#20 NSSA (Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale)

Brewed: 29th October, 2009

This was the third batch in the series of Summer Ales I'm doing with slight tweaks between each recipe. Today, I only boiled the bittering hops for the last 60 minutes instead of the 80 minutes previously. This should have the effect of producing a slightly less bitter beer. I'll do a side-by-side taste when this one is ready to see if I can notice the difference. If not, I might try a 45 minute bittering addition some time in the future.

The brew-day was fairly uneventful for this one. I was slightly under the mash temperature target, but I only lost 2 degrees instead of the 3 I lost in the last batch. In hindsight, I could have added some boiling water at the start of the mash to bring it up to my target temperature, but I guess I didn't worry about it at the time because it was only half a degree off. I had slightly better efficiency, which I think would have been even higher if I had both elements running when heating up the kettle (the variable dial on one of the elements was off even though it looked like it was on). In all, there were no surprises, and no stuff ups so I certainly can't complain.

The next day, I transferred it to primary and pitched the yeast. This was sooner than the last two batches (two days for #18 and 3 days for #20) and adds another variable, as the cube hop addition wasn't in for as long, but I don't think it'll have much of an impact. I also decided to save the cube hops for a future batch of this recipe to see if they have enough bittering capacity left in them (I got the idea from this thread on AHB).

The recipe (based on this one):

JW Pale Malt: 4500g
Torrified Wheat: 400g

Nelson Sauvin pellets (11.5% AA): 15g @ -60 mins
Nelson Sauvin pellets (11.5% AA): 15g @-20 mins
Nelson Sauvin pellets (11.5% AA): 20g @ -5 mins
Nelson Sauvin pellets (11.5% AA): 25g in no-chill cube

Mash time: 60 minutes
Target mash temperature: 64C
Start: 63.5C
Middle: 62.5C
End: 61.5C

Run-off: 29.5L

Pre-boil SG: 1039
Boil Time: 90 minutes

Volume in fermenter: 21L
Yeast: WLP001 - California Ale (harvested from #18 NSSA)
Ferment temperature: 19C

Target OG: 1050
Actual OG: 1047