Erin Go Brew: Homebrewing & Craft Beer in Ireland
Matt Dick, the Founder of Boundary Brewing in Belfast, was one of the first brewers to sit for a Beer Judge Certification exam in Ireland in 2013. Since then, he and others in attendence have opened craft breweries and organized the homebrewing scene.
It’s the latter part of 2013 and a group of aspiring homebrewers sit down together to taste their way through a series of Weizenbock beers in Farringdon’s Bar beside Dublin’s Bachelors Walk. Next up will be a selection of bottles of German Roggenbier. This group will go on to become the very first people on the island of Ireland to take a Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) exam.
“There must have been 20 or so of us that came together once a month to go through every single style,” says Matt Dick who has since gone on to set up Boundary Brewing, a cooperative brewery in Belfast. “We’d meet on a Saturday and go through a couple of styles, take a break and then go through another couple of styles. We’d get textbook examples or the best examples that we could find in Ireland. We were able to get pretty much everything.”
Matt isn’t the only person from that class to have since gone into professional brewing. Declan Nixon went on to become the Head Brewer at Yellow Belly Beer in Wexford. Couple Emma Devlin and Cathal O’Donoghue set up Rascals Brewing Company in Rathcoole. Shane Smith became treasurer of Beer Ireland, an independent brewers association as well as organizer of Ireland’s first festival devoted to sour beers. Tom Delaney of Galway Bay Brewery was there too. Rossa O’Neill, who went on to organize a second set of BJCP classes, now works as a brewing consultant for the Bodytonic chain of pubs around Dublin.
At the start of 2012 — just over one year before that group took the BJCP classes and exams — there were 20 breweries in Ireland. Organized educational and social activities relating to homebrewing were almost non-existent. There were no qualified beer judges on the island.
Fast-forward to 2016 and there are now 76 breweries on the island with their own breweries, and another 35 contract brewing. The Irish Brewers Association (IBA) reports that beer consumption in Ireland has increased overall for the first time since 2005 and that the output of microbreweries has risen from 26,000 hectoliters (hl) (~690,000 gallons) in 2011 to 71,000 hl (~1.875 million gallons) in 2015. A second BJCP course was delivered last year, bringing the total number of BJCP qualified judges to over 40.
In the space of just a few years, the National Homebrew Club has become a thriving organization that boasts 356 full members, 1,688 associate members, and 18 regional clubs across the four provinces. Beoir, the Irish national beer consumers group (named for the Irish language word for ‘beer’) are — with the exception of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) in the UK — the fastest growing of all the beer consumer groups in Europe, having increased their membership more than four-fold in the period between 2012 and 2016.
It seems that something big changed in Ireland. Actually, it was a lot of small things that happened together at the same time.
ICB, Beoir, and The National Homebrew Club
In 2007 an online forum emerged at a time when Irish homebrewing resources and networks were virtually non-existent. “When I started homebrewing in 2007, there was no homebrew club at all,” says Rossa O’Neill, who helped set up the National Homebrew Club in 2011 and held the position of President for several years. “I came across a thing online called Irish Craft Brewer (ICB). That’s how a lot of people got going at the time. It started to get bigger and bigger and ICB spawned into two separate groups.”
Those two groups were roughly divided into those who appreciated beer as consumers and those who wanted to brew. “Those interested in the consumer side became Beoir,” says Rossa. “The homebrewers went the other way and we set up the homebrew club. We had meet ups every month or so where we brought our beers and critiqued them together.”
It was difficult at the beginning. “There were no homebrew shops in Ireland,” says Rossa. “It was really hard to get ingredients. We had crappy hops. I didn’t know hops were green for years. We certainly couldn’t get any American hops.”
A little bit of social support and organizational structure went a long way. “Once the homebrew club started, the local clubs just started to spring up all over the place,” says Rossa. “We really encouraged it through the local meet-ups. It’s got to the stage now where the Capital Brewers, the main central Dublin club, might have 40-50 members at a meet-up, which is just too many beers to go around and to offer the right advice to people. Mainly, the meet-ups are about improving the quality of your beer, encouraging new beginners into the hobby and being very inclusive. It’s great to see guys who were making absolute shite winning medals at the national the year after.”
