Brewday - Best Bitter 10/05/2012

During the spring and summer months my work begins to hot up, so opportunities to brew can be few and far between. It's important to fire up the brewery when a window appears, and as I've had some work cancelled due to the appalling weather, that's today.

I'm revisiting my standard English Best Bitter that I've had problems with since switching the late hop from Styrian Goldings. This time I'm going to have a crack with a higher alpha hop, Aurora, sometimes referred to as a 'Super Styrian'. The remainder of the ingredients will be the same as before.

Best

Special/Best/Premium Bitter

Type: All Grain	Date: 10/05/2012
Batch Size (fermenter): 50.00 l	Brewer: Mark
Boil Size: 62.65 l	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 90 min	Equipment: Elite Brewery
End of Boil Volume 55.12 l	Brewhouse Efficiency: 73.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 50.00 l	Est Mash Efficiency 77.4 %
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 8700.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 95.0 % 460.00 g Crystal Malt - 60L (Thomas Fawcett) (118.2 EBC) Grain 2 5.0 % 32.00 g Whitbread Golding Variety (WGV) [6.80 %] - Boil 75.0 min Hop 3 12.3 IBUs 30.00 g Progress [7.50 %] - Boil 75.0 min Hop 4 12.8 IBUs 20.00 g Aurora [8.10 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 5 4.4 IBUs 1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 6 - 30.00 g Aurora [8.10 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 7 0.6 IBUs
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.042 SG	Measured Original Gravity:
Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG	Measured Final Gravity:
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.2 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol:
Bitterness: 30.0 IBUs	Calories:
Est Color: 12.7 EBC

As always, nothing seems to go exactly to plan when I'm rushing in the morning. My strike temperature was a little too high, so I had to add some cold liquor to the mash to get the temperature down. It's still at the higher end of the range around 69C (156F) and the mash is now a little thinner than usual, but we'll see what happens. The pH was 5.2

I'm going to split the batch into two and ferment one with US-05 and the other with WLP007. I'll be interested to compare yeasts and see what the pair bring to the table.

Dry Hopped Cousin

It may not have been good enough to feature in the Bristol Beer Factory Homebrew competition, but my American Brown Ale has a cousin. A dry-hopped, cask conditioned version.

I tapped it yesterday and it was the first pint pulled through my new, twin beer engine.

The dry hopping has made such a difference to this beer. I'm a hard man to please and while this isn't my best beer, the dry hopping has definitely lifted the flavour.

Many of my brews are re-brewed, but normally with a slight change to the hop or malt schedule, to get them just where I'd like them and this beer is no different. I'd do things slightly differently next time; get the gravity down a bit and the hops up, but I'll definitely have another crack at it.

There is a downside to the cask, too. Once tapped, the cask will not fit into either of my temperature controlled fridges, so it has to be drunk at the ambient temperature in the garage. With temperatures a bit below the norm for this time of year, it's being served at around 8C which is definitely a tad chilly. By the time I reach the end of the pint it's noticeable that the flavour has improved, but with temperatures likely to rise over the next couple of months, hopefully this will not be a problem for future brews.

Like many of my recent beers, the head retention isn't great, either, and that's something else I'll have to work on.

I took pH readings at various points through the brewing process on my latest brew, which may help in this respect.

Mash: 5.5
Sparge Liquor 5.9
First Runnings 5.2
Final Runnings 5.9
Start of Boil 5.5
End of Boil 5.2

The mash pH was a little high, but otherwise the figures look acceptable. I'll be interested to see how this beer fares once it's bottled and conditioned. In the meantime, I'm looking to brew again next week and I'll endeavour to get the readings for the mash and the liquor a little lower.

Brewday - Session Bitter 27/04/2012

Since brewing the American Brown, which incidentally didn't feature high in the Bristol Beer Factory competition , I've brewed another batch of my Citra Pale Ale. It was bottled last week and I'll report back. Until now I'd say it's probably the best beer I do.

Although the Brown Ale wasn't a knock-out, I do have some in the cask waiting to be tapped. And this one was dry-hopped with Columbus, so I'm hoping it might have a bit more about it then the bottled version.

On then, to to the next brew. This will be a session beer based on the recipe for my regular English Best Bitter. For this brew I'm looking to get the gravity down to 1.042 to make it really drinkable and I'm changing the late hop from Styrian Goldings to Nugget. I've seen a few recipes using Nugget as a bittering hop, but not so many for aroma. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

The recipe is shown below, although it's subject to slight change as I'm a bit low on Crystal Malt and might be a bit shy of the required amount. I'll substitute any shortfall with Carahell.

Brewday is pencilled in for Friday 27th.

Session Ale

Type: All Grain	Date: 27/04/2012
Batch Size (fermenter): 50.00 l	Brewer: Mark
Boil Size: 62.19 l	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 90 min	Equipment: Elite Brewery
End of Boil Volume 56.16 l	Brewhouse Efficiency:
Final Bottling Volume: 50.00 l	Est Mash Efficiency
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 9000.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 93.8 % 450.00 g Crystal Malt - 60L (Thomas Fawcett) (118.2 EBC) Grain 2 4.7 % 140.00 g Wheat Malt, Bel (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 1.5 % 35.00 g Progress [7.50 %] - Boil 75.0 min Hop 4 14.5 IBUs 35.00 g Whitbread Golding Variety (WGV) [6.80 %] - Boil 75.0 min Hop 5 13.1 IBUs 15.00 g Nugget [15.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 5.9 IBUs 1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 7 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.042 SG	Measured Original Gravity:
Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG	Measured Final Gravity:
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.2 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol:
Bitterness: 33.5 IBUs	Calories:
Est Color: 12.6 EBC

What's Killing My Head?

I’m losing my head.

It’s not gone unnoticed that several of my recent beers have lacked much in the way of head retention. And it’s not due to lack of condition, as the bottles have been nicely primed and pour with a decent head when serving. The problem is that it dissipates rather quickly and I’m not sure why this should be.

As far as I’m aware, very little has changed in my procedure. I do lubricate my sparging arm from time to time and have swapped to a food grade lubricant, so if anything, I’m presuming this should help matters. 

I know I can add adjuncts to assist with the head, but some of these beers are recipes I’ve done before and they’ve been fine previously. Same yeast and all.

My beer glasses are not subjected to the dishwasher either. So what’s killing the head? Could it be cleaning residue in the brewery? Residue in the bottles prior to bottling? If anyone has any bright ideas, please let me know. It’s doing my head in.