A Special Bitter

My first brew of 2013 proved to be a disaster, with my element blowing at the first hop addition. The situation was rescued (again), by ripping off the insulation and bringing the pot inside onto our cook top, which luckily has a high powered gas ring.

This is the third time I've blown one of these elements, and I'm done with them. I'll be purchasing a gas burner as soon as I can get my hands on one. I'm finding it harder and harder to find the time to brew, so anything which interrupts a brew session really hurts.

Anyway, the recipe is a new one, though familiar looking in some ways. It's a special bitter from perfectpint.blogspot.com . Apart from a sub of Willamette for Fuggles, my recipe is identical, yeast included. To get the hard water profile required I needed 2.5tsp gypsum, 1tsp Epsom salts and 0.75tsp Calcium chloride.

I had planned to chill this one on the plate chiller, but having to bring the pot inside was quite enough lugging around for one day, so I didn't lug it back out to do the chilling, I just no-chilled in a cube after the 15 minute hop addition (which became a flame out addition). I saved 2L of wort in an Erlenmyer flask and when pitching the yeast 2 days later (a 1L starter of WLP006), I boiled this 2L, turned off the flame and steeped the Styrians in it for 10 minutes before adding it to the main batch. This is a method from AussieHomeBrewer that I've tried before with limited success, but I was a bit stuck for ideas on Saturday so I'm trying again.

With the decision to change to gas comes another decision - do I double up on batch volume? I haven't decided yet about this. I'm usually quite sorry to see the end of a batch, and there are a lot of people about who drink my beer (I actually didn't get to taste a recent batch it disappeared so quickly). At the moment I'm inclined to do it, but that could change.