ACKv4 (CLEMENTINE PALE ALE)

Intro

This was an updated version of ACKv1. I'd brewed a couple of variations that weren't quite as nice, and this time I went back to the core recipe with minor tweaks, aiming to show this off at the Brew Con London 2017 club night.

Since ACKv1, I'd upgraded my equipment, with a real mash tun and a larger fermenter. The new mash tun seemed to result in lower efficiency than the slow cooker (as the latter effectively does a continuous step mash), so I increased the amount of malt, oats, and dextrose to compensate. I was intending to fill two 5 litre mini-kegs, so doubled the ingredients from there.

I had to pick up oats at the last minute, and grabbed a 2kg bag of Mornflake superfast oats from my local supermarket. I'm not sure how these compare to malted flaked oats as I had used previously. I made sure to mix these in with the Maris Otter thoroughly before adding any water, to try to minimize clumping.

Method

Place all the malt and oats in the mash tun, mix thoroughly, and add water to cover, at ~70°C. Once covered, mix again with a mash paddle. After a couple of minutes, check the core temperature with a themometer, and itf below 62°C, add more hot water, draining the excess into a pan to be reused when sparging. Once the core temperature has settled to ~62°C, cover, and leave for 90 minutes. When the 90 minutes are up, heat up the excess (and any additional sparge water) to ~75°C, and begin sparging.

Bring the pan to the boil, and keep it there for ~30 minutes. Once complete, cut the heat and wait for the wort to cool to ~80°C. Peel the clementines (throwing the skin away) and place the sections into a muslin bag along with the Cascade, adding the bag to the wort. After ~90 minutes, remove the bag, add 250g of dextrose (dissolved in boiling water), and cool the wort down to 20°C. There should be ~10 litres of liquid with an OG of ~1.054 (per my dodgy hydrometer).

Siphon the liquid into the fermenter, oxygenate with a paddle, and pitch the yeast. Seal with an airlock, and leave for a week before dry hopping with 45g of Citra and 45g of Centennial. About a week later, fermentation should have finished, with an FG of ~1.005 SG. Add 60g of dextrose, mix, and siphon into bottles / kegs.

Notes

As with ACKv1, the clementine flavours came through, and mixed well with the hops. The bulk of the beer wasn't that thick, with all the oaty thickness having settled in the fermenter, and only making it into the final litre or so that I bottled. I'll probably up the oats to ~40% of the grist for ACKv5.

2017-11-13