Refugee From Melbourne Recipe
-----------------------------

Bryan L Bennett

Usually we print recipes that have won first place awards or are unique in
some other way. However, those are quite often  all grain brews. Here's my
recipe that earned a Silver medal and 40 points at the 97 Spring Thing.

    1#   Carapils
    8oz  Briese 40L Crystal
    3.3# John Bull Unhopped Light Extract
    1#   William's Australian Light DME
    14oz Munton's Light DME
    3oz  Pride of Ringwood (pellets, 6.9%AA)
    1oz  Cascade (pellet)
    1T   Gypsum
    1/2t Irish Moss
    Wyeast European Ale (1338) in a starter of 1/4c light DME in 600ml water
    1/2c Light DME (priming)

Steep the grains for 40 minutes at ~155F. Also steep 1.5oz of the PoR hops
at this time. This is a variation of the "First Wort" hopping method. (In
case you are unfamiliar with it, First Wort Hopping is a technique of adding
most/all of your bittering hops to the sparge. For extract brewers, like
myself, a variation is to add the bittering hops to the steep. These hops
are then left in the wort for the boil. The method is supposed to deliver
a smoother bitterness.)

Remove the grains, but not the hops, and bring to boil. Add extracts and
Gypsum. Boil for 60 minutes.

Add Irish Moss for final 30 minutes of boil.
Add 1oz PoR for last 10 minutes of boil.
Cool wort with chiller.
Pitch yeast at 67F and ferment 4 days at 65F.
Transfer to secondary and add final 0.5oz PoR hops. I put these hops in a
small bag to help keep them from getting buried under trub.
Allow to ferment another 2 weeks and then bottle.

The Gypsum and Irish Moss are for water conditioning and to aid in
clarification.

This is my basic Australian Pale Ale. For the Spring Thing there is no
recognized category for Australian ales, so I created an American Pale using
the following variation.

After 1 week in secondary I siphoned 1 gallon of the beer into a separate
fermenter, added the Cascade hops and left for 6 days before bottling.

Personally I think that the American version was overly bitter and that
the two hop types clashed. Luckily for me the judges did not think so. The
Australian variant has a much cleaner bitterness and a good hop character.