Seeley Axe White Ale

You know me, i'm a sucker for anything that sounds odd. And lately, I've been trying to cut the flour from my diet.  In the May/June 2012 issue of  Zymurgy, there was an article about gluten free brewing. One recipe that caught my eye was Seeley Axe White Ale. Seeley Axe White Ale is brewed by Tim O'Leary at Kettlehouse Brewing Company in Missoula, Montana. (Satan and I spent the night in Missoula, but didn't visit their tap house.)

Here's the recipe:

Seeley Axe White Ale5 gallons
3 lbs Briess White Sorghum syrup
2 lbs brown rice syrp
1 oz maltodextrin
1 oz Nugget 13%/85 minutes
1 oz dried bitter orange peel/10 minutes
1 tbs coriander, crushed/10 minutes
1 oz Crystal 4%/0 minutes
Fermentis Safale US-05

Bring 1.5 to 2 gallons of water to a boil. Remove from heat, add the syrups and maltodextrine and stir to dissolve. Commence the boil adding hops and spices at specified intervals. After an 85 minute boil, turn off heat and add Crystal hops. Chill. Top up to 5 gallons and ptch yeast. Ferment at 68-70° F for up to two weeks.

I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a full wort boil, but two things made change my mind. First, a full wort boil would make this an extremely hoppy beer. A concentrated boil decreases hop utilization, and 13% alpha acids would give this beer, according to BeerSmith, almost 50 IBUs. Since this is to be spiced, I thought the spices might be more important than hops.  Second, it was 105° yesterday.  A concentrated boil will let me stay inside in the air conditioning.

The estimated OG was 1.048. I got 1.047.

I'd forgotten just how fast extract brewing was. I only had to clean a few things. A few small things. I even had time to go to Grape Juice in Kerrville.