2019 Fresh hop pale ale recipe

Growing hops at home has lost a lot of its allure in homebrewing for various reasons. Likely the biggest reason is the en vogue hops are not available as rhizomes to homebrewers. Nobody is desperate to churn out another cascade pale ale and if you wanted to it is cheap and easy to find a pound of well stored cascades. Homegrown hops are a long way from the zenith of that aspect of the hobby during the hop shortage in 2008 and might not revisit that popularity absent a radical change in hop availability or popular beer styles.

As somebody who enjoys homebrewing as much as I do, naturally I tried my hand at growing hops early in my brewing. I tried with little success to grow hops in Texas where the hops were plagued year after year with heat, high humidity, locusts, moths, spider mites and aphids. Two of my four hop plants survived the move last year to Denver and successfully rooted. The durable cascade survived with no problem and the Mt. Hood shook off its early struggle and showed healthy growth after replanting. I replaced the nugget plant that died in the move with chinook and replaced the deceased sterling with a new sterling. Despite a rough early growing season this year I got growth on all plants and hops on all but the new sterling.

Making a case for homebrewing fresh hopped beer

When I wrote an initial draft of this post I remarked how fresh hopped beers had dried up in the face of hazy beers after a push to make them popular outside of their natural home in the Pacific Northwest. After I brewed this beer I saw people everywhere posting about fresh hopped beers with encouraging frequency. Perhaps with all the acreage of citra and other popular hops there are enough to sell fresh and renew interest in this technique for hoppy beer. The Pacific Northwest always keeps the style alive with fresh hop festivals and tappings but they are always more difficult to find outside of that region. That gives homebrewers who can grow hops a great opportunity to make these beers available to themselves.

As homebrewers we do not have to contain our brewing to what is commercially popular or viable. We can buy a $5 rhizome and create a wet hopped beer or two. We can brew delicious beers outside the boundaries of the craft beer market. We can be educators as well as educated. We are not even limited in brewing wet hopped west coast-style IPAs or pale ales. You could brew a hazy wet hopped beer. You could brew a wet hopped triple IPA, amber ale, American stout or pilsner. As homebrewers we are free to invent and have fun and not care if anybody else likes our beers. So let's brew one of them. 

Designing a wet hopped pale ale

In my limited experience reviewing fresh hopped IPA and pale ale recipes I do not find the recipes differ much from their more common counterparts aside from adjusting the volumes of hops--typically adding five ounces per gallon of fresh hops. For this pale ale recipe my goal is to produce a beer that has a good mix of hop and malt character without suffering too much sweetness or body that plagues a lot of west coast pale ales (at least historically). I want the water profile to reinforce and draw out the bitterness to accentuate the bittersweet attribute of a well-hopped beer. The hops should add a commanding presence but not overwhelm the malt character entirely.

Malt

In the early 2010s a lot of pale ale and IPA recipes began incorporating pilsner malt to give the beer more crispness as dryness over the crystal malt-ladden hoppy beers of years past. I find those pale ales and IPAs to be my preference, at least for their west coast variants, and I will carry that over here by using local Root Shoot pilsner malt as the entire base malt. Their pilsner malt is a little darker and heavier than the larger producers which gets close to my target although maybe a touch too close to a golden ale. I am going to round out the pilsner malt with a mix of Root Shoot vienna malt, Gambrinus honey malt and Simpsons medium crystal. 

Hops

My preference for hopping beers tends to lean towards a bittering addition plus a big whirlpool addition with nothing in between and I will follow suit here as well. While I am not completely opposed to late boil additions I want to avoid extracting too much chlorophyll at boil temperatures so I will leave flavor and aroma additions for after the boil ends. Keeping the hop schedule simple I also left out any dry hopping. I know dry hopping is an expected part of brewing a pale ale but in my limited experience brewing pale ales I find a big whirlpool addition carries over enough hop character to avoid needing the added step (and oxidation) of dry hopping.

The wet hop contribution comes in the contribution of chinook, cascade and mount hood. Truly a classic American pale ale combination right out of 1998 which makes it old enough to order itself at a bar. I left the percentage of each variety up to what grew on the bines which ended up at 3.75oz Chinook, 1.5oz Cascade and 1.5oz Mt. Hood. All these wet hops went into the whirlpool. Following the usual 5:1 wet:dry hop ratio I was low on hops and made up for it by supplanting two ounces of dried Cascades.

Everything else

Given the enormous volume of wet hops required I scaled up this 3.25 gallon recipe for my 3 gallon kegs up to 4 gallons to account for lost volume with the hops. Wet hops should not absorb liquid the way dry hops do but I expect them to absorb some liquid and carry some away on their surfaces. If I end up with too much beer for a keg I guess I will just have to find a way to live with myself (like pitching brett and aging it). 

While on the subject of liquid, the water profile is an important part of this beer. The water profile should accentuate the bitterness and draw out the hop flavor but not push the bitterness into harshness. Hoppy beers are at their best when the hop flavor evolves across the taste and continues to linger in the aftertaste rather than pound everything into the initial taste (talking about you, hazy IPA). In a pale ale moderate chloride with moderately high sulfate seems to be the right path for that character without sacrificing malt character to too much bitterness or dryness. 

