Golden Ale Home Brew Recipe

Joe Postma is an experienced homebrewer with a passion for craft beer.  He guided beginners through the basics of homebrewing through a series of features in the Serious Eats “Homebrewing” column and developed craft beer recipes for homebrewers of every skill level.  

This extract recipe provides the basic building blocks of a tasty American Pale Ale. The 6-row pale malt provides a nice grainy character and the crystal provides some caramel sweetness and smooths out the mouthfeel. The hop schedule consists of two of the American classics and is designed to balance bitterness, flavor and aroma. This recipe is designed for the new homebrewer, and can be made with the most basic equipment setup. You can find dry light malt extract, crystal 20L malt, American 6-row malt, Cascade and Centennial hops and Safale US-05 yeast at any homebrew shop. You will need to have the grain crushed. Most homebrew stores sell pre-crushed grain or they can crush it for you on site.

I brewed this in my apartment kitchen. It fermented in a plastic bucket for 12 days at a temperature around 68°F. The finished product looks really nice in the glass. It's a cloudy pale-orange color with a dense white head, and leaves nice lacing. The nose has orangey citrus notes and a hint of caramel. The flavor follows the aroma; this is an easy-drinking pale ale with a little citrusy sweetness and a balancing bitterness.

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*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2, 000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.The defining traits of a Ukrainian golden ale are its golden hue, a relatively high ABV, and a smooth, sweet finish balanced by soft bitterness.

The Ukrainian golden ale sits somewhere between British golden ale and Belgian golden strong—stronger and less bitter than the former, yet without the yeast-derived flavors of the latter—and with a bit more body. A light touch of coriander is typical, while you have some room to play with the hop aroma.

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For much more about this style and why it deserves wider recognition on its own merits, see The Battle for the Fields of Gold.

Mill the grains and mash at 149°F (65°C) for 40 minutes; raise to 162°F (72°C) and rest for 20 minutes; then raise the temperature to 172°F (78°C), rest 10 minutes, and mash out. Recirculate until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle, sparging and topping up as necessary to get about 6 gallons (23 liters) of wort, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule; at flameout, add the coriander seeds in a small mesh bag. Chill to 65°F (18°C) and pitch the yeast. (If using liquid yeast, aerate the wort.) Ferment at 65°F (18°C) until Day 3, then raise to 68°F (20°C). Once fermentation is almost complete, add the dry hops. Once fermentation is complete and gravity has stabilized, crash to 32°F (0°C) and condition for 14 days. Package and carbonate to 2.5 volumes; if bottle-conditioning, store at room temperature for 2 weeks, then refrigerate and enjoy.

Malt: If you are going for a lower-ABV version, you can replace some or all of the pilsner malt with pale ale malt. You could also increase the crystal malt for more residual sweetness.

The Golden Child

Coriander: Many Ukrainian brewers add the freshly crushed seeds either at flameout or in the whirlpool, at amounts that vary from 0.1 to 1 gram per liter, depending on the seeds and individual preference. Coriander pairs nicely with citrus-forward hops in the whirlpool or at dry hop. The addition of coriander is optional, so feel free to experiment with your favorite spices or hops.

Yeast: We leave that extra body and sweetness in the finished beer by using a lower-attenuating British ale strain—one that doesn’t metabolize maltotriose. In lighter versions, a neutral American ale strain can also work.

Next Up: Ukrainian Golden Ale: The Battle for the Fields of Gold Ukraine has been on the minds of many people around the world for more than a year now—but that’s not why its national beer style deserves a spot in the global canon. Instead, let’s consider Ukrainian golden ale on its own merits.As a home brewer there is nothing quite as exciting as the weather warming up and the thought of all the beers you are going to make with the intention of sitting out in the garden, on the beach or the backyard and sipping on something thirst quenching. A pale and light beer.

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We are talking lawnmower beers, which is an American phrase I am particularly fond of. The idea is to have a highly quaffable beer that’s perfect for drinking after a day working in the sun. In this recipe, I’m calling it a Blonde Ale, sometimes I call it a Summer Ale and other times even a Pale Ale, I’m not all that interested in categorising.

I have the vision of a beer that is all about being drunk outdoors. I live by the beach so as soon as the sun arrives here in Cornwall I’m thinking about making the most of it a taking a picnic and more importantly a few beers. Drinking beer in this sort of environment calls for something easy drinking and refreshing, not a hop bomb or a dark beer.

Blonde Ale is technically an American beer style although you could say the beer style is just as common in the UK. The intention is to brew something crisp, refreshing and a beer that is a close reflection of a Lager or Pilsner. Blonde Ales are a little bit tricky to define more than that, it would seem to be an attempt more than anything else to brew a pale beer that will appeal to people who usually drink lager. I like to think of them more than that though I think they are a beer to encapsulate a feeling, mood or even a season.

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I come up with the recipe using the hops I had available and those just happened to be nice traditional varieties suited to lighter beers and lagers, Bobek and Perle. I want flavour from them though, more so than a typical Lager will deliver so the aroma additions are bigger and later.

The yeast I chose was Safale S-04, although this was more a case of having that around, the beer would be good with Safale US-05 although slightly less fruity. If you choose a liquid yeast a Kolsch yeast would be a good choice or for more flavour an English strain.

The malt bill is primarily Pilsner malt with a little dab of Maris Otter and Vienna for a maltier backbone than 100% Pilsner malt and a little bit of Carapils to aid head retention.

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This Blonde Ale is a combination of everything I try to aim for when brewing a beer. The first thing is trying to keep everything as simple as possible.

What I mean by keeping things simple is to only add what is necessary to achieve what you are aiming for in terms of flavour, colour and body. There is no point having 7 types of malt when 2 or 3 will do, the same with hops.

The second thing about this Blonde Ale is using up what you have. My advice is always use the freshest ingredients. If you have leftover ingredients stored away, try and use them as soon as possible. The last thing you want to do is have to throw away beer ingredients because they go stale or deteriorate.

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The beer turned out pretty clear with a lot of floral notes from the late addition hops. It has an almost tangerine quality and a very gentle maltiness. This beer like most of my beers now was bottled. Although bottling beer can be a chore the beauty is they can be taken out and that as I explained earlier is the purpose of this beer.