Recipe below provided by Aric Daul of the St. Paul Homebrewers Club, as seen brewed and enjoyed in this episode of Chop & Brew. As a scientist who works for the University of Minnesota, of course Aric named the beer Gopher Golden. (Go Gophers!)
The style is British Golden Ale (BJCP Guidelines), also known as Summer Ale, or British Blonde Ale. Think sessionable English pub ale meets American Blonde or Pale Ale. The beauty of the style is that it packs a lot of hop flavor in a fairly low-ABV beer (a very low 3.9% ABV in this case). The grist for this brew was a blend of MCI Stout Malt from Malting Company of Ireland and Crisp No. 19 Floor-Malted Maris Otter from Crisp Malting Company, both provided to us by RahrBSG. Leaning on English base malts with zero crystal or darker malts, the maltiness of the beer is foundational and flavorful but does not get in the way of the hops.
This style is typically fermented with traditional English yeast strains, but can also use a cleaner American strain. Since Aric has brewed the style several times before with English yeasts, he was game for trying something new. We opted for A15 Independence from Imperial Yeast. It’s an American ale yeast known as more characterful and less neutral than a classic Chico strain. Independence has some fruity, citrus-y esters that we thought would play nicely with the First Gold hops, also known for citrus flavors.
As you see in our brew day video, we did a 10-gallon split wort project. One mash. Two run-off worts. One — our British Golden Ale — we hopped with British First Gold hops and fermented with A15 Independence. The other half — our French Golden Ale? Is that a thing? It is now! — we hopped with French hops Barbe Rouge and Triskel (gifted to us by Hop France). Barbe Rouge is known for flavors of red berries, lemon-lime citrus, and green tea. Triskel is described as floral, sweet fruit, and even creamy/caramel. It was fermented with Imperial Yeast A07 Flagship, the lab’s Chico strain for very clean fermentation, which we chose so that the French hops would be the star of the show since it was our first time using this combination of hops. The hops in both batches were calculated to be similar total IBUs throughout the boil additions, and were also added as dry hops as noted in the following recipe write-up.
Below you’ll find information on both batches of this split wort project. Check out our episode for more brew day advice and tasting notes!
Gopher Golden | British Golden Ale (and French Hopped Cousin)
OG: 1.039
Ingredients
Malt:
MCI Stout Malt (55%)
Crisp No. 19 Marris Otter (45%)
British Version Hops:
First Gold (7.9%aa)
16 IBU at 60 min
10 IBU at 15 min
11 IBU at 5 min
Dry Hop
French Version Hops
Blend of Barbe Rouge (9.6%aa) and Triskel (4.6% aa)
16 IBU at 60 min
10 IBU at 15 min
11 IBU at 5 min
Dry Hop
British Version Yeast:
A03 Independence
French Version Yeast:
A07 Flagship
Process
Mash grains at 154-156F
Run-off pre-boil volume for your system.
Boil 60 minutes, adding hops per recipe.
Cool wort to lower 60s and pitch yeast. Keep ferment at or just below 64F.
Dry-hop in the fermenter towards the end of fermentation while some activity still happening.