Beer Recipe: “Meiko” Belgian Pale Ale

About 10 batches ago, I brewed a beer modeled after Flying Dog’s “Raging Bitch” Belgian IPA, mostly following a recipe given on the Jamil Show podcast on The Brewing Network.  It turned out really well; friends claimed it was better than the commercial version, but I suspect they just wanted more free beer.  This summer I thought it would be nice to have an easier-drinking pale ale version.  Its named after our new cat, Meiko, who we got about the time this was bottled (and they are surprisingly similar in color).

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Beer Recipe: “JuniPA II” Juniper Pale Ale

This is a recipe loosely based on an extract brew I made a while ago before converting to all grain.  It features an ingredient I really love- juniper berries.  They are far more “berry” and far less “gin” than you might think, and make a very interesting addition to many beer styles.  As you’ll read below, this is a good brew, but didn’t quite capture the magic of the original recipe.  But, I think I know how to fix it in the future.

Beer Recipe: “JuniPA” Juniper Pale Ale

This was a beer born after listening to a podcast or two about brewing sahti, a traditional Finnish beer which frequently uses Juniper or similar evergreen sprigs in the mash to flavor the beer.  I happened to have the much less resinous and more mild juniper berries already in my spice cabinet from some sauerbraten I made a while back, so I decided to use the rest for a beer.  I went with an American pale ale base so the berries could really come out and not get hidden behind too much malt or hops- I really wanted to see what they would do in the beer.  This is one of my older recipes just before I made the transition to all grain and water treatment, so this is a partial mash recipe.  I’ll soon be making an all grain beer based (loosely) on this recipe. [UPDATE: Here is the all-grain JuniPA post.]