West Coast Pale Ale

Last Friday Luke and I brewed a West Coast Pale Ale, which is pretty much defined by being more amber colored than a typical pale ale. So into the mash tun went a bunch of pale malt and some caramel 80. This is a darker caramel malt than I typically use in a pale ale, but that's the effect you're going for with this style. Pretty simple malt bill.

I wanted this beer to feature a new hop variety (well, new to this brewery), Columbus. This is a high alpha acid West Coast hop. The description from Hopunion:

Originally bred for its alpha value, it has also
become popular for its oil profile. Great for dry
hopping.

This last sentence would prove to be a beer saver. It turns out that when my last hop order was shipped they neglected to include the bag of Columbus. I didn't realize this until brewday because they were listed on my email order confirmation and I assumed they were in the box. They of course were not, so it was time to adapt.

I had wanted to use the Columbus in a couple of addition for bittering and aroma, but substituted Cascade as a first wort hop and Cluster for some additional bittering. Amarillo and more Cascade went in for flavor and aroma. This is all fine but I had really wanted this beer to be something different, not more of the same.

So the solution will be to dry hop the heck out of it with Columbus, which are supposed to, finally, be on their way.
I'll let you know how it turns out.

2112

Yes I'm a Rush nerd, but that has nothing to do with the title of this post. That honor goes to the yeast of the month - Wyeast 2112. I'm sipping right now on a pint of St. Croix Crossing Steam Beer and admiring the smooth  malty roundness you get with this yeast. That's not to say that it leaves a lot of sweetness. The finish is fairly dry, and leaves plenty of room for the palate cleansing hop bitterness of this beer.

Seeing that this yeast is amazing, we decided to use it in another beer. Last Monday, Memorial Day, we brewed an Amber Lager with Pale Malt, Bonlander (a 10L 2-Row Munich malt from Briess), and Caramel 60. It was hopped with 4 additions of Mt Hood and only Mt Hood. The brew day went off without a hitch and the beer had a starting gravity of 1.053, which was right where I wanted it. We'll be fermenting it cooler than we did the Steam beer to try to get a more traditional lager character out of it. I'll let you know how that works out.