Education and competition were the main priorities for the National Homebrew Club in those early days. “We ran the first national competitions in 2012,” says Rossa. “That was a big event for us. It put us on the map and set us on the road where there was no turning back. Education and competition go hand and hand.”
In order to run competitions, however, you need judges. “We were promising you would be judged by a professional brewer,” says Rossa. “We didn’t have any beer judging exams. We got a huge amount of support from the American Homebrewers Association and from the BJCP, in particular from David Houseman of the BJCP. As we evolved we realized we needed our own BJCP judges. So we ran the course in 2013 and then another one again last year. Those guys are taking what they have learned back to their own clubs. It fast-tracked a lot more people into making really good beers.”
The Recession
The beginnings of the National Homebrew Club and establishment of a national beer consumers group coincided — perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not — with the trough in one of Ireland’s most severe economic recessions in its history. A study from the Economic and Social Research Institute shows that not only did the country’s overall unemployment rate increase from 4.6% in 2006 to 15% in 2012, but the youth unemployment rate increased from 9.9% to 33%.
“The recession prompted people to brew their own beer but it also really helped increase the growth rate of the Irish craft beer scene,” says Reuben Gray, Chairperson of Beoir. “When the recession was really starting to hit home in 2010 you would think that that people are going to spend less money and buy cheaper products. But that’s not what happened. What they started to do was to demand value for money. They were going to look for a higher quality product. The recession saw an increase in sales of Irish beer but also in smaller artisanal food products such as breads and cheeses. The industry really took off even though people had less money.”
Excise Rebate and “Hooker”
Another major factor in kick starting Ireland’s beer renaissance was a tax incentive introduced by the Minister for Finance Brian Cowen in 2005 by way of a rebate for brewers who produced fewer than 20,000 hl (~530,000 gallons) a year. “That duty rate cut for microbreweries really took off in 2007 with the opening of the Galway Hooker brewery,” says Reuben. “Hooker were one of the first breweries to open up since the 1990s under the new revenue laws. When they came along, they changed everything. They introduced hops for the first time. We didn’t know what hops were until then.”
Galway Hooker Irish Pale Ale (4.4% ABV) is brewed at the Galway Hooker Brewery in Oranmore, County Galway. The name of the beer was decided by the public in a competition and refers to the distinctive shape of the traditional Irish fishing boat used in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland. It seems to have been largely modeled on the Pale Ale from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company with a grain bill including Pearl and crystal malts and liberal deployment of the Saaz and Cascade hop varieties. Its bitterness levels and hop aroma might not be considered pronounced or even exciting by today’s standards and rumors suggest that the recipe may have since been revised due to hop shortages in recent years, but viewed in the context of the land-scape in which it was first brewed, it was groundbreaking.
It was named “Best In Ireland” in the 2007 Bridgestone Irish Food Guide and in 2007 and 2009 won the Irish Craft Brewers Award for Best Beer and Beer of the Year respectively.
“When Hooker came along it was a revelation really,” says Rossa. “There were no hoppy beers here at that time. It sort of opened our minds. We started to taste different things and all of sudden we were spurred on to brew more.”
Hooker brewers were capitalizing on the work of other pioneering breweries that had gone before them. Carlow Brewing Company/O’Hara’s Brewery had laid early tracks, first with its original stout and then with its Leann Follain, which became largely regarded among beer geeks as the definition of the style and an iconic alternative to Guinness. “I have huge respect for what O’Hara’s did,” says Rossa. “Their previous Head Brewer Liam Hannon came up with the Leann Follain recipe. I remember tasting that beer and thinking it was wonderful. I couldn’t remember an Irish beer tasting so big and full before.”
Inspiration of Imports
Another brewery that led the way was Metalman Brewing Company in Co. Waterford. They were the first microbrewery in Ireland to invest in a canning line. “Metalman have got a homebrew background as well,” says Rossa. “They are a brewery that constantly evolve their recipes. They were at one of the first homebrew meetings I was at and they went and took the plunge. Anything that they brew is usually worth trying.”
