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.
Showing posts with label bitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bitter. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Baritone Bitter V2
Hot on the heels of the Landlord I made over the weekend, I diving straight into a hopefully improved version of my recent baritone bitter. This was a beer inspired by cask bass, with a heavy dose of Northern Brewer hops. Besides being far too bitter, I felt that there were a few other areas ripe for tweaking.
First, I'll say what's not changing. The water treatment, a 'burtonizing', and the yeast, WY1028 will stay the same. These were two of the more successful elements of my first version. The malt bill is only slightly modified, going to 6% simpsons medium crystal, up 1% from the last version.
In the hopping schedule I'm dropping the early hopping back to 10g of Northern Brewer, from 15g previously. This beer is no-chilled, and the flameout additions are 20g of Northern Brewer and 20g Williamette. I'm calculating the flameout additions as a 20min addition because of the no-chill, and altogether this brings my total IBUs to 26ish, from 34ish in the previous version. In fact I think I somehow ended up nearer to 40ish in the previous version. The williamette should also help to flavour the hop palate a bit. This was quite pleasant but a little monotone last time round.
Recipe:
First, I'll say what's not changing. The water treatment, a 'burtonizing', and the yeast, WY1028 will stay the same. These were two of the more successful elements of my first version. The malt bill is only slightly modified, going to 6% simpsons medium crystal, up 1% from the last version.
In the hopping schedule I'm dropping the early hopping back to 10g of Northern Brewer, from 15g previously. This beer is no-chilled, and the flameout additions are 20g of Northern Brewer and 20g Williamette. I'm calculating the flameout additions as a 20min addition because of the no-chill, and altogether this brings my total IBUs to 26ish, from 34ish in the previous version. In fact I think I somehow ended up nearer to 40ish in the previous version. The williamette should also help to flavour the hop palate a bit. This was quite pleasant but a little monotone last time round.
Recipe:
Bass A ProMash Recipe Report Recipe Specifics ---------------- Batch Size (L): 22.50 Wort Size (L): 22.50 Total Grain (kg): 4.21 Anticipated OG: 1.044 Plato: 10.95 Anticipated SRM: 13.2 Anticipated IBU: 25.9 Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 % Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes Grain/Extract/Sugar % Amount Name Origin Potential SRM ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 93.0 3.91 kg. Pale Malt (Maris Otter) UK 1.038 3 5.9 0.25 kg. Crystal 80L USA 1.033 80 1.1 0.05 kg. Roasted Barley (Simpson's) UK 1.029 685 Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon. Hops Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10.00 g. Northern Brewer Pellet 9.00 13.2 60 min. 20.00 g. Northern Brewer Pellet 9.00 8.9 20 min. 20.00 g. Willamette Whole 4.30 3.8 20 min. Yeast -----
WY1028 London
Water Treatment
---------------
0.75tsp CaCl2 2.5tsp CaSO4 1tsp MgSO4
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Bass
Irish people know Bass as a weak, tasteless red kegged/canned beer. This was certainly my experience of it. Our infamous taoiseach Bertie was a big fan, but was alone in his Bass preference from what I could see. When I first got interested in beer, around the time of that trip to Newcastle Upon Tyne (see the Landlord entry for more on that), I began to realise that Bass meant different things to the English than to us. The Bass available in Ireland was usually in a can and brewed in Belfast. When I ended up in a cosy roadside inn outside of Newcastle the day after my first cask ale (Landlord), it was Bass that mine host had put on the handpump.
The difference was quite remarkable. This Bass had depth of flavour, many interweaving aromas and esters, with a dry finish. I'm still grateful to whatever hand was guiding me around my first 'Real Ales', as both the Landlord and the Bass were unforgettable brews, and my memory of the taste of each is as keen now as then.
I haven't before tried to brew it, and really this brew is more of a Bass inspired beer than a clone. I'm using Wyeast 1028, which is called 'London Ale', but is allegedly the Worthington White Shield yeast. This was pointed out to me by Will over at perfectpint.blogspot.com. I was going to try to get my hands on White Labs 'Burton Ale', but it may be the case that this is not from Burton at all, but rather Henley on Thames, and is in fact the same as WY1275, which I have had a patchy relationship with. Anyhow, if 1028 really is the white shield yeast, it should work really well for this beer.
