Full Suspension Pale Ale Clone (Lessons Learned So Far)

Well it's been a while since I've posted, and Kevin and I bottled our Full Suspension Pale Ale clone this weekend so I thought it appropriate to post.  The reason for brewing that beer was to test a couple of things we've learned over our first several batches and our process in general.  Basically, the first few beers had some common problems.

• The color was too dark for the style (our wheat looked like a brown)
• Some strong phenolic/medicinal flavors in the first 3 beers
• Carbonation was lacking (majorly)
• The taste was generally not acceptable to either of us

To start, everything we've done to this point has been extract with specialty grains.  We found that the color issues came from boiling our full weight of extract for a full 60 minutes.  Being that liquid extract is already dark to begin with and that we were only boiling 3 of our 5 gallons for the full batch, our wort would darken considerably more than we had hoped.  Add to this the fact that we were likely scorching some of it during the boil and you add up to some dark colored beers with unpredicatble results.

The phenolic overtones I think came from poor temperature control during fermentation.  It simply swung too much as the temperature changed throughout the day.  As an example, our Bitter Belgian sat anywhere between 64 and 72 degrees during primary!  What we likely ended up with was stressed yeast which led to the phenolic taste in our beer.  This was confirmed by judges at Siciliano's Annual Homebrew Competition when they judged the Irish Red Ale we submitted.

To carbonate the first three we attempted to make a wort with some dried malt extract and prime accordingly.  I used some rules of thumb found on the interwebs and found none of them to be terribly good.  The first three brews turned out painfully flat.  Some had no 'sprite' whatsoever when opened.  This of course broke our hearts.

 As far as the last point is concerned, we just weren't satisfied with our results, so we set out to learn more and move forward.  After much reading in brewing texts, magazines, and web research I stumbled on some clone recipes and we settled on a pale ale to try our hand at getting the color and flavor right.  I won't post the recipe here because it can be found on the BYO website.  Here is how we addressed our issues.

• Color - Using a combination of dry and liquid malt extract; boiling less weight for the full 60 minutes and adding the rest in the last 15 to pasteurize; we will likely only work with pale or extra pale extracts as a base going forward and using specialty and adjunct grains to supplement flavor and color.
• Phenolic notes -  We are building our own fermwrap with a temperature controller and moving the primary fermentation to my nice, cool Michigan basement.  I will link to another site later with some info on how to do this for those who are interested.  This will allow us to hold the temperature consistent throughout fermentation and achieve better control of our flavor, especially with respect to styles that favor certain esters found in particular temperature ranges.
• Carbonation -  We have done our homework and will actually calculate down to the hundredth (.01) of an ounce the amount of corn sugar required to prime for a given volume of CO2.  We are also taking in to consideration the ending fermenation temperature and the residual disolved CO2 already present in the beer as to not over or under carbonate for a style.  We have been researching how to better prime with wort, but we'll get back at that once we build some confidence with this method.
• Taste - Well, to deal with this issue we'll just have to simply brew more beer!

On to the clone!
At bottling time the color was a nice straw to golden color.  It had sat in secondary dry hopping for 5 weeks (Kevin was in Ireland; I was lazy) so it had plenty of time to clear up.  It is easily our clearest looking beer to date.  The 5 weeks of sitting on an ounce of columbus pellets lent nicely to a strong, spicy hop aroma.  The taste of the beer at bottling was spicy, hoppy and slightly warming.  We came in right around 4.6% ABV, so it's a little heavy to call a session pale, but I think 2 or 3 is not a stretch on a warm summer day.  Neither of us detected much in the way of yeast or phenolic notes, so we're happy about that as well.

Once the bottle conditioning is complete and we've had a chance to evaluate one I'll post a review.  Happy brewing!

Respect Beer.  Drink Only the Exceptional
-Mike