Black Sheep Riggwelter

I managed to top crop quite a lot of yeast from the recent Landlord brew, so I thought I might put it to good use on a strong ale. I'm a pretty keen listener to the "Can You Brew It" show on the brewing network. In each episode show Jamil Zainasheff and his co-hosts attempt to clone a commercial beer. Despite my interest in the show, I haven't up to this point attempted any of the recipes they have come up with. I think this is probably because many of the recipes are for relatively strong beers with high original gravity. Unfortunately this doesn't agree very well with both my personal taste (I like to drink more than one a few pints at a time) and my equipment (Brew in a bag can become quite inefficient at higher OG). Because I'm just about to start upgrading the brewery quite a bit, introducing mash recirculation and other stuff, I thought I might push my current system to the limit and try to do a big beer.

Paul Theakston, Founder of The Black Sheep Brewery

Quite a while back I listened to the "Riggwelter" Can you brew it episode. For those who don't know, Black Sheep is quite a unique brewery. Though quite young, it occupies an interesting space between English microbrewers and larger brewers. The owner, Paul Theakston, is one of the famous Theakston brewing family. He decided to start his own brewery in Masham after the sale of Theakston's brewery in the late 80's by his family. This means that it is both a young innovative brewery, and yet is steeped in tradition. As an example, the brewery has several slate 'Yorkshire square' fermenting vessels, and exclusively uses top cropped multi-strain yeast from their own Yorkshire square system.

Modern 'Yorkshire Squares" at Black Sheep

Black Sheep Riggwelter is a strong ale, coming in at about 6% a.b.v. The
'Can you brew it" episode mentioned above features an interview with the head brewer in which he outlines most of the ingredients and techniques used in it's creation. The only slightly odd ingredient is a very tiny portion of roasted barley. I decided to leave this out as I didn't fancy asking my local home brew shop to add 1g of it to my grain bag order! The recipe which 'Tasty' McDole came up with on 'Can you brew it' is listed here on homebrewtalk.com. Mine is slightly adjusted for different efficiency and hop IBUs.

Black Sheep Riggwelter

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         5.57
Anticipated OG:          1.055    Plato:             13.67
Anticipated EBC:          47.8
Anticipated IBU:          36.0
Brewhouse Efficiency:       72 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 80.1     4.46 kg.  Pale Malt (Maris Otter)       UK             1.038      8
  8.9     0.50 kg.  Flaked Soft White Wheat       USA            1.034      4
  6.0     0.34 kg.  Crystal 80L                   USA            1.033    211
  5.0     0.28 kg.  Chocolate Pale Malt           UK             1.036    595

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 60.00 g.     East Kent Goldings                Pellet   4.30  36.7  60 min.
 25.00 g.     East Kent Goldings                Pellet   4.30   0.0  0 min.


Yeast
-----

To up my efficiency a bit I did quite a bit of mash stirring and also did a mash out, neither of which I normally bother with. A dunk sparge or something of that type would have helped too, but I didn't get round to it. I'm starting to realise that chilling is not all it's cracked up to be. It might make better beer (in certain cases) but it sure lengthens the brew day. By the time I had mounted it, hooked it up, flushed it and then figured out what was causing a big blockage (it was air), I had wasted a good hour or two. I am still learning on the job when it comes to pumps and brewery plumbing, and I think my issues today were mostly caused by having the plate chiller mounted at the same level as the pump. Next time the pump will be at the lowest point in the brewery, and I will keep the system primed with starsan until I need it. I ended up with only around 18L in my fermenter this time round. I'm losing about 3L to trub and hoses/chiller. I don't have a pickup tube on my kettle outlet, so I may look into doing something with this. I did try to strain the trub yesterday just to see how thick it is, and I could barely get any liquid through a regular baking sieve, so I'm probably recovering as much liquid as I am going to. Whirlpooling is hampered by the electric element protruding from the side of the kettle, though I do get a reasonable cone in the center.

In a way I'm actually quite pleased with how things went, as I adjusted my recipe to a 72% mash efficiency based on previous experience. I hit it pretty much bang on. My only mistake was underestimating losses to trub. At this OG and with BIAB I'm right at the limit of what I can produce while still getting a full 19L of beer for my corny kegs. As I move to more vessels I should have more flexibility in this regard.

The "Barkly Union" system

Here's what I'm calling my "Barkly union system" (I live on barkly street - get it?). I put this together because I got sick of cleaning up when my krausen overflowed the fermenter in my fermenting fridge. In the shop bottle is sterile water. This is the second time I've used this, the first being on the Landlord (which is nearly ready, watch this space). As I had hoped, it produced about 250ml of very clean yeast which has now been pitched to this batch. I'm hoping I might get some yeast from this too, but there is far more headspace so it may not happen. I'll just wash the yeast cake if I don't get a top crop. I think I'll just keep brewing something with the WY1469 every month or so if I can. It has produced some wonderful beers for me in the past, and they keep getting better!