Santa Monica Pale Ale

Now that I'm living in Manhattan Beach, it was time to check out the local homebrew store and start a housewarming batch. I found Culver City Home Brewing not far away - nice fully stocked store where you can go in and measure out any ingredient you need for any beer. It's also the meeting place for a homebrew club known as Pacific Gravity - I'll be considering joining in the near future. I wanted to brew a lighter summer beer, so I picked up their Santa Monica Pale Ale kit and a brew kettle. Recipe below.

Malt Extract: Pale 6 lbs
Grain Bill: Crystal 40L 8oz, Crystal 10L 8oz
Hopping Schedule: Columbus (15.5%) 0.55oz 60min, Cascade 0.7oz 15min, Cascade 1.0oz 0min
Yeast: Safale US-05

This is my first use of dry yeast (not counting the doomed Cooper's kit). I pitched late last night, and when I woke up, the airlock was bubbling nicely. I'm also trying a new way to maintain consistent fermentation temperature at the advise of the brewer working at CCHB - I placed the carboy in a big plastic bucket of water. This should smooth out natural temperature fluctuations and allows me to get a more accurate temperature reading since the water temperature should match the brew temperature. If it gets too hot, I can throw some ice in the bucket. I forgot to pick up some Irish Moss, so the carboy has a bunch of crud settled in the bottom already and my final brew will likely be a bit cloudy. Looks like the pale ale will end up fairly dark too due to the use of LME. If the beer turns out fantastic, it may be worth re-brewing with some DME to lighten the color and tweak the flavor balance.

UPDATE:

Bottled 7/8/10. Left in primary for 3 full weeks. Seemed to stay cloudy for a long time and I wanted to secondary it to try and help it clear but it seems current homebrew knowledge suggests long primaries are best. Lets the yeast work magic on the leftovers and may clear the beer better than a secondary. FG is 1.017 which should give me about 4.38% abv. Tastes pretty good. Pretty sweet and malty and the nose is less than anticipated but I have high hopes for when it's carbed up. Think it's going to be a good summer beer.