This is our first brew from Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Beer Making Book. The book contains recipes for small 1‑gallon batches, but does include changes for making a normal 5‑gallon batch.

This Grapefruit Honey Ale sounded terrific to have ready to drink in Spring and Summer.

Results

Overview

• Starting Gravity (actual)
  • 1.065
• Starting Gravity (expected)
  • N/A
• Final Gravity (actual)
  • 1.014
• Final Gravity (expected)
  • N/A

Being familiar with other brewing recipes, it was odd that this one didn’t include starting or final gravity numbers.  Maybe the target audience for 1-gallon batches doesn’t really care?  It’s just nice to have them as a rough guide.

When tasting the wort there was a noticable bitter grapefruit aftertaste (in a good way).

Brewing Notes

Timeline

• Brewed on
  • April 18, 2012
• Transferred on
  • N/A
• Bottled on
  • May 12, 2012
• Tasted on
  • May 19, 2012
• This was a confusing book because the recipes are for 1-gallon batches with only a small sidebar for a normal 5-gallon batch.
• We had to make many substitutions for available malts and to use up some hops that we already had on hand.
• We used 5 “small” grapefruits (instead of the ridiculously large grapefruits). The recipe only calls for roasting their peels.