The brew cycle: The extract Batches, batch #1

Here are my choices for the extract batches of the brew cycle.  These are the first three beers in the cycle.  And they build on themselves, and provide the foundation for the beers we are brewing later in the cycle.

Beer #1  American Pale Ale - 
Most beer lovers love a good basic american pale ale. And truthfully, they are really hard to make at a competition level.   But they are really, really easy to make when your goal is a good drinkable acceptable beer.  The hops hide any mistakes a new brewer might make. I always think a heavy handed beer is a good place to start, they are very forgiving.   So here is my recipe for an extract with specialty grain, pale ale.   This beer is however, fairly low OG.  So it should go from stove to glass in a fairly short period of time 4-5 weeks total.   I selected fermentis S04 yeast, also a quick finisher with high floculation.

NOTE:  if you can not do a full volume boil,  increase your hops.  You will not get full hop utilization with partial boil brewing.  Best way to do this is log on to brewtoad, create an account, and make a variant of "everyday pale ale".   go into the batch and boil section and let it know you aren't doing a full volume boil.   adjust your hops accordingly, we are shooting for 35-40 IBUs.  As an example I just calculated that if I could only boil 3.5 gallons of wort, I would need to bump the Warrior up to .6 to keep the IBUs at 35-40.