I’ll be brewing a my favorite pale ale this weekend, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone I call “Snagtooth Pale Ale”. I typically use White Labs WLP-001 yeast on this beer but this time I’ve decided to try a cheaper alternative, Fermentis Safale US-05, which has good reviews and is supposed to be the same yeast.

I’ve also adjusted the hop bill slightly. The original recipe called for an ounce of Perle, 0.4 ounce of Magnums, and an ounce and a half of Cascades for boil hops. I’ve removed the Perles and put the full ounce of Magnums. I adjusted this because most all of the flavor and smell constituents are boiled off leaving only the bittering agents during the boil. One ounce of Magnums will still produce 40 IBU’s of bitterness, just slightly more bitter than the 37 IBU’s from Sierra Nevada.

I’ll add more to this post after brew day!

EDIT: April 5, 2015

Looks like I forgot to add a little bit more on my thoughts regarding changing the hop schedule on Snagtooth Pale Ale. I like it! For some reason the bitterness imparted by the Magnum hops tastes cleaner to me. My last batch had a fair amount of diaceytl in it while this one does not. Magnums do taste better than the Pearles that they replace.