Panhead APA (April 2023)

About This Beer

Fourth APA in the Panhead lineage. Direct re-brew of batch 30 (November 2022) — same grain, hops, yeast, mash, water profile, boil, and whirlpool. Two minor fermentation simplifications and a switch to dextrose for bottle conditioning. Marred by a malt pipe spill on brew day that lost meaningful volume.

The Malt Pipe Lesson

The defining event of this brew was a process mistake worth capturing.

During the sparge, Owen pushed down on the filter plate at the top of the Grainfather malt pipe — trying to squeeze more wort through faster, rather than letting it flow by gravity. The retaining clip wasn’t designed to hold against downward force; it gave way, the malt pipe tipped, and wort spilled.

Volume consequences flowed through the rest of the brew:

• Pre-boil came in 2 L under target (25 L vs 27 L planned)
• Post-boil 3 L under target (24 L vs 27 L) — Owen wrote a ”!” next to the 24 in the notebook
• Bottle volume 19.68 L vs 22 L planned — additional small loss at transfer (“split some”)

Lesson: do not squeeze the malt pipe. Let the sparge flow by gravity even if it’s slow. This becomes a foundational process rule going forward.

The OG came in 1 point over target (1.055 vs 1.054) — Owen had extracted the planned sugars before the spill, so concentration was right, just into a smaller volume of finished beer. Cost per litre rose from ~$3.23/L (at planned 22 L) to $3.59/L actual. Brew-day mistakes have a measurable financial impact on small-volume batches.

The Recipe — Identical to Batch 30

Grain Bill

5.8 kg total — same as batch 30:

• 4.8 kg Gladfield Ale Malt
• 0.6 kg Gladfield Light Crystal
• 0.4 kg Gladfield Medium Crystal

Hop Schedule — 300 g

Fermentation — Simplified

2 packets of Safale US-05 pitched at 19.5 °C. Single 10-day stretch (simplified from batch 30’s 5+5 split). Cold crash at 13 °C for 2-3 days.

Dry hop on day 5 from pitch: 50 g Simcoe + 40 g Centennial + 70 g Cascade.

FG hit 1.010 vs 1.012 target — slightly drier than batch 30’s 1.012. ABV 5.91 % vs 5.5 % target.

Packaging

130 g dextrose for bottle conditioning at 19.68 L = ~6.6 g/L dextrose (~5.6 g/L sucrose-equivalent).

Numbers — Hit Hard by the Spill

Lineage

• Panhead Supercharger Clone (December 2020 / January 2021) — batches 7 & 9, Owen’s first Panhead clones
• Panhead Supercharger Clone (November 2021) — batch 18
• Panhead Supercharger Clone (February 2022) — Pacific Jade/Mosaic variant
• Panhead APA (November 2022) — Owen’s consolidated template
• This brew — Panhead APA (April 2023) — direct re-brew of batch 30 with fermentation tweaks
• Panhead APA V2 (August 2024) — follow-up