We picked up on beer brewing about a year ago. It was one of those rare weekends where we had nothing planned and wanted to do something different. Since then, we’ve brewed several batches of beer and have moved from extract to all grain brewing. With the supply of our summer cream ale dwindling, we started planning for another all grain batch. We had an extra vial of White Labs California Ale yeast left in the fridge from our last brew batch and decided to make a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone and use the yeast. Since the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is known for its crisp taste, we figured this would be a crowd pleaser around Thanksgiving.

We used an all grain recipe found on brewersfriend, along with some additional notes found on a northernbrewer forum.

Since our yeast has been stored in the refrigerator for a couple months, we prepared a yeast starter Tuesday night for the yeast to multiply. Our typical yeast starter recipe consist of:
4 cups of water
1/2 cup of dry malt extract (DME)
1 vial of liquid yeast

Using an old growler from Black Market Brewing Company as the yeast starter

We combined the yeast inside a sanitized growler once the water and DME combination came back to room temperature. It’s important to let the yeast acclimate to room temperature before pitching it in the water mix to avoid temperature shock for the yeast.

I picked up the rest of the brewing materials 2 days before brewing. In all, the recipe called for 10lbs of malt, 4 oz of hops and 1 vial of liquid yeast. Continue reading →