An Experiment In Brewing: Genever Pale Ale

NigelF went on a bit of a rant said
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Now I don't claim to exactly have a ton of time outside of the mediocre work I do around here, but I do have some time for hobbies. One of them happens to be home brewing. I'm not exactly hard core into it yet, but I feel pretty comfortable around my equipment and am slowly expanding my facilities. Unfortunately for now I am limited to doing partial-grain brews of the 5.5 gallon variety (due in no small amount to my current living conditions).

But I want to take my brewing in a different direction for a batch. In addition to beer, I have great fondness of gin. And, being a bit of history nerd, I was always fascinated with the history of the drink and it's genever roots. It got me thinking, could I possibly make a beer that carries forward the notes of gin's genever roots? What the hell, I'm going to try it, and you fine members of the community are going to help me from gardening tips to ingredient choices.

To start off here of the things that I have decided upon:

  • The beer needs juniper berries as an adjunct (duh)
  • The beer will be in the harvest style (I'll get to that soon)
  • Other adjuncts should be historical additions only (lemon, lime, grapefruit and bitter orange peel, anise, angelica root and seed, orris root, licorice root, cinnamon, almond, cubeb, savory, dragon eye, saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, grains of paradise, nutmeg, cassia bark)
  • The base beer should likely be an Imperial Red like Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale (to keep in line with the oude style of genever which is moderately malty, but still plenty of room for hops to accentuate the juniper flavor)

So the first part of the endeavor is the beer malts. From what I can tell, for an extract beer to work the total amount of grains should come in around 1-2 lbs. Then comes the extracts, 6-9 lbs total to bring the O.G. in line (1.075 min). Of course the extracts need to be balanced to keep the beer from going off the deep end into porter or stout territory. That brings us to the first two questions:

  • What would be a good breakdown within that range of commonly available grains?
  • What LMEs and/or DMEs should I use?

The target brewing date for this beer is middle of August so we have some time to plan but obviously that's going to depend on my horticulture... I will post other threads on the progress of my garden, the progress of other beers I might be brewing, and to discuss the other ingredients for this undertaking.