#28 Galaxy Pale Ale
I brewed this beer so long ago I've completely forgotten what the brew day was like. I wasn't going to bother with a write-up were it not for the fact that I'd been thinking recently that it was probably the best beer I'd made to date, although oddly when I came to take a photo for the write-up I've reevaluated that decision. Fickle, fickle beer!
Recipe
6kg Simpsons pale malt
50g Galaxy @ mash for 60 mins
150g Galaxy @ Dry Hop
WLP090 San Francisco Super Yeast
OG 1.040
FG 1.012
This beer marked a departure from my (I now realise, foolhardy) attempt to cut down on chilling time by reserving 5 L jugs of fresh water for tipping into the kettle after the boil. I know now that it means you have a lot less water to rinse the grains with, although I can't remember now if that's the reason why I abandoned it.
This was my first ever non-BIAB beer with a converted Igloo mash tun. I'd yet to transition to a manifold though, and instead contained the grains in a Shroud of Turin-sized sheet of voile. That, combined with the fact I mashed with the entire volume of water (what can I say, BIAB habits die hard) meant that my efficiency was almost hilariously low. These days I'll shoot for at least 300 gravity points per kg/L (and even that isn't great). This was about 200.
So it was that I only hit an OG of 1.040, rather than the hoped-for 1.060. Although I've since had problems with San Francisco Super Yeast giving up the ghost halfway through a fermentation, this was a cakewalk and it finished up before long at 1.012 for an ABV of 3.7%.
I'd been thinking for some time that this beer had dropped clear without any gelatin, and without any cold-conditioning. The last several beers I'd taken from the cellar were glass clear, with a beautiful soft, round bitterness that kicks my salivary glands in to high gear. When I came to do the photo shoot, though, I ended up with quite a different product: haze, and a harsher bitterness from the hops than I'd remembered. Psychological? Who knows. The only thing I can think is that the last string of bottles didn't spend all that much time in the fridge before I poured them, whereas this one was in all weekend, so perhaps the chill haze had more time to develop.