“Love Spreads” Hazy Pale Ale is an all-grain recipe kit that allows you to homebrew this amazing collaboration between Track Brewing Co. and The Malt Miller. Designed and brewed by the team here at The Malt Miller alongside Matt Dutton, Head Brewer of Track Brewing Co., this recipe was crafted for the Love & Beer Festival on 14th September 2024—our joint beer festival with Jonny and Brad from The Craft Beer Channel. This beer is big, thick, juicy, and full of love! We’ve employed all of Track’s best techniques to get the most out of the wonderful selection of hops chosen for this beer, along with a malt bill that will shine bright yellow in the glass, delivering full satisfaction. You can check out video on this brew and learn from the team at Track in even more detail here.

Our malt bill for this beer is designed to be simple yet effective for the style. Extra Pale malt from Crisp forms the bulk of the fermentable sugars but with very low colour. This is then complemented by Thomas Fawcett’s Oat Malt, a favourite of Matt’s due to its performance in delivering haze and its locality to the brewery in Manchester. Now, this might seem unconventional, but we’re mashing high at 72°C! This will leave a significant amount of body in the beer after fermentation, giving us a final gravity of around 1.018–1.020. We’re also only mashing for 45 minutes. Track typically mashes for 30 minutes with an additional 30 minutes of recirculation, so on our smaller systems, 45 minutes should put us in a similar place after the mash period. You may want to consider how you recirculate your wort during the mash, as it’s important to minimise the oxygen introduced to the wort to preserve the low colour we’re aiming for.

Track aim for a mash pH of 5.4 for their hazy beers but they also correct the pH after the mash in the kettle. At around 95c they take a reading and adjust to 5.2pH.

Now, this is where things get even more interesting—we’re not doing a whirlpool! This technique comes directly from Track’s playbook. They’ve started using a method called a “Hot Dip” to add hop aroma and flavour at the end of the boil. This method works well with hop pellets but is particularly effective with flowable hop products. Since we’re using Mosaic INCOGNITO® by BarthHaas®  in this beer, it’s perfect for this process. The concept is simple: after the boil, transfer a few litres of uncooled wort—around 3-4 litres—to your fermenter. Then, slowly pour your packet of Incognito into the hot wort in the fermenter. It helps to warm the Incognito packet beforehand, either in a jug of very warm water or by resting it on the lid of your sparge water heater during the brew. When adding the Incognito, drizzle it over the wort rather than letting it all fall to the bottom at once. (PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ARE FERMENTING IN A PET FERMENTER SUCH AS A FERMZILLA OR BREWZILLA THEN THIS STEP CAN’T BE REPLICATED AS YOU WILL DAMAGE THE FV)

Once the Incognito is in the fermenter, transfer your wort as usual, using your preferred method to cool the wort before it enters the fermenter. Track has found that this method leads to much better efficiency of the Incognito, resulting in beers with much more hop saturation—even before dry hopping!

Pitch your yeast, WHC Saturated, at the usual temperature (around 18°C), and let fermentation go for 7-10 days or until you record the same gravity for two consecutive days. It’s a good idea to perform a forced diacetyl test at this point before moving on to the next stage. Then, cool to around 14°C, dump the yeast if you can, and proceed with dry hopping. Ideally, leave the hops in contact for no more than 48 hours. If possible, dump the hops from the cone and cold crash, continuing to drop hop matter for a few days before packaging.

As with all our hazy pale ales and IPAs, we recommend adding a dose of ALDC when you dry hop to ensure no diacetyl forms at this stage or later.

We also have included the option to add a vial of Clarity to this recipe, tick the box above if you wish to add this to your brew and create a beer which is Gluten reduced, making it suitable for many who suffer with Gluten Intolerance. Simply add this to your FV when you pitch the yeast.

“Love Spreads” will be available from us in our Indie Beer Fridge once it’s launched by Track. You can also try this beer at the Love & Beer Festival in September—get your tickets here

Ingredients Included

BESTMALZ Chit Malt
Thomas Fawcett – Oat Malt
Crisp Extra Pale Malt
Vic Secret – BarthHaas® Pure Hop Pellet (39 grams)
Galaxy – BarthHaas® Pure Hop Pellet (39 grams)
Citra T90 Pellets (51 grams)
Citra® – BarthHaas® LUPOMAX® – Pellets 50g (1 pack)
WHC Dried Yeast – Saturated – 11g Packet (1 pack)
BarthHaas® INCOGNITO® – Mosaic® 16g (1 pack)

Method

Beer Style (main): American Ales
Beer Style (sub): Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale
Batch Size: 23
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.018
ABV %: 5.5
IBU: 10

THE MASH
Temperature °C (Step 1): 72
Length (mins) (Step 1): 45

THE BOIL
Boil time (mins): 60

Hop / kettle additions and timing:

1.5g Citra @ 60min

Whirlpool / hop stand:

1 x 16g Packet of Incognito used for a Hot Dip. To achieve this, transfer 4l (apx) of wort after the boil with no chilling applied. Add the packet of Incognito to the FV directly into the hot wort and allow to disperse. Try to add slowly and thinly across the top of the wort to avoid the Incognito clumping and falling to the bottom of the FV. Now continue to transfer the wort in the usual method, applying your usual cooling method.

Yeast: WHC Saturated x 1 Pack
Fermentation temperature/steps: 7-10 day ay 18-20c – check final gravity is stable for 2-3 days in a row before dry hopping.

Dry Hop:

After you have hit final gravity and performed a forced diacetyl test which has been passed, you can then move to dry hopping. We suggest cooling your tank to 14c at before hand and then adding the dry hops. Track leave the hops in contact for 24 hours, due to the size of our fermenters we suggest 48 hours, then draw out the hops form the bottom of your FV if you can and cold crash to at least 4c. Over the coming few days draw out more hops which have been settling out. After a few days cold crash move on to packing your beer! We strongly recommend kegging for this style.