Brewing beer is fun! Especially for specific occasions. While summer is more of a "season" than an "occasion," it's full of opportunities to bust out a light, refreshing, easy drinking, ale. Like cookouts, birthday parties, corn hole tournaments, camping trips, late night fires, mid day cold snacks, late afternoon post yard-work refreshments, fishing trips, you name its. And these are just to name a few. If we took the time to make a list of all of the occasions that were appropriate to enjoy in the company of a cold beverage, there'd be an excuse to drink a beer every dayl

Full recipe details are below, and here's the brew day video:

Summer Ale Recipe Ingredients

This is an all-grain beer, and by it's nature it's a bit more complicated than an extract beer. However, the grain bill and mashing procedure are about as simple as it gets:

• 6.5 pounds (3 kg) - English Pale malt
• 2.25 pounds (1 kg) - Pilsner malt

We're using Cascade and Amarillo hops in this beer;

• .5 ounces (14.2 grams) - Cascade @ 60 minutes
• .75 ounces (21.3 grams) - Cascade @ 30 minutes
• .75 ounces (21.3 grams)- Cascade @ flameout
• 1 ounce (28.4 grams) - Amarillo - dry hop

Brew day hop additions

We went with a dry yeast on this one:

• 1 package - Nottingham Yeast

Mashing

We mashed for 60 minutes at 152F (66.7C), while recirculating wort through the grains.

Mashing in

Recirculating wort during mash

Fermentation

This one fermented at room temperature 70ish F (21.1 C) for 1.5 weeks.

Finishing and Kegging

We decided to dry hop this beer with Amarillo. Here's what hopping and kegging looked like.

We felt like there was just something missing with this beer, so we decided to dry hop it.