The beer that launched the commercial success of Metalman was also an American-style pale ale with citrus and floral aromas. The influence of imports — and particularly those from the United States — was beginning to become obvious. “You had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale pretty much readily available,” says Rossa. “It just took off when American beers started coming in. The pale ale is such an easy one to get into. Some people just don’t like the banana of a weissbier or don’t like the phenolics of a saison. Maybe they’re scared of the ABV of some Belgian beers. With the pale ale they’re seeing something that looks like a lager with low alcohol and with a bit of a hoppy taste.”
It’s hard to say whether it was exposure to American beers that focused Irish brewers’ attention on Yakima hops or whether it was the exposure to the more readily available beers of new up-and-coming UK breweries who themselves were heavily influenced by the “American craft beer revolution” (think BrewDog launching in Scotland in 2007 and Irish homebrewer, Evin O’Riordain setting up the Kernel Brewery in London in 2009). Either way, imports of interesting beers were suddenly popping up in Irish off-licences and it had an impact on both the homebrewing and commercial beer scenes.
Breaking the Holy Trinity
The Irish have always been a nation of people who travel. Those returning home at that time were bringing their food and drink experiences with them. “Before American imports in Ireland you could thank the airlines for getting people out of the country to places like the UK, America, and Australia,” says Reuben. “People were drinking very different flavored beers over there than we had over here. A lot of our brewers had travelled and then come back to Ireland. They were sick of the same three types of beer.”
Those same three types of beer are often referred to as the “Holy Trinity” in beer circles in Ireland and constitute a pale ale or lager, a red ale, and a stout. Some breweries were able to create interesting interpretations of historic Irish styles. Franciscan Well in Cork launched a red ale in 1998 called Rebel Red, which gained both commercial and critical success. The Porterhouse brewpub in Dublin released a stout called Wrasslers XXXX, which beer writer Michael Jackson described as, “the best stout in Ireland for my money.” However, the majority of beers in these traditional styles were not exciting. “Most breweries were not doing a good job at all of these three beer styles at the start,” says Rossa. “Some of them were worse than the homebrews we were making.”
Stout still maintains a cultural stranglehold in Ireland. “The domination of stout as a style in Ireland to this day comes from the domination of the three big stout producers in Ireland,” says Rossa, referring to Guinness, Murphy’s, and Beamish. “I’m still obsessed with stout. I’m completely obsessed with it. I love researching old recipes of stout. It’s something that’s fascinating. If you track them down and recreate them, they’re simple but so fabulous. You’re drinking what your great grandfather might have drank.”
American Styles
In July 2012, Chris Treanor had just finished his final university exams and landed the job of Head Brewer at Galway Bay Brewery. “I did three solid days of work with the outgoing brewer,” says Chris. “Then I was handed the keys and wished the best of luck.” At the time he was 22 years old and the youngest head brewer in Ireland. In 2014, he released Of Foam and Fury, a Double IPA of 8.5% ABV with a caramalt sweetness and accentuated bitterness carrying a passion fruit and blood orange hop punch from large quantities of Galena, Chinook, and Simcoe® and a pronounced aroma from two dry hop additions. “It was Ireland’s first Double IPA and it is still iconic to this day,” says Reuben. “It’s just won the annual Beoir Award for Irish Beer of the Year yet again.”
Matt Dick shares the sentiment. “My perception was that Of Foam and Fury was the first beer to try to captivate the American influence in Ireland and absolutely nail it,” he says. “Equally as important was the 200 Fathoms released by Chris and Galway Bay soon after. That was the first beer where there was a proper release and people went nuts.
I don’t think it’s circumstantial that those two beers came from the same brewery.”
Matt himself spent time in America. “I worked in a brewpub in Reno, Nevada,” he says. “I came home from the States in 2010 and started working at Brewbot in 2013 before setting up Boundary in 2014. My beer geekery wasn’t in overdrive in the States. It’s only when I got home that I realized how good America had been.” Matt went on to help set up a Belfast Beer Club and a Belfast Homebrewers Club. His brewery, Boundary, was named the Best Brewery and the Best New Brewery by RateBeer in 2016. His Export Stout was named as the Best Beer in Northern Ireland in 2015.
American Brewers
It wasn’t only American hops and Irish people spending time in America that started to have a major impact on the beer scene in Ireland. American brewers started to come to Ireland and dominate.
