So many things went horribly wrong this brew day. But hey! That is expected when you have a completely new system, isn't it? The biggest thing that went wrong is that I think I got saniclean instead of star san, even though the bottle was labeled star san. I only realized this when I started to cool the wort, so there was not so much to do about it. I was also not able to measure the OG, the hydrometer was really big so it stranded in the pot and in the bucket, and I had forgotten to buy a measuring glass. I also don't know how many liters that went down into the fermentation bucket, it was not labeled! This I can measure afterwards, but since I don't know the OG it is not so relevant anyway. I also forgot to buy calcium chloride, which I wanted to add to the mash to bring out a malty backbone. The final thing that went wrong is that I am waiting for a new bottle of star san, so the beer has been in the fermentation bucket way longer than I would have liked to (now 10 days).

The new BIAB setup!

Lets discuss the design of this recipe. I wanted to create a beer with moderate alcohol (4,5% ish) with the typical new England pale ale "juiciness". Recently, I have become a huge fan of beers with moderate alcohol. Maybe its me getting older? But if I pop a 7% beer on a weekday, I can cleary feel it in the morning after. One of the things I will aim for with my brewing is to create a light colored and hoppy house beer. I am not sure whether to call it pale ale or IPA. This is my first atempt at this.
These days, I like to keep my recipes simple, especially the malt bill. When designing your own recipes its often easy to get excited about the descriptors of the malts and if you are brewing something flavorful, you want to throw all that goodies in there! However, if done wrongly this usually muddles all the tastes up. In this beer I used Maris Otter as the base malt, hoping that a slightly more robust base malt will prevent the beer from being too thin. Further, 13% flaked oats to fit the style and to add smoothness to the body of the beer, and finally 5% carafoam to add some body without contributing to the color. With the hops, I went El Dorado as the main hop as I am curious about its qualities as it is described as big tropical fruit and jolly ranger aromas! Since this beer is all about the hops, I wanted to compliment the El Dorado with some Simcoe, which is one of my favorite hops with its, to me, pineapple and pine aromas, and some Amarillo.   

New England Pale Ale
Date: 04-12-2016

Batch Size: 11 liter
BIAB water: 15 liter
OG: ??  (1045 estimated from BeerSmith!)
Bitterness: 33 IBU
Est. Alcohol: 4.5%
Efficiency: ??

Malt
82% Maris Otter (1.9 kg)
12% Flaked Oats (300g)
5% Carafoam (120g)
Mashed at 68°C for 1 hour.

Hops
60min:
5g Simcoe (10.5%)
Hop Stand:
20g El Dorado (12.8%)
10g Simcoe (10.5%)
10g Amarillo (8.9%)
Dry Hop (added day two):
30g El Dorado
15g Simcoe
15g Amarillo

Yeast
Wyeast London Ale III

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 See this post for tasting notes