For hops I'll be using Northern Brewer. I think they should give this beer a really unique hop presence, woody and earthy, and should be reminiscent of the Northdown/Challenger hops which I believe are the actual Bass hops. The third defining aspect of this beer will be the water profile. I'll be bumping up the sulphates quite a bit. The profile will be loosely based on Randy Mosher's Ideal Pale Ale profile, with the sulphates dialled back slightly from that. I'm aiming for about 110ppm of Ca, 280 SO4, and around 50 Cl.
Maltwise, I'm going for a 95% Maris Otter, 5% Medium Crystal bill. I'll add a little roasted barley for colour, as I want this to be a darkish orange heading for red. Why do I want this? I dunno, just do. This will be the second beer put on my new handpump, after the Beamish, so it's got about 3-4 weeks to mature if we go easy on the Beamish.
We won't go easy on the Beamish though.
The recipe is a mix of the Wheeler "Brew your own real ale at home" recipe, a "Brew your own" magazine recipe, and some adjustments by me based on experience.
Recipe:
3.91Kg Simpsons Maris Otter
0.21Kg Simpsons Crystal Medium
0.05Kg Simpsons Roasted Barley
15g Northern Brewer 9%AA @60mins
30g Northern Brewer 9%AA @Flameout
yeast nutrient and koppafloc @ 10mins
No-Chill
Target OG 1.043
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I brewed this last night, having set the timer on my pot to have my water up to strike temp when I got home from work. Everything went quite smoothly until it was time to transfer to my cube - part of the no-chill process. I was using my oldest cube, and while sealing it up I felt a distinct warm sensation on my left foot. The cube had cracked about half way up one of the sides and wort was squirting out onto my shoe.
I've been brewing a lot lately and all of my other cubes were full. I made a snap decision to keg the Beamish I brewed last week and use its cube for the Bass. This made sense as the Beamish had finished fermenting within three days and is to be served as a 'real ale' on my handpump. I was aiming to turn the Beamish around quickly, though not as quickly as it ended up.
Having cleaned and sanitised the Beamish cube, I transferred the Bass clone from the leaking cube with the loss of about a litre or so of wort, not too bad and I should still be able to fill a keg with a little left over.
Fermentation for this one is:
0.5 packet of WY1028 London Ale into 500ml of wort
When finished transfer into 1.5L of wort
When at high krausen transfer to main batch.
I lost quite a bit of efficiency here, and my Ph was a bit low (5.3 at room temp). I suspect a relationship between those two things. I may need to adjust Ph up a bit when using so much sulphate in future. I still hit all of my numbers by judicious use of my refractometer.
The difference was quite remarkable. This Bass had depth of flavour, many interweaving aromas and esters, with a dry finish. I'm still grateful to whatever hand was guiding me around my first 'Real Ales', as both the Landlord and the Bass were unforgettable brews, and my memory of the taste of each is as keen now as then.
I haven't before tried to brew it, and really this brew is more of a Bass inspired beer than a clone. I'm using Wyeast 1028, which is called 'London Ale', but is allegedly the Worthington White Shield yeast. This was pointed out to me by Will over at perfectpint.blogspot.com. I was going to try to get my hands on White Labs 'Burton Ale', but it may be the case that this is not from Burton at all, but rather Henley on Thames, and is in fact the same as WY1275, which I have had a patchy relationship with. Anyhow, if 1028 really is the white shield yeast, it should work really well for this beer.
For hops I'll be using Northern Brewer. I think they should give this beer a really unique hop presence, woody and earthy, and should be reminiscent of the Northdown/Challenger hops which I believe are the actual Bass hops. The third defining aspect of this beer will be the water profile. I'll be bumping up the sulphates quite a bit. The profile will be loosely based on Randy Mosher's Ideal Pale Ale profile, with the sulphates dialled back slightly from that. I'm aiming for about 110ppm of Ca, 280 SO4, and around 50 Cl.
Maltwise, I'm going for a 95% Maris Otter, 5% Medium Crystal bill. I'll add a little roasted barley for colour, as I want this to be a darkish orange heading for red. Why do I want this? I dunno, just do. This will be the second beer put on my new handpump, after the Beamish, so it's got about 3-4 weeks to mature if we go easy on the Beamish.
We won't go easy on the Beamish though.
The recipe is a mix of the Wheeler "Brew your own real ale at home" recipe, a "Brew your own" magazine recipe, and some adjustments by me based on experience.
