As a homebrewer you sometimes need odd sized ingredients to make your brews. For instance if you only need 0.75oz of hops but you needed to buy a 1oz package what do you do with the remaining 0.25oz? Well after building up some “extra” ingredients over the course of a few months I decided to experiment a bit with what I’m calling a summer “leftover” ale.

Everything about this recipe was left over or harvested (in the case of the yeast) with the exception of the grain. For the grain bill I figured I would just keep it super simple and go with only 2 row. Here is the full recipe:

Beer Specifications

Beer Name: Summer “leftover” Ale Beer Style: Ale Recipe Type: All Grain Batch Size: 5.5 gallons / 20.8 litres Estimated SRM: 2.1° Estimated IBU: 23.3 Estimated OG: 1.044 Estimated FG: 1.011 Estimated ABV: 4.3%

Grain Bill/Fermentables

LBS Fermentables 8 2 Row

Hops

Oz Time Hops 0.75 60 min Fuggles 0.5 20 min Styrian Goldings 0.25 5 min East Kent Goldings 0.25 5 min Cluster

Yeast

# Yeast 1 Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast

Fermentation Schedule

21 days Primary 7-14 days Bottle Conditioning Optimal Fermentation Temperature: 57-70°F / 13.8-21.1°C

Place fermenter in stable temperature, out of the light.

Directions

Mash Temperature: 150°F / 65.6°C Mash Time: 60 min Strike Water Volume: 3.5 gallons / 15.9 litres Sparge Water Volume: 3 gallons / 11.4 litres Boil Duration: 60 min

As you can tell from the recipe this was a pretty straightforward affair. I ended up with a measured original gravity (OG) of 1.042. After letting the beer ferment for about 3 weeks I bottled it at which time I got a final gravity (FG) measurement of 1.006 for an estimated ABV of 4.73%.

The final product is actually pretty decent, even more so when considering I made it from mostly left over ingredients. That it is as rounded and well balanced as it is betrays the fact that I kind of just threw everything together to make it. It’s not the best beer by any means but it is certainly a very drinkable “lawnmower” style beer that goes down nice and easy on a hot summer day.