After the very successful Vienna WCIPA ran out faster than expected I needed a super quick keg-filler, so I whipped up this hazy pale, using a pale malt base, lots of flaked wheat and oats, some GNO that I had, and some chit.
Grain bill was:
- 4 kg (66.7%) — Voyager Craft Malt ATLAS
- 800 g (13.3%) — Flaked Wheat
- 600 g (10%) — Rolled Oats
- 300 g (5%) — Chit Barley
- 300 g (5%) — Golden Naked Oats
Hops where whatever I could scrounge up:
- 25 g (12 IBU) — Rakau — Boil — 15 min
- 25 g (16 IBU) — Strata — Boil — 15 min
- 50 g (3 IBU) — Rakau — Aroma — 15 min hopstand @ 75 °C
- 25 g (2 IBU) — Strata — Aroma — 15 min hopstand @ 75 °C
- 25 g — Amarillo — Dry Hop
- 25 g — Rakau — Dry Hop
- 5ml — Abstrax Galaxy Quantum 5mL is ~150g equiv. (CO2 Extract) - at packaging
Used Voss, pitched and fermented at 35c, it was practically finished at 24 hours, but I gave it 3 days at 35, then 4 days at -2c, dry hop went in while it was chilling and just under 20c so it got some time as it passed through the "ideal" 14-16c range.
Final colour is difficult to capture, but it's a very nice pale, good hazy, flavour is great, bright, sharp acidity, feels good in the mouth, dry but has some body, great mix of hops, carbonated slightly higher than I usually do which really fits. here is a picture as it was just coming up to carbonation, it's brighter and paler than the image really shows, and this picture doesn't show the head.
Do you ferment under pressure?
usually at least a little bit. this one was pretty much open, tiny bit of pressure from the kegs attached to the gas port.
generally once the krausen starts to drop I ramp it up to 10-15psi.but this time I manually gassed the fermenter up to 20psi at cold crash to get some carbonation started.
I like using pressure cause I use fermentation c02 to purge and sanitise kegs, so it's great having the kegs not only c02 purged for free, they are pressurised too! I take the unrestricted gas from the fermenter, into a keg full of sanitizer (gas port) then the liquid port of that goes to the gas port of another keg so when it starts producing c02 the liquid gets pumped out to the next one, only thing I have to remember is the final keg in the chain needs to be hooked up the other way to avoid dumping that sanitiser everwhere.. which I have done.. twice now.
I've been meaning to do that but it's a bit of juggling with the timing to have everything ready at the exact same time.
I've read there are clear benefits to yeast metabolism up to about 10psi. Anything above that has diminishing returns. But another added benefit as you mentioned is, of course, self carbonating. It's so much easier this way, lol.