Harvest Ale

This beer has been 18 months in the making, maybe more. No, I didn’t age this beer. It just took about a year and a half for my Cascade hop plant to bear fruit. Well, to be really technical, they were flowers. I bought the rhizome about 18 months ago from my homebrew shop, two rhizomes actually. If you didn’t know any better, hop rhizomes look like dirty twigs. That’s how Sammy ended up throwing one away. Good thing she kept the other as that’s what bore us cones this year.

It takes about 2 seasons for hops to bear cones and in this second season, my little Cascade plant bore us cones. To say I was “excited” when I saw my hop plant starting to bear cones would be an understatement. They started off as little burrs, then they grew into cones. I’ve read that the first harvest is usually pretty low. My initial yield this year was about 15.9 ounces wet and 7.45 ounces “dry”.

To dry my hops, I pulled a screen off one of my windows and spread the cones around in a layer around 1 hop cone in thickness. The weather had been warm the past few days and the hops dried out fairly quickly. My initial harvest of 11.80 oz ended up being 6.05 oz dry. The second harvest of 4.15 oz ended up being 1.40 oz. I could’ve dried out the hops a bit further but I felt that one day was enough.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Pale ales and IPAs are the styles best suited for showcasing hop qualities. Instead, I end up formulating what could be called an American Amber ale at best, an English Mild at worst. Here’s my harvest ale:

Ingredients

• 6 lbs – Coopers Light DME

Specialty Grains:

• 1 lbs – Bamburg Munich 6L
• 1 lbs – H.B. 80L (I don’t know what H.B. is. My receipt was mislabeled).
• .25 lbs – Belgian Aromatic 20L

Hops

• .5 oz – Magnum (13.1)
• 7.45 oz – Fresh Cascade

Yeast

• English Ale Yeast (WLP002)

Extras

• 1 tablet servomyces
• .5 tsp Irish Moss

Original Gravity: 1.053

Final Gravity: 1.018

ABV: 4.59%

Process

1. Steep grains @ 155° F for 30 minutes, then remove.
2. Boil .5 oz magnum for 60 minutes.
3. Add 6 lbs of DME at the 30 minute mark.
4. Add wort chiller at 40 minute mark.
5. Add Irish Moss at 50 minute mark.
6. Add servomyces at 50 minute mark.
7. Add 7.45 oz of Cascade hops at 58-59 minute mark.
8. Cool beer to 70° F and pitch yeast from yeast starter.
9. Aerate for 5 minutes.

Yeast Starter

I used a yeast starter for the first time with this beer. There are many advantages of using a yeast starter. The biggest advantage is a higher pitch rate. A higher pitch rate means yeast replicate faster and become the dominant microbe in your wort staving off infection. A higher initial yeast count means your beer will ferment faster.

To make my yeast starter, I boiled about 1600 mL of water in a flask. I then mixed in about 8 oz of Coopers DME for the 1600 mL. After cooling, I pitched my vial of yeast. I let this ferment for about 2 days before I stashed it in my fridge until I needed it. That’s it, pretty easy.

Tasting Notes (wort)

Pale, caramel in color with amber highlights. Hazy, with hop particulate in suspension. Sweet wort aroma, slightly green/grassy aromas. Cereal sweet malt flavor, cloying. Bready, toasty malt flavors, full body, still.

Tasting Notes (primary)

Murky caramel in color with amber highlights. Sweet smelling, toasty malt character, bready. Sweet bready and toasty, slightly grainy character in flavor. Hop flavor is moderate. Attenuation seemed a little low, most of the floral, fresh Cascade hop aroma was scrubbed off during fermentation. Disappointing.

Tasting Notes (final)

Surprisingly, a medium/medium-high level of fresh, Cascade hop aroma. Low bready malt aroma. Slightly hazy caramel in color with an off-white head. Medium hop bitterness, smooth, present into the finish. Medium-low/medium body, medium carbonation.

It’s a little hard to categorize this beer. It’s what I would call a mash-up. A mash-up, in my opinion, is a beer that exhibits characteristics of different beers. Think of the Linkin Park and Jay-Z mash-up album, kind of like that. In this instance, this beer has an English malt character with a decidedly American hop profile. Not quite an English Mild, not quite an American Amber ale but all Englican Milber ale.

Despite it’s lack of identity, this beer is all good. I found it to be very tasty and because of its session-level strength, I could drink this all day. Num yummy. I’m thinking of bringing it to a Halloween party this weekend but I fear that there won’t be any left by the time the party is over. I can’t wait until next year. Hopefull there’ll be enough hops next year to do two harvest ales.