A Hazy New England Pale Ale, sessionable and saturated with a massive hit of wonderful hops from both the USA and the New Zealand. Following a trip to Cornwall visit the pinnacle of craft beer here in the UK, Verdant Brewing Co., We’ve come back with not only some amazing videos over on our YouTube channel, but also an all-grain recipe kit for Sundialer. One of Verdant’s core beers, showcasing Motueka hops alongside Mosaic, Strata, and a little touch of Nelson Sauvin.

During our interview with James Heffron, co-founder and head brewer at Verdant, James described Sundialer as one of the beer recipes that he is proudest of. This is due to the way he approached building the recipe, featuring one of his favourite hop growing regions, New Zealand. So for us to be able to bring you this clone version of Sundialer is a very proud achievement, and we know you’ll love brewing and drinking this awesome beer!

Fermented with Verdant’s distinctive yeast strain from Lallemand, this recipe has a fairly typical grain bill for beers of this style. Oats and wheat to contribute towards that distinctive haze and mouthfeel, alongside a hopping schedule that allows the fully saturated presence of the hops to shine through. The area to start your work on building a beer that truly represents the commercial version of Sundialer is your water profile. We recommend targeting the same water profile as Verdant provided us for Sundialer:

Ca = 120, Mg = 2, Na = 41, Cl = 206, SO4 = 84
RA = -95.7 ppm as CaCO3
Alkalinity = -12 ppm as CaCO3

Ultimately though, when it comes to water, you’re going to be aiming for a soft water profile, so choose your preferred method to attain this, such as reverse osmosis or adjusting your source water to fit a soft water profile. Just be sure that if using tap water, steps are taken to remove chlorine, such as filtering the water or adding sodium metabisulphite.

The other area to note when brewing this recipe is how Verdant treats dry hopping alongside fermentation. Firstly, they focus on fully completing fermentation before moving to any form of dry hopping. The yeast will be pitched at around 18°C and allowed to ferment the wort until about half way through fermentation. Then allow the beer to free rise to 21°C and continue to ferment until terminal gravity has ben reached, allow to sit at this point for a full 48 hours. It’s key to perform a forced diacetyl test to check that your beer is clear of diacetyl. If not, then allow the beer to sit for a further 24 hours and check again. Following a pass on the forced diacetyl test, you can then move to dry hopping. Firstly, if you can, draw off yeast from the bottom of your fermenter until you hit clear beer, then cool the beer to 13°C. Allow it to stand at this temperature for 24 hours and collect more yeast from the bottom of the FV. The reason for this is that we want as little yeast in contact with our dry hops to avoid hop creep and further diacetyl creation. Now you can now add your dry hop addition and allow for 72 hours total contact time. If you can, bubble CO2 through the bottom of your FV a few times over this 72-hour period to increase the hops’ contact with your beer and enhance the hop saturation in the final product. If you are keen to completely avoid diacetyl, then we also recommend adding a dose of ALDC to the FV at the same time as you dry hop.

After the 72-hour contact time, start cold crashing your beer to as close to 0.5°C as you can. Also, at this time, start drawing off hops from the bottom of your FV as soon as you start your temperature drop. Draw the hops from the bottom a few times over your cold crashing period prior to packaging. This will remove hops from being in contact with the beer and make drawing them off easier over the cold crash period. After around 48-72 hours of cold crashing and once the majority of the hops have been removed, you can now move to packaging your beer!

Ideally, this beer will be best served from a keg, but you can bottle.

A few other brewing tips from James at Verdant, PH is a key area to monitor through the process if you can. Hitting a mash PH of 5.4 will make things a lot easier through the entire brewing and fermentation process. Don’t rush the beer production, especially during fermentation, this is where you’re going to make big gains in hop saturation and creating a beer which truly represents the original. Finally, whirlpool temperatures of sub 80c are ideal, Verdant aim for 77c. Once you are on the whirlpool stage you also need to consider contact time, Verdant do a 30min whirlpool and then it takes around 40mins to transfer the wort to the FV, on our smaller scale we can mimic this by allowing a further stand after whirlpool for around 20mins before you transfer to your FV, this can be increased or decreased depending on your speed of transfer from your brewing system.

Lastly, James’ advice it to make plenty of notes and listen to some great music whilst you brew!

You can learn even more about Verdnat’s approach to brewing by checking out our video on YouTube.

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Ingredients Included

TMM Rolled Wheat Flakes (Flaked Wheat)
Crisp Dextrin Malt
TMM Oat Flakes 20
Simpsons Malt – Finest Pale Ale Golden Promise®™
Nelson Sauvin T90 Hop Pellets (55g)
Strata T90 Hop Pellet (30 grams)
Motueka – Hop Revolution – T90 Pellets 100g (1 pack)
Motueka T90 Pellets – Hop Revolution (70 grams)
Mosaic – BarthHaas® Pure Hop Pellets (74 grams)
LALBREW® VERDANT IPA Dried Yeast 11g (1 pack)

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Method

Beer Style (main): American Ales
Beer Style (sub): Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale
Batch Size: 23
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.013
ABV %: 5
IBU: 29

THE MASH
Temperature °C (Step 1): 67
Length (mins) (Step 1): 60
Temperature °C (Step 2): 75
Length (mins) (Step 2): 10

THE BOIL
Boil time (mins): 60

Hop / kettle additions and timing:

9g Mosaic – First Wort Hop
11.5g Motueka – 15mins
17g Motueka – 5mins

Whirlpool / hop stand:

86g Motueka – 75c for 30min Whirlpool, then allow to stand for a further 30mins before transferring to FV.

Yeast: Verdant IPA – Lallemand – 1 Packet
Fermentation temperature/steps: 18c for 5-7 days, then allow to free rise to 21c for 2 days.

Secondary additions:

Perform a Forced Diacetyl Test once final gravity has been hit for 48 hours, then cool crash to 13c. Remove yeast from bottom of fermenter if possible when you start the cooling to 13c, then again 24 hours later. After this you can then add your dry hop dose of:

– 65g Mosaic
– 55g Motueka
– 55g Nelson Sauvin
– 30g Strata

At this stage, you can also add one of our single doses of ALDC if you have chosen to add one to your kit to prevent to formation of Diacetyl due to hop creep.

Allow 72 hours contact time, rousing if possible by pushing CO2 through the bottom of the FV. Do this at least twice over the 72 hour period. This will push the hops into suspension again and allow for further hop saturation to take place.

Once the 72 hour period of dry hop contact has taken place, draw the hops off the bottom of your fermenter. Again, if possible do this twice over a 48 hour period before moving to cold crashing your beer to. Once you have hit at least 4c leave to cold crash for 48-72 hours, again drawing off the debris that is collecting at the bottom of the fermenter.

After the cold crash period has taken place you can then move on to packaging your finished beer and carbonating.