🍺 Top-down Brew: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone

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Variation for a steeped specialty grain plus malt extract version:

Codes and format:

Target volume

Enter the desired volume at the end of the boil. The volume units can be either liters, gallons, or US barrels.

Measurement Units

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Mash Efficiency

Enter the anticipated mash efficiency percentage. If this is not known, try the following values based on the sparge method: Steeping (50%), No-sparge or brew-in-a-bag (65 to 75%), Batch sparge (80%), or Continuous (fly) sparge (85 to 90%).

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Results

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Notes

This clone is based upon a homebrew recipe from the Sierra Nevada web site. The recipe is adapted from the original notebooks of Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman. This recipe eventually became Sierra Nevada's flagship pale ale.

Unfortunately, the recipe lacks some information: original gravity, grain weights, and IBUs. The present recipe uses the IBU value (38) from the commercial version. The original gravity is estimated from the final gravity provided on the web site (2.8 °Plato or 1.011SG) and the ABV (5.6%) of the commercial beer. Plugging these into a rearranged ABV formula yields an estimated OG: 5.6/131.25 + 1.011 = 1.054.

Sierra Nevada advocates for using use hops in whole cone form and this recipe specifies whole cones. An amber color of 10 to 12 SRM is recommended. The yeast should be an American ale "Chico" strain.

The hops in the recipe from the web site will yield 50 to 60 IBUs, which is much more than the 38 IBUs from the commercial recipe. Feel free to bump the overall IBUs up to 50 or 60 if you want to go big or be more true to the recipe from Sierra Nevada's web site. This is accomplished by editing the ibu line to be ibu: 60.


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