on April 9th. I followed the advice in the article to keep the soil most until the first sprouts appeared. 

April 25th update:

I'm proud to say that just about 2 weeks after planting the rhizomes, these little fellas popped up to say hello. Sweet - it actually worked! Following the advice of the BYO article, I hit them with some liquid fertilizer diluted to one-quarter strength to help them along. I would prefer to grow them 100% organically without fertilizer, but from what I've read, fertilizer is pretty much a necessity when it comes to growing in containers. I'm planning to feed them with fertilizer about once a month or as needed. 

May 8th update:

Things are coming along nicely. There are multiple bines growing from each pot and the leaves are looking nice and green. Some type of insect seems to feeding on the leaves as there are small holes in a lot of them. I'm not too concerned right now, but it if gets worse, I will see what options are out there for organic insecticides. The Cascade plant is definitely growing faster than the Centennial, so we'll see if that continues. 

Read More