Vintage Hop (2007) Pale Ale

Once early voting was completed, and a celebratory lunch at Natty Greene's was consumed (8.5% Imperial Pilsner to be released on Halloween by the way), it was back home to set up the equipment in the driveway. "What equipment?" you may ask? Why let's brew some beer and smoke some meat.

Guests to our humble abode inquire as to the beery selections made available to them. Let's see...smoked porter, honey molasses porter, Gordon Lightfoot Porter, porter porter porter. Lighter styles are sometimes asked for, and sadly there are times those requests cannot be honored. So a lighter beer, a pale ale, was brewed to satisfy the masses.

"Vintage Hop?" you may ask? One of the ingredients was the last gallon freezer bag full of Cascade hops from the 2007 harvest. This was thrown into the kettle at flame-out. A "prepackaged kit" was purchased at Triad Homebrew Supply, so no dry malt was used. Rather, two cans of liquid malt extract were included. Sometimes the liquid, if it's old, can impart an off-flavor, but the kit purchased had new labeling on it, so if it's new to THS, it's new inside the kit.

The goods:












The malt extract is in warm water on the stove until needed to assist in the pour. When cold, it's thick and hard to remove from the can. Brewing went well...outside of forgetting to turn on the cold water hose for the heat exchanger! Gah! So the first gallon transferred over just as hot as it was in the brew kettle. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The scary addition of some unsanitized ice cubes through the carboy neck and the luck of a chilly 45 degree evening helped bring down the temperature better. (The additional 4 gallons sufficiently cooled via the heat exchanger did not bring down the temp of that first boiled gallon at all.) Fermentation kicked off as usual by the morning, so any thought of bacterial infection from the dirty ice should be erased. I hope.