Rick Lever — originally from Boston but a resident for most of his life in upstate New York — moved to County Donegal with his Irish wife, Libby Carton. After a year or two of test batches, they set up a 10-hectoliter (8.4-barrel) system together in 2013 under the name Kinnegar Brewing. Kinnegar now has an academy for homebrewers and their Black Bucket (a black rye IPA of 6.5% ABV) won Gold at Alltech’s 2015 Commonwealth Cup in Kentucky.
American Joe Kearns answered an advertisement in an online jobs board to come and head up the brewing team at White Hag Brewing Company in Ballymore, Co. Sligo in 2014. Joe had apprenticed under Fred Karm at Hoppin’ Frog Brewery in Ohio and had been Head Brewer at the Main Street Grille and Brewing Company in Garrettsville, Ohio. White Hag’s Black Boar (an imperial oatmeal stout of 10.2% ABV) was voted Ireland’s second best beer in 2015 and the brewery was named by RateBeer as the Best New Brewery in Ireland this year.
To illustrate the point that American styles and American brewers are leading the way, look to the breweries that scooped the awards for Beoir’s Beers of the Year in 2016: Galway Bay Brewery (Of Foam and Fury, a double IPA); Kinnegar Brewing (Rustbucket, a rye pale ale); and White Hag Brewing Company (Beann Gulban, a sour heather ale). “Rick from Kinnegar was one of the first Yanks to come in and make really consistently good beer here,” says Matt. “You don’t get that a lot. There are not so many breweries that I drink every beer they brew because I know it’s going to be great. And White Hag are quickly becoming the best brewery in Ireland. If they aren’t already.”
Reality Check
The rapid growth in the Irish homebrewing and commercial beer scenes — while exciting and certainly to be celebrated — should also be put into perspective. According to the IBA report last year, the market share of microbreweries in Ireland rose from 0.6% in 2014 to 1.2% in 2015. That’s still a tiny proportion of the overall beer market on an island the same size as the state of Indiana and with a population similar to that of the state of Tennessee.
On a recent trip to Ireland, American beer writer Jeff Alworth was disappointed to find more of America than the traditions of Ireland. “The US absorbed Irish culture a century and more ago, and we expect to see it when we return,” he writes. “We expect to see shamrocks and leprechauns and blarney stones . . . and pints of stout. We hold Ireland’s past against its present. I can imagine how tiresome that must get. But I’m still not excited about a future where the entire world brews sticky American IPAs (even when they’re brewed as competently as the ones I sampled in Dublin).”
That seeming obsession with America among Irish brewers and homebrewers is perhaps an indication of both Ireland’s immaturity as a beer nation and the seductive nature of American hops. “Once you experience the hop, you don’t go back,” says Emma Devlin of Rascals Brewing Company, who also attended that first BJCP class in Farringdon’s and who started commercial brewing with her partner Cathal O’Donoghue after they won homebrew competitions for their Belgian style wheat beer (Wit Woo) and their Ginger Porter. “Hops may be an acquired taste, but when you acquire it, that’s it.”
Cultural attitudes to drinking in Ireland — where quantity and brands are king — also seem to be curtailing the development of Ireland’s beer culture in comparison to other countries. “You see a lot of people wanting to drink pints rather than try smaller quantities of stronger or even more challenging beers,” says Rossa. “The general Irish drinker seems to need a pint in their hand.”
However, the opportunity to explore the beer world is certainly available to anyone in Ireland who wishes to do so. “I see my father going into an off-licence and asking about the beers they have,” says Rossa. “That tells me that there’s hope.”
Weiss Old Owl (Weizenbock)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.074 FG = 1.018
IBU = 22 SRM = 12 ABV = 7.8%
By Richard Lubell. Best of Show National Brewing Championship
Chocolate malt achieves the color and slight chocolate notes while avoiding the added sweetness of using more crystal.
Ingredients
8.5 lbs. (3.9 kg) wheat malt
7 lbs. (3.2 kg) pale malt
7 oz. (200 g) Munich malt
4.5 oz. (125 g) Caramunich® I malt
1.75 oz. (50 g) Vienna malt
1.75 oz. (50 g) dark chocolate malt(475 °L)
6.4 AAU Perle pellet hops (60 min.)
(0.75 oz./20 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
0.5 oz. (15 g) Sonnet pellet hops (1 min.)
