We’re switching gears from brewing English low-gravity bitter to higher-strength American pale ales and IPAs.  Today’s recipe is inspired by Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewery in San Francisco.  Maris Otter pale malt is combined with some Belgian and English crystal malts.  Target and actual gravities were the same, at 1.054.  We bittered with Pacific Gem and the flavour and aroma additions were all last year’s harvest of the home-grown Cascade.

The pin of the Landlord clone was racked two weeks ago, so we vented it and it was very lively.  It took 4 hours before it was quiet enough to hard spile and store in the serving tank.  I got quite a heavy shower of beer in the face when I tapped it after 3 hours or so of venting!

The Palmer’s Best Bitter clone was racked to corny kegs after a week in primary.  Gravities were 1.014 and 1.015 and we dry hopped each keg with an ounce of First Gold plugs.