Check it out - I made beer! 15-minute Pale Ale

[Kealia]

My brewing schedule is going to take a hit in the next few months so I've been looking for ways to whip up quick brews without going the HME route. I found a thread on HBT that spoke about a 15-minute pale ale so I've decided to give it a shot. Originally, I was going to change the recipe because there are a lot of hops that I like better than Cascade, but I decided to do the recipe as-is the first time to determine how malty it comes out to see if I want to play with it in the future.

The entire brew day was 1 hour 45 minutes, including set up and clean up so there is still room to shave that down a bit if/when this becomes a repeatable brew day.
The recipe looks like this:
6lbs Light Dry Malt Extract
1lbs Crystal 60
2.5oz Cascade 7.5% AA at 15 min
1oz Cascade 7.5%aa at 5 min
.50 oz Cascade 7.5% at flameout
1oz Cascade 7.5% dry hop 7 days

Yeast: Something clean. The OP used Notty but others have used US-05, WLP001, etc. Your call. I used US-05.

The poster of the recipe stated that he puts the grain in cold water and steeps them until the water hits 170, pulling them out at that point and adding the DME. I did a 'standard' steep at ~160 for 30 minutes with 1 gallon of water and just heated the rest of the water and DME in a separate pot before combining them.
I also halved this recipe to 2.5 gallons so I could see how it comes out before investing in 5G of it. Even if Cascades aren't my favorite hop I'll have a good idea of how this turns out.

I've done hop bursts before but never without some type of bittering addition (FWH, standard 60 minute, etc.) so I'm curious to see how this comes out. It's described at hop-forward with a sweet malt backbone....but so is just about every beer I've read about on Beer Advocate

I had to adjust hop amounts as mine were 5.6% instead of 7.5% but that was easy. If this turns out to be a decent session pale ale it would make some brew days pretty quick when I can't go AG. The IBUs/AAUs will also allow me to tweak various hops that I like (Simcoe for Cascade, etc.) and end up with wildly different brews.

I'll keep everybody posted on this to see if it really turns out a good beer or not. My biggest concern is that it's going to be too sweet. But for a quick sub-two hour brew day I had to try.

In the 3G carboy now at 64 with rehydrated yeast. Fingers crossed.

[BlackDuck]

Looks like a pretty good recipe actually. And you can't argue with 1 hour and 45 minutes. If it does turn out too sweet, you can always reduce the crystal 60 to 1/2 pound and use 1/2 pound carapils. That wouldn't change your numbers much, but it might reduce the sweetness of it. To be honest, I don't think it will be too sweet. Looks like there is enough light extract and hops to balance it out.

[John Sand]

Thanks for sharing, let us know how it works out. I am considering extract brewing for summer to avoid heating the kitchen too much. I had a short brew day the other day when I made the Irish Red, so I used LME and a 45 minute boil, adjusting the hops.

[Gymrat]

I have hop bursted a couple of my IPAs. They havent been too sweet at all.

[bucknut]

Very interested in this one, just 15min of boiling and how that effects the finished hop flavor/bitterness. Keep us posted for sure, I'd love to do a "under 2 hour" brew day and then maybe I could get my pipeline built backup.

[Kealia]

I have hop bursted a couple of my IPAs. They havent been too sweet at all.

I hop bursted the IPA that I did, too. But I still had a bittering addition - did yours?

[Foothiller]

I have used a somewhat similar approach, including in a 2.25 gallon batch of a blonde ale last spring, working in steeped grains. I heated 1 qt of water to 185 F in the microwave, and used that to steep 2 oz of caramunich + 2 oz of caravienne + 4 oz of crystal 10 + 2 oz of crystal 80 + 2 oz of special roast in a 1/2 gallon beverage cooler for 20 minutes. While that steeped, I heated 2 qt water to boiling, adding 1 cup of Muntons extra light LME while it heated, and boiled 0.7 oz of fuggles + 0.4 oz of magnum hops for 20', and 0.3 oz of fuggles hops for 5', adding 1/2 tsp of irish moss in the last 10 minutes. After 20' of steeping, I poured that part of the wort through my kitchen strainer into the boil pot. I used 1/2 pack of S-23 yeast.