White Labs WLP380 (Hefeweizen IV Ale) or Wyeast 3638 (Bavarian Wheat) yeast
7⁄8 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash the grains in 5.5 gallons (21 L) water at 152 °F (67 °C) for 60 minutes. Sparge with enough water to collect 6.5 gallons (25 L) in the kettle. Bring the wort to a boil and boil for 60 minutes total adding the hops according the ingredients list. After the boil, chill the wort down to 60 °F (16 °C), aerate the wort heavily and pitch the yeast.
This is a winter sipper so ferment low at 60 °F (16 °C) to accentuate spicy phenols over banana esters. Ferment until final gravity is achieved, then bottle or keg as normal.
Weiss Old Owl (Weizenbock)
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.074 FG = 1.018
IBU = 22 SRM = 12 ABV = 7.8%
Ingredients
8.7 lbs. (3.9 kg) Muntons wheat dried malt extract
7 oz. (200 g) Munich malt
4.5 oz. (125 g) Caramunich® I malt
1.75 oz. (50 g) Vienna malt
1.75 oz. (50 g) dark chocolate malt (475 °L)
6.4 AAU Perle pellet hops (60 min.)
(0.75 oz./20 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
0.5 oz. (15 g) Sonnet pellet hops (1 min.)
White Labs WLP380 (Hefeweizen IV Ale) or Wyeast 3638 (Bavarian Wheat) yeast
7⁄8 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Muntons wheat dried malt extract is 55% wheat, 45% pale malt which is in line with the German legal requirements for commercial wheat beers. Place the crushed grains in a muslin bag and soak the grains in 2 qts. (2 L) water between 150–160 °F (66–71 °C) for 45 minutes. Remove the grains and wash with 2 qts. (2 L) hot water. Stir in the liquid malt extract and top off to 6.5 gallons (25 L). Bring the wort to a boil and boil for 60 minutes total adding the hops according the ingredients list. After the boil, chill the wort down to 60 °F (16 °C), aerate the wort heavily and pitch the yeast.
This is a winter sipper so ferment low at 60 °F (16 °C) to accentuate spicy phenols over banana esters. Ferment until final gravity is achieved, then bottle or keg as normal.
1889 STOUT (Foreign Extra Stout)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.066 FG = 1.013
IBU = 34 SRM = 31 ABV = 7.2%
By Rossa O’Neill. Winner Liffey Brewers Homebrew Competition
After spending some time researching old Irish stout recipes I put this together based on what was being brewed and exported in Cork circa 1889.
Ingredients
12.7 lbs. (5.75 kg) pale ale malt
1.54 lbs. (0.7 kg) amber malt
0.77 lb. (350 g) black malt
9.9 AAU Fuggle hops (60 min.)
(1.94 oz./55 g at 5.1% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and mix with 4.75 gallons (18 L) of strike water at 163 °F (73 °C) to reach a mash temperature of ١٥٠ °F (65.5 °C). Hold this temperature for 60 minutes. Vorlauf until your runnings are clear. Sparge with 4.2 gallons (16 L) of 170 °F (74°C) water or enough water to collect a preboil volume of 6.8 gallons (26 L) at 1.053 SG. Boil for 1 hour. Chill to 65 °F (18 °C), aerate well and pitch yeast. Ferment at 65 °F (18 °C) until final gravity is achieved. You can either age 2–4 weeks in primary or rack to secondary for aging. Bottle or keg as normal.
1889 STOUT (Foreign Extra Stout)
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.066 FG = 1.013
IBU = 34 SRM = 31 ABV = 7.2%
Ingredients
7.7 lbs. (3.5 kg) Maris Otter liquid malt extract
1.54 lbs. (0.7 kg) pale ale malt
1.54 lbs. (0.7 kg) amber malt
0.77 lb. (350 g) black malt
9.9 AAU Fuggle hops (60 min.)
(1.94 oz./55 g at 5.1% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place the crushed pale ale malt and amber malt in a muslin bag (#1) and the black malt in a second muslin bag (#2). Add muslin bag #1 to 1.2 gallons (4.5 L) of 163 °F (73 °C) water to reach a mash temperature of 150 °F (65.5 °C). Hold this temperature for 60 minutes. Add bag #2 and if possible, raise the mash temperature up to 168 °F (77 °C) by infusing boiling water. After 15 minutes, remove both bags and place in a colander. Slowly wash the grains with 1 gallon (4 L) of hot water. Add the liquid malt extract and top off to 6.8 gallons (26 L). Make sure all the extract is dissolved, then bring the wort to a boil. Boil for 1 hour adding the hops according to the ingredients list. Chill to 65 °F (18 °C), aerate well and pitch yeast. Ferment at 65 °F (18 °C) until final gravity is achieved. You can either age 2–4 weeks in primary or rack to secondary for aging. Bottle or keg as normal.
