It’s that time of year again. We take our homegrown hops, formulate a recipe, and brew it up. If you caught our live stream back on November 6th on YouTube, you saw us brew it. Let’s see how the 2021 Brew Dudes Harvest Ale turned out.

Happy harvest ale!

This Year’s Harvest Ale Recipe

Every year is a little different but we always use homegrown hops in our Harvest Ales. Here is the 2021 recipe:

Boil Size: 6.5 US Gallons 0r 24.6 Liters

Grain Bill

83% Rahr Pale Malt – 10 pounds or 4.5 kilograms
8% Special Roast Malt – 1 pound or .45 kilograms
4% Rahr White Wheat Malt – 0.5 pounds or .22 kilograms
4% Faucett Oat Malt – 0.5 pounds or .22 kilograms

Hops

All the hops used in this recipe were grown in my backyard and are of the Chinook variety

2.5 ounces or 71 grams – added as a First Wort Hop
2.5 ounces or 71 grams – added at 20 minutes to go in the boil
2 ounces or 57 grams – added at 2 minutes to go in the boil

Estimating 11% Alpha Acid content of these hops, that’s 77 Alpha Acid Units (AAU) peeps

Yeast

1 packet of Lalbrew Verdant IPA yeast

Extra Stuff

Campden tablet – added to the water before the boil

Whirlfloc tablet – added with 15 minutes to go in the boil

Notes and Stats

Mashed at 150° F or 66° C for 60 minutes
Fermented at 68°F or 20° C for 2 weeks

Starting Gravity – 1.051
Final Gravity – 1.011
Estimated ABV – 5.25%

How Did It Taste?

The beer appears pale amber in the glass with citrus pithy aromas. I was hoping I would get some peach notes in there but it was all my imagination. The flavor follows through with a strong grapefruit impression tied with a piney, resiny aftertaste.

The mouthfeel has this essence – it comes off as medium full, but it’s more of this softness coming from the specialty malts and the yeast which really sets it apart from other Harvest ales I have brewed.

The 2021 version is good. I think may have liked last year’s beer more. I am really glad I used the Verdant yeast. It really produced a nice American Pale Ale.

BREW ON!