Beer Forum

Hi

I'm looking to brew a very pale Citra Pale Ale without using Crystal Malt.

Anyone got a good recipe I could try?

Cheers

Take your favorite APA recipe.
Take out the crystal
Sub in the same weight in Munich or Vienna malt, and convert some of the base malt too
Hop it with Citra
In your software, calculate the hop schedule.
For 5 gallons, I'd aim for something like this:
2 oz at 10, 2 oz at flame out, and then figure out how much you'll need in order to bitter it with enough at 60 mins to hit ~38 IBUs. (The lack of crystal will increase the perceived bitterness, so)

HTH-

I'd do something like this:
8 lbs 2 row
2 lbs dark Munich
1/2 oz Citra @ 60 (you'll need to adjust this weight based on the %AA of the hops you get)
2 oz Citra @ 10
2 oz Citra @ 0
US-05 or WLP-001 or WYeast 1056
Dry hop with another 2 oz of

Another way to go is to mix the Citra with something like Amarillo, Galaxy or Mosaic. IMO, Citra by itself is kind of one dimensional.

I think you need to take a step back and look at why there is crystal in the recipe to begin with. The unfermentable sugars in the crystal serve to balance out the hop bitterness. Too much will obviously make the beer too sweet but you generally need some sort of unfermentables for that balance. If your goal is to get the palest beer possible, switch to using a 10L crystal malt or, along the same lines as BDawg suggests, go with with light Munich. You should be able to find that at about 20L. You need to have that malt backbone in there.

Also keep in mind that the crystal thing can be dependent on the gravity of the beer you are making. If you are brewing something in the 6-10% area, then you can get plenty of body and mouth feel with no crystal at all. If you are doing stuff in the 3.5-4.5 area, then the qualities that some crystals (various versions) can bring to the party will really enhance the fullness of the beer and keep it from being watery. You have to be careful with it though, you need to make it full but not sweet.

What they said. Also, if the reason for not using crystal is to make the beer more bitter then you need to consider your water profile. A teaspoon of gypsum in the mash probably won't hurt but can't say that for sure without knowing your existing water profile.

A 100% vienna malt pale ale an also be pretty tasty, IMO.

You should check out German carahell malt. At 10L, it is a different sweetness than American 10L. It almost provides a bit of nutty, toffee sweetness that helps to round out a normal base malt.