"Xtract" Australian Pale Ale

"Xtract" Australian Pale Ale

Notes: My first attempt at re-igniting my interest in home brewing. I went to my local home brew store and asked for something very easy that would taste good - this is what they recommended. No boiling, just add the extract, make a hop tea, mix it all together and pitch the yeast.

Date: 30/8/19

Batch Number: 1

Beer: Australian Pale Ale

Kit: Country Brewer "Xtract" Australian Pale Ale - Liquid

Yeast: Fermentis Safale S-04 (dry)

Hops: 2 x 12g Cascade 'tea-bags - US 5% Alpha

Steps

1.  Soak extract in sink of hot tap water to soften contents - 10 mins
2.  Steep both hop 'tea-bags' in 2 cups boiling water - 10 mins
3.  Add extract to fermenting vessel (FV)
4.  Fill extract container with hot tap water to absorb remaining contents - stir and pour into FV
5.  Add cold water to FV whilst stirring to dissolve extract
6.  Add hop-tea (including tea-bags) while FV filling with cold water
7.  Fill to 20L
8.  Sprinkle yeast onto wort
9.  Gently stir yeast through wort

Pitched at 18C

OG: 1050

Fermentation Notes

• Fermentation underway within 23 hours
• FV kept under stairs - temperature consistent 18-20C
• Small krausen initially - slowly building - white/brown/green foam
• ~72hrs - removed krausen kollar from FV

Hydrometer Readings

OG: 1050

Day 4: 1010

Day 6: 1009

Bottled after 13 days with carbonation drops

ABV: (1050 - 1009 / 7.46) + 0.5 = 5.99%

Tasting Notes

For my first attempt at getting back into homebrew, it's not too bad. Certainly better than anything I made a couple of years ago when I first tried my hand at this using coopers pale ale tins and kit yeast. Unfortunately it has that infamous home brew "twang" - a unique sweet flavour that's hard to explain but just isn't quite right that is prevalent in a lot of home brewed beers. The internet is rife with theories on what causes it and how to fix it - which ill cover in a separate blog post. Aside from that, the taste balance is good, quite bitter as you'd expect from an APA