Orange Cascade Pale Ale

Well, there she is, excuse the cold break on the bottom of the glass, but there is a sneak peak of the Orange Cascade Pale Ale.

I did manage to stuff up by forgetting to put the orange and coriander in at 15mins.....so I ended up making a 5 litre tea of orange peel and coriander, boiled it for 15mins and threw it in the fermenter. At the end of the day, it'll be beer right?

I also threw some Motueka at it, just cause Cascade and Motueka together is an intense flavour combination!

Here's the mash in - excuse the feet. 4.5kg of Maris Otter, 500g Vienna and 500g of Pale Crystal. Simple recipe, easy mash in.

16 litres of water to 76 degrees, dough in and what do ya know, 67 degrees. Off the burner, kept in the sun lid on and let it rest for and hour. Note the really cool mash paddle? Queue an old BBQ fish slice and a hammer to make it straight. Works a treat!

Took a little while to hit the boil, but once she was there it was nice and consistent. Yes, those are pegs. They're holding the hop bag in place. One thing you can't see is the first wort hops I ended up doing. I put the first 27g Cascade into a muslin bag and threw it in the boil kettle before I gathered the wort. That means the hops have been sitting in the cooler wort right through to boil and right through to chilling. I'm interested on how this will go.

Next was the chilling. Went real quick, I assume due to the Manawatu wind picking up. At this point, I clicked that I had forgotten the orange peel and coriander, so I raced inside and made up the tea I mentioned earlier.

Now, the fermenter is inside, cooling down as much as it possibly can inside so I can throw the yeast in. I think I'll cold crash this one as well, after fermentation has ceased, or slowed down, 5 day cold crash with 30g each or Cascade and Motueka.

ManawaBrew Pale Ale

You would have seen in my last blog that I've cracked a bottle and had some notes there......well, here it is. Nice full head, lacing stays with it right through. Aroma is dried apricots, mango, passion fruit and a tiny hint of pine and wait for it, caramel.

Taste is insane. I wasn't sure how well Cascade and Motueka would work together, but they work really well. You get the same sort of tastes as in the aroma, dried apricot, mango, passion fruit and caramel.

I gave out a bottle to Shady, who said it was pretty good and wanted the recipe, gave in the in laws a taste last night, one is an avid wine drinker and she said she liked it, the other is a staunch Steinlager, Guinness and Whiskey drinker and even he liked it.

I think it missing a couple of things, one it the abv is excessive, 7.5% is too high. I think something in the 5.5 to 6% would be ideal. I think it needs more hops, maybe more of a combination of Cascade and Motueka all the way through, who knows, I'll keep playing and once its ready, I'll throw it at some competitions and see how we go. All about experimenting right?

Hops

As I said in the last post, the Mystery German is reaching for the sky, stoked! The Smoothcone is awake and climbing, but the Mystery German is by far the biggest. I'll throw up some photos later on, so check back!

Tomorrow I'll be brewing the rhubarb saison with Steph, so watch this space for some more blogging and pics!!

Cheers!!!