Tomorrow I head to Ellictoville, NY for the Rites of Spring Beer and Wine fest.  I’m going to be representing Ithaca Beer.  I’m especially excited because they’re having a Real Ale competition.  I’ve never actually had any cask conditioned beer before so I’m really anxious to try these.  I’m bringing a cask conditioned version of our Flower Power.  It should be damn good.  But I certainly want to try a little bit of everything.  It’ll also be good to meet some people from other breweries around the state and maybe make a few contacts.  It’s nice to make the New York brewing community a more friendly place.  Working together I think we can make the New York beer scene one of the best out there – at the very least we can give it our best shot.  Also, hell, I just like talking about beer.

I pitched the yeast in late Sunday night and woke up the next morning to… nothing at all.  The yeast (WLP550) was a little on the old side for what they reccomend so I wasn’t too concerned until it became Tuesday morning and still no visible signs of fermentation had occured.   I knew there was more than enough sugars for that yeast to get going so I picked up a package of Safale (S-04) from work and did a quick and dirty starter for that, pitched it in, and went out drinking.  When I got home the airlock bubbled infrequently, but I was happy to see it had started.  The next morning I woke to it bubbling at a decent clip.  When I checked it Wednesday night it was like a foamy volcano went off.  Fortunatelty it didn’t blow the lid off, it was just foam spraying out the top of the airlock.  I battled back against the foam, and after several attempts I managed to get a blow off tube in to it.  Just to be safe I covered it up with a towel in case something popped loose.  This morning it was bubbling in its pot of beer and foam filled water pretty steadily.  This is without a doubt the most active fermentation I’ve ever had at home.  It’s really making me want to make this a big brew year.  There’s going to be a lot of homebrew to go around.

I’ve been doing a lot more crazier beers lately so I felt it was time to take a step back and return to something nice and simple. To start out the new year I made a very simple pale ale recipe. It’s primarily a grain recipe, but there is some extract in it to bulk it up.

2007 New Years Pale

• 8 lbs. 2-Row Brewers Malt
• 8 lbs. Pilsen Malt
• 1 lbs. 2-Row Caramel Malt, 40L
• 1 can Munton’s Extra Light Malt Extract
• 1 oz. Newport Hop pellets (bittering)
• 1 oz. Amarillo Hop pellets (finishing)
• Brewery yeast

This is the first time I’ve used yeast from the brewery in any of my beers so I’m curious to see how this one is going to come out. If someone else was making this beer I’d use an American Ale yeast for it.

The O.G. came out at 1.038 – certainly not the highest gravity beer in the world, but I’m going for something very smooth and drinkable. This isn’t like the last two beers I made where I was aiming for more of a higher gravity sipping beer.

It’s going to ferment for about 10 days before I rack it over to a secondary fermenter where it will sit for about another 7 days before bottling. This will give it time to ferment out to its full potential as well as allow a lot of the sediment to settle out of solution. “Floaties” are much more noticeable in a lighter beer than a lot of the darker stuff I’ve done.