My assessment is that it had a sweet malty flavor with low caramel, low bitterness that could be smoother, light hop flavor, moderately sweet hop aroma, golden color (darker than the style should have), and a good 1/2" persistent head. Next time I will eliminate the crystal 80 grain, change the caramunich to more caravienne, change fuggles to glacier hops, and change magnum to simcoe hops. Nevertheless, this got good compliments at my homebrew club, and scored 31 at the 2013 California State Fair.

We have busy schedules, and I like anything that will save time. To me, adding the time to steep grains was worth it, since setup and cleanup take a certain amount of time, and the total brewing is still a reasonably short part of the total.

[Foothiller]

A small oversight in my post: I added the rest of the 3.3 lb can on LME at the end of the boil.

[mashani]

FWIW: I've done this with a couple of beers. They turned out fine, but I decided to do the first addition at 20 minutes for later beers instead of at 15, because over time the bitterness mellowed too quickly, so I had to drink them all up. Not that I minded, but I like to drink different stuff every night instead of the same stuff, so I'd rather have it stay more "stable". At 20 they are more stable.

Check this out too:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew ... l-kit.html

[D34THSPAWN]

I just did one with a 20, 15, 10, 5, 0, and dry hop. 1 oz each of Centennial and Amarillo for all additions. It smells incredible, got a week and a half left before Bottling, will let you know how it turns out too. I had a bigger Malt bill too, 9.15 lbs of lme, 1lb crystal 40, and 0.5 lb carapils. Needed the huge amount of hops to balance it out, 5.5 gallons og of 1.061 give or take a few points, using us-05 too. Excited for this one

[Yankeedag]

I just did one with a 20, 15, 10, 5, 0, and dry hop. 1 oz each of Centennial and Amarillo for all additions. It smells incredible, got a week and a half left before Bottling, will let you know how it turns out too. I had a bigger Malt bill too, 9.15 lbs of lme, 1lb crystal 40, and 0.5 lb carapils. Needed the huge amount of hops to balance it out, 5.5 gallons og of 1.061 give or take a few points, using us-05 too. Excited for this one

you used 6oz of hops in that? Are you trying to explode your head?

[D34THSPAWN]

it ended up being 10 with the dry hop! It came to about 35 IBUs, just going to be a huge amount of flavor and aroma.

[Kealia]

Three days later and it's progressing very nicely. Interestingly enough, the first 24 hours didn't SHOW much in terms of visible activity. Very few bubbles, very think krausen, etc. Fast forward to today and the airlock is chugging away. If you turn the volume up loud and listen through the normal white noise you can hear what sounds like mouse farts.


The really impressive part is that the beer itself is already dropping clear, while still churning out the CO2. (Always hard to tell with smart phone cameras, but the bottom of the carboy shows how clear it already is)
It' sitting at 62-64, the flash highlighted the lower range of the temp strip.



Looks like this one should finish pretty quick, too.

[Kealia]

Bottled today (day 13) after a solid and quick fermentation that ended at 1.012. Dry hopped for 48 hours then cold crashed for 3 days. I'll test one in 2 weeks to see how it is. It may be green (or maybe not) but I should be able to tell how it's going to be at that point.

<crosses fingers>

I just bottled the entire batch which is something I haven't done in a long time at this point. I over-estimated my volume thinking I had a full 2.5 gallons but only ended up with 2.1. I batch primed for 2.5 so my carb will be higher than intended. Oh well, life goes on.

[Kealia]

I opened one last night after 17 days in the bottle and it was good - ready to drink. The aroma was interesting - the Falconers Flight dry hops almost gave it a Belgian yeast aroma. It had good bitterness, good flavor and was nowhere near as sweet as I feared it would be.

Bottom line: The base recipe provides a quick and easy brew day with a good session pale ale beer in the end.

The pipeline is happy.