Birra Corvo Steam Ale

Background

This recipe was originally loosly based on Charlie Papazian's The Sun Has Left Us on Time recipe in the New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Changes over the creation of three batches resulted mostly from the fact that real Steam Beer uses Ale yeast at lagering temperatures. Since I live in Texas, lagering temperatures are difficult for the non-obsessed homebrewer to maintain. This recipe makes for a very good first batch of homebrew.

Ingredients

8 lbs Pale Malt Extract

1/2 lb Crystal Malt

2 oz. Northern Brewer's hop pellets.(boiling)

1 oz. Cascade hops(final)

1 packet of Windsor dry ale yeast

Algorithm
Put Crystal Malt in a grain bag and put it into a pot containing 1.5 gallons of cold tap water. Apply heat until the solution reaches around 160F and remove the grain bag, squeezing as much of the malt juice out as possible. Bring the remaining wort to a boil and as boiling commences, add the malt extract. Now, add the two oz. of Northern Brewer's hop pellets taking great care not to let the wort boil over onto your stove. Stand over this bubbling brew stirring and cogitating for fifty-eight minutes. Now add the 1 oz. packet of Cascade hops, boil for another two minutes and remove the heat. Prepare the primary fermenter by adding three gallons of chilled water into your plastic five gallon bucket. Chill your wort down to just under ninty degrees using a wort chiller or ice bath. Strain the wort into your primary fermenter and take a temperature and specific gravity reading. For me, the O.G. at 76F was 1.048. Pitch your yeast, close up the primary and wait for the excitement. After a few days, give your beer a look and decide whether it's time to go from the primary to the secondary. I racked to the secondary after three days. My secondary is a five gallon glass carboy. After ten more days, activity had ceased and I bottled at a F.G. of 1.020. I used 1 1/4 cups of pale dry malt extract boiled in a pint of water for my primer. Yield, around 60 12 oz. bottles.
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Last updated Oct. 30, 1996