I just bottled a North American Pale Ale, (Treewhale Pale) which is a style typical of the region that western separatists usually call Cascadia, and found very little elsewhere. This version is a deep copper, with a strong Cascade Hop aroma and flavour. I am less impressed with the head retention that I have seen so far, but who knows, that may get better. It was also a little chunky going into the bottles due to the single stage fermentation. It may not be a medal winner, as it is up against stiff competition in that category, but I'm sure it will be good enough to drink. I happened to chance into a couple of dozen empty bottles that took me over the top in terms of my bottling capacity, which I had expected to require me to drink another dozen or so beers prior to bottling.
Now I am pondering the next brew. I am thinking of a mash-extract California Common Beer, and do half the batch as a blueberry, that way I can enter one beer in two categories in the competitions this year. Also, I added a spice tea to a few bottles of my cider, so that I can enter it as two ciders as well. This is all in response to the call for each member of the Edmonton Homebrewer's Guild to enter at least three beers for competition this year. This way, with my Hefeweizen, my Pale Ale, and my ciders, I can make one more beer, flavour half of it blueberry, and enter a total of 6 times, all with making only one more beer this competition season. I think that this is a pretty good way to start, since this will be my first competitive season. If nothing else, I will make the better brewed beers seem good by comparison.
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3 comments:
See, what you really need to explain is how your so-called "pale ale" can be a deep copper in colour.
This is a common question amongst beer neophytes. A pale ale was originally a style brewed in England and Belgium in the 18th century, and it was distinguished from the other two dominant styles of beer at the time in England by its paler colour. Those styles were porter, which was a deep brown almost like Guinness Stout, and Mild ale, which was a dark brown much like Newcastle Brown Ale. THe plae ales of the period were pale in comparison to the foregoing beers. When compared to modern pale lagers such as Molson Canadian, Budweiser, and Pilsner Urquel, they seem dark, but one must remember that when the pale ale style first gained popularity, pale lagers were over 100 years away from becoming possible, and 150 years away from becoming commonplace.
The North American Pale Ale style is an americanized version fo the classic British style, and as such, it draws its name from that style, despite the notable differences in hopping and attenuation, as well as the malt character derrived from using north-american grains.
And, for that metter, having held it up to the light, Jenn and I have agreed that it is more of a pale-copper than deep copper. Still darker than coors, though.
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