The Pale Ale, first iteration

On August 23rd, the day we bottled the Amber ale, we brewed up a pale ale kit -- we didn't trust our knowledge enough to buy our ingredients separately, and anyway, Swoboda had been carrying the kit around for years, from Seattle to Pittsburgh to Minneapolis. And canned liquid malt extract doesn't go bad, right? Probably not. What follows is a transcription of the brewing journal.

8/23 -- 6:33pm
Starting Pale Ale Kit

6:58
Steeping grains in .5 gal water: 12oz crystal malt [no degrees specified]

7:06
Grain at 175 degrees

7:20
[this is what the journal says. Can't figure out exactly what it means] Started 1.5 gal w/ 6.6 lbs of Cooper's Light Malt [Extract]

7:27
Added .5 gal grain-steeped water

7:40
Malt and grain mixture begins boil

7:43
Hot break: added 1.5 oz Northern Brewer Bittering Hops (6.8%) [wish we knew what kind...]

8:25
Added finishing hops (1.5oz Willamette 4.1%)

8:30
Removed mixture from heat

10:00pm
OSG at room temp: 1.047

10:20
Pitch yeast [important side-note: we did not document the yeast variety because we didn't know shit about what we were doing. Tragic results. We'll get to that later.]

8/24 -- 5:00pm
Bubbling going strong

8/25 -- 1:00pm
Bubbling slows

8/28
Racked to secondary (SG 1.022)

9/9
Bottling (FG 1.019)

Interesting note: nothing in the journal indicates that we ever tasted this beer. Obviously that's not the case. In fact, we drank the hell out of it. But, as I recall, largely in order to free up bottles for more (hopefully) successful brews. As the SG readings indicate, the alcohol content of this beer was extremely low. We theorized like wild men about potential causes -- old malt extract? old yeast? wrong fermentation temp? -- but the taste was way off. Like the Amber Ale, this beer tasted super sweet -- unfermented fermentable sugar obviously remained. We were drinking, then, syrupy 3.2 beer. If we even managed 3.2% ABV. We fixed it eventually, but I'll leave that for another post.