Recipe: Ale with Wild Hops

Time to experiment with the wild hops! I used the same pale ale recipe that I have used for others. I like it because it is on the darker side of pale ales.

This recipe is for a 5 gallon batch on my shoddy equipment. The mash is at 149ºF for 1 hour.

I would have liked more hops, to maybe try dry hopping as well, but this is the first year I found them and I could only harvest 2.6 oz (weight after drying). After trying a tea made with a few of the hops, I decided to treat them as dual purpose. This may have been a mistake but we will find out when the beer is ready!

Grains:

  • 12 lbs Pale Ale Malt
  • 1.5 lbs Carahell 10L
  • 1/2 lb Crystal Dark

Hops:

  • 1.0 oz at beginning of boil (60 mins)
  • 1.6 oz near end of boil (5 mins)

Yeast:

  • Safale S-05

The hops soak up a lot of liquid so the batch is smaller than usual. About 4.6 gal instead of 5 gal. Currently this batch is fermenting away nicely. End result should be about 7% ABV.