Recipes
Beer-style: Pale Ale Family
Grantham Mild
The best thing about brewing a mild is that you get to dial up pretty much all of your favorite malt flavors, in whatever ratio you’d like, in a session-strength beer – and all you need to do is back out the black barley and sub in a bunch of fun character malts. You can still have a touch of roast in there (if you want), but you also get biscuit, toffee, nut, molasses, toast, plum, raisin . . . you get the picture.
Cologne Kölsch
The word Kölsch has several connotations in the German language. If used as a noun, it refers to the distinct Cologne dialect and accent. As an adjective, it means “anything from Cologne.” Thus, it is a local joke that Kölsch is the only language that you can also drink!
Düsseldorf Altbier
The grain bill of the classic copper-colored altbier — which is internationally also known as a German Brown Ale — is almost Munich-like, but with a slightly less “caramelly” character than a Märzen, and less dark than a dunkel. It differs from a Munich brew, however, in its much more pronounced hoppiness. This creates a wonderful blend of malt-and-hop aromas in the finish, which is often described as bitter-sweet. The uniqueness of this beer — an ale after all — comes from the clean fermentation of a relatively cold-tolerant, top-fermenting specialty yeast.
Bone Idle Bitter
A schwarz’ed version of an English bitter.
Tafelbier
Similar to Trappist single, Tafelbier is a low-gravity session style beer with a nice Belgian character in the background that is a great beer to drink on brew days when you need to keep your wits about you but would also like to have a few beers. It also has a quick turnaround, so it’s perfect for brewing when you need a beer for a fast-approaching event.
Bombing Range Brewing Co.’s Medusa Dry Hopped Pale clone
This beer from Bombing Range Brewing (Richland, Washington) had limited availability but was easily one of the best using MedusaTM that I personally had. Founder and Head Brewer Mike Hopp describes it as a smooth, easy drinker with huge stone fruit and apricot flavors and aroma.
Oskar Blues Brewery’s Dale’s Pale Ale clone
Dale’s Pale Ale is an iconic American pale ale, balancing caramel and biscuit malt and fruity, citrusy, piney hops. The first craft beer in a can comes with a little extra oompf at 6.5% ABV — just enough to cap off a solid day in the mountains!
Ichetucknee Pale Ale (Vermont Version) By Danny Coenen
BOS-winning homebrew recipe, brewed by Danny Coenen. Winner of First Coast Cup (Jacksonville, Florida: 548 entries)
Horst’s Kölsch
One of Germany’s summer session beers, Kölsch is a fairly recent development by beer-historical standards. The style has no exact birthday, but instead emerged gradually as a beer style in Cologne shortly after World War I. Frequent contributor Horst Dornbusch provides BYO readers with a recipe for this style of beer.
Deschutes Hop Trip Fresh Hop Beer clone
Looking for a wet-hopped (fresh hops) beer recipe? Lucky for us homebrewers, Deschutes was willing to share their recipe for their awesome Hop Trip Fresh Hop Beer. According to their website, “Vine to kettle in less than four hours, we wait restlessly all year for the hop harvest celebration. After bagging these aromatic jewels, we hustle back and toss them into the brew kettles within hours of picking. It’s our one chance to capture the bright citrus and pine essence of fresh hops.”
Brown Rice Pale Ale
A gluten free pale ale with plenty of character.
A Bitter to Be Proud Of
Jamil Zainasheff provides readers with an English Bitter that they can be proud of. Find ingredients and step by step here.