Black Tsunami Porter (Oak-aged Imperial Porter)
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.085 FG = 1.015
IBU = 40 SRM = 31 ABV = 9.9%
By Rossa O’Neill. Winner of the Abbeyleix Beer Fest
Ingredients
14.5 lbs. (6.6 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
0.55 lb. (0.25 kg) amber malt
1.65 lbs. (0.75 kg) Carapils® malt
1.32 lbs. (0.6 kg) brown malt
0.66 lb. (0.3 kg) UK crystal malt (55 °L)
0.88 lb. (0.4 kg) UK chocolate malt
9 AAU Northern Brewer hops
(60 min.) (1.06 oz./30 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
5.7 AAU Fuggle hops (20 min.)
(1.59 oz./45 g at 3.6% alpha acids)
3.8 AAU Fuggle hops (5 min.)
(1.06 oz./30 g at 3.6% alpha acids)
1 tablet Protofloc (15 min.)
1.06 oz. (30 g) French oak chips
White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mill the grains and mix with 6 gallons (24.5 L) of strike water at 163 °F (73 °C) to reach a mash
temperature of 149 °F (65 °C).
Hold this temperature for 90 minutes. Vorlauf until your runnings are clear. Sparge with 3.7 gallons (14 L) of 170 °F (74 °C) water or enough water to collect a preboil volume of 6.8 gallons (26 L) at 1.053 SG. Boil for 1 hour adding the hops according to the ingredients list. Chill to 62 °F (17 °C), aerate well and pitch yeast. Let the temperature slowly rise to 72 °F (22 °C) over the course of
7 days. After fermentation subsides, rack into secondary and age on French oak chips for 3 weeks and then mature in bottles for at least a year.
Black Tsunami Porter (Oak-aged Imperial Porter)
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.085 FG = 1.015
IBU = 40 SRM = 31 ABV = 9.9%
Ingredients
6.5 lbs. (3 kg) Muntons dried malt extract
3 lbs. (1.36 kg) Maris Otter pale ale malt
0.55 lb. (0.25 kg) amber malt
1.65 lbs. (0.75 kg) Carapils® malt
1.32 lbs. (0.6 kg) brown malt
0.66 lb. (0.3 kg) UK crystal malt (55 °L)
0.88 lb. (0.4 kg) UK chocolate malt
9 AAU Northern Brewer hops
(60 min.) (1.06 oz./30 g at 8.5% alpha acids)
5.7 AAU Fuggle hops (20 min.)
(1.59 oz./45 g at 3.6% alpha acids)
3.8 AAU Fuggle hops (5 min.)
(1.06 oz./30 g at 3.6% alpha acids)
1 tablet Protofloc (15 min.)
1.06 oz. (30 g) French oak chips
White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place the crushed pale ale malt, amber malt, Carapils® and brown malt in one muslin bag (#1) and the crystal and chocolate in a second muslin bag (#2). Add muslin bag #1 to 2.5 gallons (10 L) of 163 °F (73 °C) water to reach a mash temperature of 149 °F (65 °C). Hold this temperature for 60 minutes. Add bag #2 and if possible, raise the mash temperature up to 168 °F (77 °C) by infusing boiling water. After 15 minutes, remove both bags and place in a colander. Slowly wash the grains with 1 gallon (4 L) of hot water. Add the dried malt extract and top off the 6.8 gallons (26 L). Make sure all the extract is dissolved, then bring the wort to a boil. Boil for 1 hour adding the hops according to the ingredients list. Chill to 62 °F (17 °C), aerate well and pitch yeast. Let the temperature slowly rise to 72 °F
(22 °C) over the course of 7 days.