Last, fermentation will be carried out with my good friend London Ale III. While not a great choice for west coast hoppy beers I think it performs great for balancing malt and hops even in a west coast style--especially in a pale ale--when not required to work under the conditions of a hazy beer. It will drop clear with a little cold crashing and leaves behind just enough of its own flavor to integrate hops and malt which I find helps distinguish a west coast pale ale from west coast IPA. 

Wet hop pale ale recipe

Details
Batch Size: 4 gallons
Est. ABV: 5.0%
Est. IBU: 37
Est. OG: 1.050
Est. FG: 1.012
Est. SRM: 8
Expected Efficiency: 72%
Grain Bill	Pounds		Ounces		SRM		Pct. Grist
Pils malt	6		4		2		83.20%
Simpsons medium crystal	0		6		50		5.10%
Vienna malt	0		8		4		6.70%
Honey malt	0		6		25		5.10%
Water Profile	ppm
Bru'n Water Pale Ale
PH: 5.5
Calcium	140
Magnesium	18
Sodium	25
Sulfate	299
Chloride	56
Bicarbonate	109
Water Additions					Mash		Sparge
Gypsum					3.6g		4.6g
Epsom Salt					1.6g		2.1g
Canning Salt
Baking Soda					0.8g
Calcium Chloride					1g		1.3g
Chalk					0.3g
Pickling Lime
Lactic Acid
Mash Schedule	Step Temp.				Step Time
Single Infusion Batch Sparge
Mash volume: 9.39qt
Sparge volume: 3 gal
Infuse 9.39qt at 167F	152				60
Sparge 0.5 gal	180
Sparge 2.5 gal	180
Boil Schedule	Volume		Unit		Time		IBU
60 minute boil
Belma [12%] hops	0.6		oz		60		37
Cascade wet hops			oz		Whirl		0
Mt Hood wet hops			oz		Whirl		0
Chinook wet hops			oz		Whirl		0
Cascade pellets	2		oz		Whirl		0
Fermentation Schedule	# Days		Temp.
Yeast: WY1318
Pitch at 64F	16		67
Cold crash	1		32
Keg to 2.2 vol

Brew day & Fermentation Notes

Brewed 9.2.19. My original plan for this beer was to do all late additions with fresh hops but through the boil I harvested and realized I was far short of the twenty ounces of wet hops I needed to produce the beer I wanted. Thankfully I had some cascade pellets on hand and put them to work beefing up the whirlpool addition.

First runnings: 1.083
Preboil gravity: 1.045
Preboil volume: 4.5 gal
Mash efficiency: 73%
Postboil gravity: 1.045
Postboil volume: 4 gal
Brewhouse efficiency: 81%

Aside from the hop adjustment the brewday went off without a problem. I gave the wort a taste after boiling but before adding all the hops. It tastes very much like a pale ale despite its pils malt base.

Cold crashed the beer to 35F for two days on 9.19.19 and kegged on 9.21.19.

Fresh hop pale ale tasting notes

Such a terrible picture

Appearance: Beer pours a dull copper color that appears as an inviting copper color in bright light but on the table looks less inviting. It is not hazy beer thick but definitely has some haze to it. A thick snow white head forms on the pour that maintains nice lacing and stays as a thin coating all the way to the bottom of the glass.

Aroma: Orange, leafy-vegetal like trees covered in fresh growth in the spring, lemon, rose, glazed donuts or maybe brioche, light clove, subtle pine tree and around the edge of the glass an intriguing cashew-like yeasty aroma. London Ale III is definitely present in the aroma.

Flavor: Orange, grapefruit, gentle black pepper, pine, rose, honey, brioche, lemon, a little yeasty. The beer is strongly citrusy cold but as it warms up it becomes less citrus and more complex. Pine, pepper, floralness and the vegetal flavor of fresh hops show up as the beer warms. Again London Ale III is identifiable. The malt character is light aside from the mild honey character and doesn't try to compete with the hops. Bitterness is present but a little light for the style. It lingers long into the finish rather than beat you over the head in the beginning but it gives the beer some sweetness up front that mellows into a trail of bitterness in the aftertaste.

Mouthfeel: A little thin for a pale ale but not quite watery. It is kegged to CO2 between keg and cask pressure and it shows in the middling carbonation. More carbonation might amp up the hop character but at the expense of making the beer thinner and more fleeting. Tannins linger on the tongue for a long time and feels a little heavy after the swallow.

Overall: I feel fairly good about this as a first fresh hop attempt. I wish I had been able to put more wet hops into the beer but hopefully next year will be more robust. I like the hop flavor and aroma from the beer although I think the yeast flavor gets in the way where a cleaner strain would have let the hops pop a little more. As it is the beer is somewhere between a blonde ale and a pale ale tough to fit conveniently in any category, especially with the yeast character. It could probably pass as a hazy blonde ale better than a pale ale but I'm not sure that is even a thing.

I felt like the honey malt and crystal malt didn't play as well with the pils malt as I had hoped. Rather than edge the beer closer to a pale ale it reminds me a little of a blonde ale with an oxidation problem. There isn't the cardboard flavor or flatness in the hops that usually accompanies an oxidized beer but that is where my mind goes, especially as the beer warms.

Overall, not my best beer but I will not feel bad about drinking the rest of the keg.