Brewing: California Sunshine Ale #1 and #2

The results are in. Howard and I's first outing with brewing was a modest success. We cracked open our first beers with Matt Smith and Cory Logan, whose considerable brewing expertise informed a lot of my beer-making decisions.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.

California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.

All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.