HomebrewandBeer.com forum

Hi all

I'm a recent member on this forum and have been doing some reading but this is my first post.

I've just recently started AG brewing ... two brews under my belt now - a wheat beer and just got a Newcastle Brown Ale clone ticking over in the fermenter as I type - can't wait for that one.

I've sampled a few Vale Ale's recently and I love them...they're a local brewer here in SA down in the McLaren Vale wine region. It's got a nice bit of citrusy hop to it, but not too full on like some of those Little Creatures type styles...they're a bit floral and powerful for me.

The McLaren Vale Beer company website lists the following:

Malt:
Pale - sweet malty flavour
Wheat - Mouth feel and ‘palate fullness’
Crystal - Caramalised flavour and imparts golden colour.

Hops:
Super Alpha - soft bitterness
Amarillo - passionfruit grapefruit
Cascade - spicy, citrusy.

I'm just wondering if any of you more experienced brewers might be able to shed some light on percentages of each malt and amount of hops to use. Also I don't think i will be able to get Super Alpha hops ... any suggestions for substitutes?

Thanks in advance..

Cheers

Molly

Sounds very similar to my house golden ale. I bitter with Super Alpha but the flavour/aroma additions tend to change between brews for a bit of variety. If you want it a bit lighter on the hops than something like a LCPA then maybe go for something like:

4 kg Pale
500g Wheat
250g Crystal

10-15g Super Alpha @ 60 minutes
15g Amarillo @ 20 minutes
20g Cascade @ 10 minutes

As for the Super Alpha, it can be subbed with just about any high-alpha hop, or even a larger amount of something like Amarillo or POR, I think would go okay.

Never had Vale Ale before, but from the sounds of things, this should come close. Even if it doesn't, it'd still make a lovely beer on the lower-IBU scale for an APA.

Thanks bullfrog .. that gives me a start.

What yeast do you use when you brew that one?

BTW Vale Ale has only been around for a few years I think but well worth a try...they're getting it out there a bit more now I think.

Cheers

Molly

For an APA, I generally go for a pretty neutral yeast. US-05 is great because it's easy to handle (dry yeast) and it's readily available just about everywhere.

By the way, the above hop schedule is calculated with Cascade of around 6-7% AA, which is toward the higher end for Cascade, and Amarillo of around 8.5% which is pretty standard. If your hops have lower AA% than those, then consider upping the quantities a touch to compensate.

Oh and, what has your brewhouse efficiency been like over your last couple of brews? If it's been ridiculously high or ridiculously low then you may be wanting to tweak the grain bill a touch, too. What were the grain bills and respective OG's for your last AG batches?

Okay thanks for that.

Well my first AG wheat beer was a bit of a stuff up! I got flustered when I flooded my kitchen floor with a few litres of my precious wort after leaving the valve open .. oops! Lucky I don't have a Mrs anymore or she would have gone ape droppings!

Anyway I forgot to sparge, so my efficiency would have been right down .. didn't even bother recording gravities - but surprisingly the beer was still bloody beautiful. I only just did my second AG yesterday. Did a 24L brew, scaled up a recipe in Beersmith and all seemed to go extremely well. Total grain bill was about 5.4kg ....Target OG was 1.041 .. mine was more like 1.045. Then when I went to take a final reading I cracked my hydrometer!! Back to the brew shop I guess. I was happy with the mash though .. did a 90 min mash in my converted Rubbermaid 38L cooler, got the strike temp bang on and it dropped less than 1 degree over the 90 mins.. then did two batch sparges, both with about 8L of water, then boiled for 90 mins .... so I'm reasonably confident that it all went pretty well. But I'll prob drop the details into Beersmith again and tweak it if need be .. I love that software, it does make some parts of my brew day very easy.

I think I need to invest in a decent sized brew pot and a plate chiller very soon just to make things a bit easier on brew days. Too much manual handling at the moment and too long chilling the wort down. Lucky the brews work out cheap, cos all this equipment is starting to add up, but it's too much fun to stop!

Molly

Hi Molly,

Vale Ale is bottle-conditioned, so you might like to try culturing a yeast from a bottle or two of it.

Although, as you're possibly aware, some breweries filter or pasteurise their beer after primary fermentation then use a different yeast for the secondary fermentation in the bottle. In this case, culturing yeast from the bottle would probably not give you the intended results, and would possibly give undesirable results.

An email to the brewery might clear that up for you. Many small breweries are very happy to help homebrewers with information.

Cheers,

Oliver

Thanks Oliver I'll check that out

Cheers

Molly

Recipe looks good to me

Thanks for that, thats a powder type yeast isn't it? Not the Wyeast liquid type right?

I'll probably give bullfrogs recipe a go this week and see how it goes.

Molly,

Yes, US05 is a dried yeast, not liquid.

Oliver

Molly,
The afore mentioned, Safale US-05 is an American Ale Yeast. (pink pack)
They do an English Ale yeast too, S-04 (blue pack)
Many a debate has been had as to which is better, personally I prefer the S-04, I find it flocs out much better & is very neutral & clean in flavour.
I suggest that at some stage you give this one a try also!

Cheers, Mick.

Thanks Oliver and Mick

I'll give that a try, I reckon I've used it before when I used to do extract brews instead of the stuff under the lid. I've been using Wyeast liquids recently, but I'll give it another go with that one.

Cheers

Molly

If you prefer to stick with the liquid yeasts wy1056 is said to be the same strain as US05.