About once a year I take stock of all of the left over ingredients I have from the beers that I’ve been making and try to put together a nice simple summer ale. This beer is always different and forces me to try and be creative and to try combinations that I wouldn’t have otherwise attempted.
Beer Specifications
| Beer Name: | Summer “Leftover” Ale II |
| Beer Style: | Ale |
| Recipe Type: | All Grain |
| Pre-Boil Volume: | 6 gallons / 27.3 litres |
| Batch Size: | 5 gallons / 22.7 litres |
| Estimated SRM: | 2° |
| Estimated IBU: | 38 |
| Estimated OG: | 1.047 |
| Estimated FG: | 1.012 |
| Estimated ABV: | 4.6% |
Water Chemistry
| Tsps | Addition |
|---|---|
| 1 | Calcium Chloride |
Grain Bill/Fermentables
| LBS | Fermentables |
|---|---|
| 8 | 2-Row |
Hops
| Oz | Time | Hops |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | 60 min | Mosaic |
| 0.5 | 30 min | Amarillo |
| 1 | Whirlpool | Mosaic |
Yeast
| # | Yeast |
|---|---|
| 1 | Safale US-05 |
Fermentation Schedule
| 21 days | Primary |
| 14 days | Bottle Conditioning |
Directions
| Mash Temperature: | 150°F / 65.5°C |
| Mash Time: | 60 min |
| Boil Duration: | 60 min |
As you can tell from the specs above this version of the “leftover” ale is pretty straight forward, especially compared to the hop schedule of the first version.
I chose to mash at the middle of the road temperature 150°F / 65.5°C for 60 minutes.
After boiling my Original Gravity (OG) reading was 1.032 which was pretty weak but I didn’t mind too much. As a summer beer I was kind of looking to make something light and refreshing so this fit the bill. Plus I was hoping that the hops would really be the thing to carry the taste.
I let the beer ferment for just under a month before bottling. My Final Gravity (FG) reading came in at a perfect 1.000 which gave this beer an estimated ABV of 4.2%.
Tasting Notes
| Smell | The nose on this beer was actually quite nice. The mosaic hops from the whirlpool definitely came through and as a result you could almost be forgiven for thinking this was an IPA based on smell alone. |
| Appearance | Very light in colour if not a bit boring. Carbonation seemed in line with the whole summer beer thing I was going for. |
| Taste | Hoppy, but also a bit unbalanced and sort of bland. It’s definitely not bad and does go down easy on a hot day, it’s just that it seems to be missing… something. I think if I were to do this again I would add a little bit of specialty malt to the grain bill. Maybe even turn this into more of an amber ale or something bready to help balance the hops and low ABV. Still, considering I made this entirely with left over ingredients and some pretty old hops I’m not disappointed. |
| Yield | This brew cost $26.69 in ingredients to make and yielded 37x355ml bottles ($0.72/bottle) |
Do you guys ever do something like this where you try to put together a recipe out of nothing but what you have left over? I would love to hear about your success stories and of course the recipes!
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