#29 OPA (Oz Pale Ale)

Brewed: 7th January, 2010
Time to catch up on a few recipes!

I brewed this one for a friend's party at the end of the month, and I've still got one more to do for that party so I'll be cutting it fine. On the plus side, if it comes out any good, I'll can take a few samples of it to enter into the first club competition of the year in February where the styles contended are Australian Pale Ale and English Bitters.

I've brewed the recipe a couple of times before. It's a pretty easy drinking pale ale; not over hopped and fairly dry. Think of a slightly lighter Coopers Pale Ale.

The previous times I've made this recipe, I've been a little unhappy with a sulphur taste that was present in the bottles. I think I've since narrowed that down to the old bottle cleaner I was using (sodium metabisulphate), so I'll be interested to see if my current cleaner (iodophor) leaves the beer tasting, well, cleaner. I also noticed when looking at the previous two batches that I made, I added double the amount of hops that was required (copy & paste mistake), so perhaps that had an impact on the undesirable flavour as well. Mind you, it didn't appear to be over-bitter so here's hoping this one comes out bitter enough.

The original recipe calls for 95% Australian ale malt and 5% wheat malt, but because I didn't have enough ale malt, I ended up substituting the missing amount with Australian pils malt. Aside from that lapse in preparation, the brew day went very well with most of the numbers falling well into place.

Actually, just as I write this, I'm thinking that perhaps I should have boiled for longer to account for the pils malt in the bill. I've seen in passing a number of references to doing a 90 minute boil for pils malt, but I'm not sure if that's more for doing lagers, or because of the malt itself. It's something I'll need to look up on for the future.

The recipe (based on this one):

JW Pale Malt: 2700g
Aus Pils Malt: 1100g
Wheat Malt: 200g

Pride of Ringwood flowers (9.6% AA): 10g @ 60 mins
Pride of Ringwood pellets (8.3% AA): 15g @ 45 mins

Mash time: 60 mins
Target mash temperature: 65C
Start: 65C Middle: 63.5C End: 62.5C

Runoff: 26L

Pre-boil SG: 1037
Boil time: 60 minutes

Target OG: 1043
Actual OG: 1042