Brew Love Balter Xpa Clone.

I don’t know if its just me that has changed or did Balter Xpa on tap at the local change when the brewery sold out to CUB, who  then sold out to Asahi.  Have the accountants taken over and changed the recipe to something easier to mass produce ( read cheaper. ) or have my tastebuds just decided to change and chase more hops ?.

When I saw a Balter clone recipe come up on a brewing site, I thought I’d give it a go.

Its classified as an American Pale Ale and called an Xpa, the X stands for Extra  as in extra pale so I assumed Pilsner malt was the go. But.

Recipe for 18L

3.8Kg  American Ale Malt  I used Gladfield

0.8 Kg Wheat malt  cranked up to 1Kg ( see below)

0.2 Kg Cara Malt  I used Gladfield light crystal

0.2 Kg of German Carapils.  I didn’t have any and just threw in another 200g of wheat as I expect it was only for head retention anyways.

I actually did a double batch of this as I wanted to keep a fresh wort kit on hand so I could play around with the dry hops if the first didn’t work. so all the below hop additions were doubled too.

15g Citra  boil 60min so i used 30g you get it.

12g Centennial Boil 10min

12g Citra Boil 10min

12g Centennial Whirlpool for 15min at 80c

12g Citra in whirlpool 15min at 80c

Dry hop 10g Citra 10g Centennial and 17g Amarillo  Day 3  Which for me was just after High Krausen had settled

Normal mash and sparge which for me is 60 min at 67 Deg c and sparge at 74 c.

Fermented at 18 degrees and left for 3 days at no pressure just a blow off, and then dry hopped and pressure fermented for 7 more days at 10psi before cold crashing for 4days and kegged.

I used US05 on the first one and changed up to Verdant in the Fresh wort kit one a few weeks later and also dry hopped with 30g of Nectaron  in the second one,   cause why not?

Both turned out terrific at about 5.5% The second one just went on tap and the Misses loves it. ( but she says that all the time.)

I can do a recipe kit for this if anyone wants it or even a Fresh Wort kit if you want one, and are prepared to order and wait till its done as I don’t like to keep them in stock for too long.

Brew Love

Andrew.