Electric Pale Ale
Testimonials
"Just wanted to share with you my recent happiness with using your recipes from the website. I have been AG brewing for 4years and in the past month made both the Electric Pale Ale and the Electric IPA with outstanding results. Very balanced beers and easily the best I’ve made. I followed the recipes through including the water profiles and can’t believe how good they turned out. Last night I tried the EIPA after it had been carbonating for a couple of days, WOW!" - Dan P.
"Brewed this for the first time.... After tasting it, it won't be the last. Especially great on a hot afternoon." - anthonyroggero
"Just had my first taste of this and it's amazing. Looking forward to making many more batches of this!" - RacingRam
"After having this sit in the bottles for just over a week, I found a flaw with this recipe: The beer seems to magically disappear. I just started drinking it a few days ago and a quarter of the batch is gone. Fantastic recipe. Everyone who's tried it can't believe it's home made. This will definitely be a regular on the brew circuit. I think I need better equipment so I can brew larger batches..." - TheWulf
"Wow, if you have not brewed this beer I highly suggest you do. It is getting better as each day goes by. The aroma is just absolutely amazing, the taste is awesome as well. It's just like how a APA should be." - pola0502ds
"This is my new favorite. I entered this into my first beer contest and won first place in the Pale Ale category." - g8tors
"I followed this recipe to the letter and am just now enjoying the first taste after bottle conditioning for a week. It is fantastic! Thanks for the great recipe!" - matto
"This one's a winner, the wife loves the hop flavor and aroma. She's not a hop head so she was loving the clean and not bitter finish. The flavor is excellent and it's really drinkable. Also this was my first ever brew!" - Besk one
"This beer is awesome! Everyone that has tasted it just raves about how good it is." - Guzzler
Introduction
Our original signature beer! First brewed in 2009.
This is an all late-addition American Pale Ale (APA) where hops are only added in the last 20 minutes to give it very smooth bitterness with a massive hop flavour.
The Electric Pale Ale is one that we've made many times now and everyone who tries it raves about it. We made minor changes to the hop bill over the first year or two until until we got it exactly the way we liked it. It's one of our house beers that is often on tap as it's dry and thirst quenching.
A large portion of the hop goodness comes from the Citra dry hops - they're essential (in our humble opinion). We've also tried this recipe with 100% Citra but it just wasn't the same (it was somewhat one dimensional). We prefer this version here. Try both and let us know what you think!
The Electric Pale Ale
Size: 12 US gallons (post-boil @ 68F)
Mash Efficiency: 95%
Attenuation: 82%
Original Gravity: 1.056 (style range: 1.045 - 1.060)
Final Gravity: 1.010 (style range: 1.010 - 1.015)
Colour: 5.9 SRM (style range: 5 - 10)
Alcohol: 6.0% ABV (style range: 4.5% - 6.2%)
Bitterness: 37 IBU (style range: 30 - 50)
Mash:
15.5 lb Domestic 2-row malt (1.8-2L) (78.5%)
3.5 lb Weyermann Vienna malt (3-4L) (17.7%)
0.75 lb Crystal malt (40L) (3.8%)
Boil:
1 oz Centennial hops (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min [8.0 IBU]
1 oz Amarillo hops (8.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min [7.2 IBU]
1 Whirlfloc tablet (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
2 oz Centennial hops (9.2%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min [11.5 IBU]
2 oz Amarillo hops (8.2%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min [10.2 IBU]
Post-boil:
2 oz Centennial hops (9.2%) - added immediately after boil
2 oz Amarillo hops (8.2%) - added immediately after boil
Yeast:
Fermentis Safale US-05 dry yeast* (36g recommended or make an equivalent starter)
Dry hop:
2 oz Citra hops (11.1%) - added to fermenter near end of fermentation, steeped 3 days
*If you prefer to use liquid yeast, Wyeast 1056 American Ale or White Labs WLP001 California Ale are excellent choices as they are the same clean fermenting Chico strain as US-05. You'll need ~470 billion cells or an equivalent starter.
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Notes / Process
- Add 500mg potassium metabisulfite to 20 gallons water to remove chlorine / chloramine (if required).
- Water treated with brewing salts to our Hoppy flavour profile: Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=50, SO4=275 (Basically Randy Mosher's ideal Pale Ale numbers with slightly less sulfate). For more information on how to adjust your water, refer to our step by step Water Adjustment guide.
- 1.25 qt/lb mash thickness.
- Single infusion mash at 152F for 90 mins.
- Raise to 168F mashout temperature and hold for 10 mins.
- ~90 min fly sparge with ~5.6-5.8 pH water (measured at mash temperature).
- Boil for 60 minutes, adding Whirlfloc and hops per schedule. Lid on after post-boil hops are added, start chilling immediately.
- Cool the wort quickly to 66F (we use a one-pass convoluted counterflow chiller to quickly lock in hop flavour and aroma) and transfer to fermenter.
- Aerate or oxygenate the chilled wort to a level of 8-10 ppm dissolved oxygen. For more information refer to our Aerating / Oxygenating Wort guide.
- Pitch yeast and ferment at 66-68F (wort temperature). We use modified stainless fermenting buckets in wine fridges.
- Add dry hops once fermentation is nearing completion (i.e. 5 points from final gravity) and raise the temperature to 70-72F. In our case we simply turn off the fermenting fridges and allow the beer to naturally rise to room temperature. Steep hops for 3 days while fermentation finishes. Assume fermentation is done if the gravity does not change over ~3 days.
- Before packaging you may optionally rack to a brite tank (we use 5 gallon glass carboys) that has been purged with CO2 to avoid oxygen pickup, add 1 tsp of unflavoured gelatin dissolved in a cup of hot distilled water per 5 gallons of beer, and allow to clear for 2-3 days. Gelatin may "round off" some hop flavour / aroma so we tend to skip this step with hop forward beers like this. As well, the less you handle the beer through racking and potentially expose it to oxygen, the better.
- Package as you would normally. We rack to kegs that have first been purged with CO2, and then carbonate on the low side (around 2 volumes of CO2) to minimize carbonic bite and let the hop and malt flavours shine through. We chill the kegs to near freezing while carbonating at the same time in a 6-keg conditioning fridge. After ~1-2 weeks at serving pressure the kegs will be carbonated and ready to serve. Like all hop forward beers this IPA is best consumed fresh so feel free to raise the CO2 pressure temporarily to 30-40 PSI to carbonate fast over a 24 period, and then turn back down to serving pressure. Some hop bits will have invariably made their way into the keg during transfer so we use a Hop Stopper Keg Edition filter to ensure that hops do not clog the dip tube and/or end up in the glass. Force carbonating at high pressure and using a Hop Stopper filter allows us to serve this beer 24 hours after kegging. There's no need to wait a few days for any hop bits that made their way into the keg to first settle out.
For detailed brewing instructions, see our Brew Day Step by Step guide.
Enjoy!
Questions? Visit our Electric Pale Ale forum thread.
Pictures / Videos
Interested in seeing what we're brewing right now? Follow us on Instagram for pictures and videos of our brewing activities as they happen.
6 hour slow smoked ribs and Electric Pale Ale. Perfect combo!
For more pictures and videos of our Electric Pale Ale search Instagram for #ElectricPaleAle.
