Golden Ales aren't the most exciting beer but there's something fun in working with more subtle flavours to try to create something almost endlessly drinkable. With this one I'm following the lead of some English breweries. The Internet tells me that these kinds of beers are quite popular at the moment. The general theme seems to be: pale golden colour, 3.5-4.5% ABV, an English yeast and an American or New Zealand hop variety.
This is the perfect time to try out a hop variety that's new to me: Summer. It isn’t a brand new variety, it was developed right here in Tasmania in 1997 by Hop Products Australia. For a while it was called Summer Saaz as one of its parents was Saaz but now the Saaz seems to have been dropped and we have Summer. The description says that it has a balanced, sweet and fruity aroma of melon, citrus and passionfruit. It’s a fairly low alpha acid variety, this batch clocking in around 5.5%aa. In this beer I’m shooting for around 25 IBUs, enough to be there but not to steal the show. I’m after a decent hop aroma though, something surprising to people not used to craft beer but inviting at the same time.
Buck Mulligan Golden Ale (23L batch)
OG: 1.045
FG: 1.011
IBU: ~24 (this is a bit of a guess since most of the bitterness comes from the flame-out addition)
EBC: 7.7
ABV: 4.5%
80% Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner malt
20% Best Malz wheat malt
8 IBUs of Summer @ 10 min
50g of Summer @ 0 min
50g of Summer @ dry hop
Fermented with WY1026 @ 18 celsius
Water adjusted for a balanced profile and to get the calcium to a good place. 3g CaSO4, 6g CaCl2, 3g MgSO4.
Stepped mash: 66C (40 minutes), 72C (15 minutes) and a 78C mash out
22/11/13 - brewed with Huw's help
04/12/13 - dry hopped with 100g Summer instead of 50g since the yeast had stripped out almost all the hop character
07/12/13 - bottled
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