Fireman's Pail Ale

Ok, so I guess it is my turn to write-up one of our beers… It seems logical that the first beer I write up about is the first commercial brewing recipe I made, Fireman’s Pail Ale. So the story behind the Pale Ale is that I was a new assistant with Pennichuck finishing up my Siebel program when Damase and Phil approached me about creating the recipe for the pale ale. Damase reflected upon his first time working for a brewery and the brewer allowed him to create a recipe in order to kind of initiate him in the brewing industry. Damase felt compelled to do the same with me.

When designing the recipe for the Pale, I only had restraints on which hops to use. I was free to play with the malt bill, but the types of hops were already predetermined. This was a result of the recent hop crisis. We could only get our hands on Palisades and Argentinean Cascades. With this, I took it upon myself to create a Pale Ale that “I” would enjoy; pretty much ignoring some of the standards. Typically not a wise business decision, but it was my first recipe and I was going to do what I wanted :).

The malt bill consists of the typical two-row pale malt, kiln amber, caramunich, and caramalt. There is also a little bit of wheat. I wanted a beer with body that had a full malty taste. I didn’t want a simple two-row pale malt beer driven by hops. Some pale ales are essentially dumbed-down IPA’s. I’m not a hop head. I enjoy a malty beer. Appearance-wise, Fireman’s Pail Ale has a lot more amber color than most Pale Ales, but by BJCP guidelines, it falls right smack in the middle at around 9 SRM’s. As for aromatics, you will find that this beer has much more of a malt presence than a hop presence. The sweet, biscuit aromas are complimented by the gentle earthy hop aromas. As far as the hop aromas are concerned, we were all pretty shocked at how little hop aroma came through. Like I stated before, the hops were dictated, but we were allowed to use them in any fashion that we saw fit. We used the Palisade hops as the primary bittering hop during the boil due to its alpha acid content. The Argentinean Cascades were the aroma hops that were added at the end of the boil to give an “American” hop aroma (Grapefruit). We also decided to “Dry-hop” with the Argentinean Cascades. As the beer emerged from its fermentation, we quickly realized that Argentinean Cascades are nothing like American Cascades. The hop gave a real earthy hop aroma that you would find in typical English-style beers.

Hopefully you enjoy Fireman’s Pail Ale as much as I do. Let me know what your impressions are. Hopefully next time we can incorporate some of your comments.

James