The Cascade hops growing in the backyard are almost entirely harvested, so now we can brew a pale ale using them. The recipe is based on Burning River Pale Ale from Great Lakes, using pale, crystal, biscuit and carapils. Hops are all homegrown Cascade except for a couple of ounces of Galena at 60 minutes to boost the bitterness. Twelve and a half ounces of the Cascade go in the boil, with the remaining four ounces reserved for dry hopping. Today was the first day that we used only the counterflow wort chiller since the water got hot in the spring. The ground water was 67 and by running the wort at about 3/4 flow, we reached low 70’s in the fermenters.

The Magic Hat #9 clone has had a week in primary, so we racked it to secondary. Gravities were good, right around the mid teens. Sampling them, the flavour is pretty mellow, which will be a good base for the fruit flavour to be added. We also racked the second half of the Black Sheep clone to the pin, with no dry hop.