Rye Cooter Pale Ale

I’m a big fan of Nelson Sauvin hops, and especially enjoy Widmer Brothers Nelson IPA and Alpine Nelson (when I can get them). Naturally I wanted to try to make one myself.

I decided on a Rye Pale Ale, since I particularly like the nose and taste of the spicy rye and winey Nelson. I settled on the following 10 gallon recipe:

	2.00 tbsp	PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60 min)
	20 lbs	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
	8.0 oz	Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)
	1 lb	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
	2 lbs	Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM)
	5 lbs	Rye, Flaked (2.0 SRM)
	1.0 oz	Citra [12.0%] – First Wort Addition
	1.0 oz	Nelson Sauvin [12.0%] – Boil 60 min
	1.0 oz	Citra [12.0%] – Boil 20 min
	0.50 tsp	Irish Moss (Boil 10 min)
	2	Yeast Energizer (Boil 10 min)
	10.0 oz	Nelson Sauvin [12.0%] – Steep 15 min
	2 vials	California Ale V (White Labs #WLP051)

I mashed in with about 38 quarts of water and held the mash at 154° for about an hour maintaining the temperature with my RIMS setup. I then stepped the temp up to 168°, and sparged with about 30 quarts of 168° water from my HLT, collecting about 13.5 gallons of wort. I also added 1 oz. of Citra pellets before the boil started.

Once I had a roiling boil, I added 1 oz. of Nelson pellets, with another oz. of Citra after 40 minutes.

At 50 minutes, I added half a teaspoon of Irish moss and two White Labs Servomyces capsules to the boil.

After a 60 minute boil, I turned off the flame, used a sanitized stainless steel spoon to start a whirlpool, and added 10 oz. of Nelson pellets, using a technique called “hop-bursting”. I normally use a stainless steel hop spider to help contain my hops, preventing a lot of it entering the fermentor. Since I was trying something new, I removed the spider and let the hops do their magic for about 15 minutes while I prepped my two carboys.

I then ran the hot wort through my trub strainer, through my plate chiller, and into my shiny new stainless steel carboy, as well as a 7.5 gallon sanke keg outfitted with my sanke fermentor kit. This was my first use of both of these, so I was very interested in seeing the outcome.

After oxygenating the wort and pitching a vial of White Labs WLP-051 California V yeast into each fermentor, I placed them into my converted chest freezer, and set the temp to 68°.

After about a week the bubbling had stopped, so I took a reading, and the result was about 4.5% ABV, right in the range I was expecting. It tasted great, so I let it sit for one more week, and then bottled it. It’s sitting in my “bottle bomb shelter”, right now, and in about a week will be ready to drink.