Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Beer

A light lager, from a recipe that Mike Williams and I made up one rainy day while working at the homebrew shop. I had just bagged 20 pounds of Northern Brewer hop leaves and wanted to try them in a light, hoppy beer. The title was inspired by my favorite album.

About two hours before you plan on making the beer, make a yeast starter. In a small pot, bring 2-3 cups of water to a boil. Dissolve in about one tablespoon of malt extract and boil for a minute or two. Put on the lid, remove it from the heat, and let it cool. When room temparature, put in a mason jar and add the yeast. By the time you're done making the beer, your yeast should be very bubbly and active. When recipe calls for you to pitch the yeast, pour the contents of the jar into the fermenter. This gives the yeast a head start, which reduces the probability of any undesireable organisms contaminating your beer.

Put malt extract and rice syrup in boiling pot with 1 gallon of water. Bring to a boil.

Add 1/4 of the boiling hops. Boil for 15-minutes.

Add 1/2 of Boiling Hops. Boil for 30 more minutes. Meanwhile, place 1/2 cup of Klages Malt (a.k.a. light barley) on a cooking tray, bake in pre-heated 300-degree oven for about five minutes. Note: make sure you have the smoke alarm turned off and the windows open, as the malt makes quite a bit of smoke when it's being toasted.

Add the toasted Klages Malt and the rest of the Boiling Hops and the Irish Moss. Boil for 12 more minutes. Add the flavor hops. Boil for three more minutes.

Remove from heat, cool, and sparge into fermenter. Add aromatic hops and enough water to make 5 gallons. Pitch yeast when about 80-degrees.