Brewer's Best Imperial Pale Ale

Brewer’s Best Imperial Pale Extract Recipe Review

Brewer’s Best is one of our top-rated homebrew stores. Brewer’s Best describes this ale as “a 5-gallon extract beer-making ingredient kit modeled after big, bold West Coast strong ales.” I bought this recipe kit on Amazon for $49.50 and free shipping via my Amazon Prime account

The recipe kit included:

Fermentables: 6.6 lbs. Light liquid malt extract (LME) and 3 lbs. Light dried malt extract (DME)

Specialty Grains: 8 oz. Cara Brown, 8 0z. Biscuit, and 4 ozs. of Carapils

Hops: 2-packs of 1 oz Columbus pellet hops, and 1 oz. of Cascade pellet hops

Yeast: Apex Cultures San Diego dry yeast

Other Additions: Priming sugar, a Whirlfloc tablet, and 60 bottle caps

This is a higher gravity beer:

IBUs: 65 – 69
ABV%: 8.0% – 8.5%
OG: 1.081 – 1.085
Color: Deep Amber

The brew day is relatively simple. Start with 2.5 gallons of water in your brew pot. Once the temperature gets to 150 degrees, steep the grains using the included muslin bag for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat and keep the temperature range for steeping the grains between 150 and 165 degrees. Do not let the temperature go beyond 170 degrees, as that will leach tannins into your wort. Remove the grains and let the bag drip back into the kettle. Do NOT squeeze the bag!

Bring your water, now called a wort, to a boil. Remove from heat and completely stir in both the LME and DME. Once the wort is back to a boil, add 1 oz of the Columbus pellet hops. Be watchful for a potential boilover when it comes back to a boil and when you add the first hops.. After 30 minutes, add the other 1 oz pack of Columbus pellet hops. After 20 minutes, add 1 oz. of Cascade hops and 1/2 of the Whirlfloc tablet. I also add a yeast nutrient, which really helps energize the yeast, especially a higher gravity recipe like this one. After 10 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the kettle from the heat. Total boil time is 60 minutes

Now it is time to chill the wort as fast as possible. I put my kettle in an ice bath in my kitchen sink. I also have 3 1-gallon jugs of distilled water in my refrigerator. I usually add one to the kettle to help reduce the temperature even faster. Once the temperature cools down, I pour it into my fermenting bucket, pitch the yeast, attach the cover with the airlock, and put it into a dark place.

Optimal fermentation for the Apex San Diego yeast is 65 to 68 degrees. It can handle temperatures ranging from 60 to 75 degrees.

I rarely rack into a secondary fermenter for ale recipes. I just keep an eye on the airlock. After the bubbling has stopped, or dramatically slowed down, I let it sit for an additional week to clarify. Then we move on to packaging day!