Recipe:
3.91Kg Simpsons Maris Otter
0.21Kg Simpsons Crystal Medium
0.05Kg Simpsons Roasted Barley
15g Northern Brewer 9%AA @60mins
30g Northern Brewer 9%AA @Flameout
yeast nutrient and koppafloc @ 10mins
No-Chill
Target OG 1.043
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I brewed this last night, having set the timer on my pot to have my water up to strike temp when I got home from work. Everything went quite smoothly until it was time to transfer to my cube - part of the no-chill process. I was using my oldest cube, and while sealing it up I felt a distinct warm sensation on my left foot. The cube had cracked about half way up one of the sides and wort was squirting out onto my shoe.
I've been brewing a lot lately and all of my other cubes were full. I made a snap decision to keg the Beamish I brewed last week and use its cube for the Bass. This made sense as the Beamish had finished fermenting within three days and is to be served as a 'real ale' on my handpump. I was aiming to turn the Beamish around quickly, though not as quickly as it ended up.
Having cleaned and sanitised the Beamish cube, I transferred the Bass clone from the leaking cube with the loss of about a litre or so of wort, not too bad and I should still be able to fill a keg with a little left over.
Fermentation for this one is:
0.5 packet of WY1028 London Ale into 500ml of wort
When finished transfer into 1.5L of wort
When at high krausen transfer to main batch.
I lost quite a bit of efficiency here, and my Ph was a bit low (5.3 at room temp). I suspect a relationship between those two things. I may need to adjust Ph up a bit when using so much sulphate in future. I still hit all of my numbers by judicious use of my refractometer.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Fullers ESB, and another element failure
I'm a regular listener to the brewing network's "Can you brew it" show with Jamil Zainasheff. I have a lot of time for Jamil, mostly because of his book "Brewing Classic Styles". Everything I've brewed from that book has been a complete success, and I've learned a hell of a lot just working through the recipes. "Can you brew it" provided the recipe for the Black Sheep Riggwelter I brewed quite a while back. This wasn't a complete success, mainly due to under-attenuating yeast which left me with a sickly sweet 1.018 FG. Still I could see that the recipe had the potential to be really good.
My next "Can you brew it" recipe is Fuller's ESB. There were actually a series of shows on Fuller's beers, and one conclusion the guys came to was that you need to do a parti-gyle brew, and stick to a somewhat anarchic fermentation schedule in order to accurately nail this beer. I'm not going to go quite that far, although the "Brew in a bag" system is essentially a no-sparge technique, meaning that my wort will be similar to the first runnings from a parti-gyle. I have adjusted the numbers from the show a little, as I wanted a slightly lower OG - though increased efficiency means I ended up two points higher than I was aiming anyway. I have subbed some of the hops too, magnum for target for the bittering addition I don't think will hurt much. Subbing extra EKGs for challenger for the final hop addition will undoubtedly change the character of the beer, though I think the dry hopping will probably dominate over any potential changes from this.
I brewed this yesterday, and about 5 minutes after mashing out I had more element woes. No harm done but I how have a plug in RCD which is completely shot. I won't go into detail about this, but it meant I had to rip the insulation from my pot and carry it inside to my cook top. Luckily for me the big burner on our cook top is well able to get a rolling boil going with 26ish litres of wort, so the beer should turn out ok.
Here's the recipe:
Chilled to 20 degrees and pitched with a generous quantity of washed yeast from the Rebel rising brew (WY1968 London ESB). As mentioned before this ended up at 1.058 OG, meaning efficiency was really more like 73%. As I have been doing for other high OG beers, I did a mash out for 15mins at 75C. Mash temp was 64C to get the desired attenuation from the WY1968 yeast.
It's now in the fermenting fridge at 18C. I'll step this up to 20 over the next day or two and send it back down to 18 later on in the fermentation, somewhat mimicking the Fullers fermentation schedule.
Yesterday was meant to be a double brew day, with a Beamish clone being the second brew. The element blowing meant that this didn't happen so if I can get it fixed soon I'll be brewing up some Beamish later this week.
My next "Can you brew it" recipe is Fuller's ESB. There were actually a series of shows on Fuller's beers, and one conclusion the guys came to was that you need to do a parti-gyle brew, and stick to a somewhat anarchic fermentation schedule in order to accurately nail this beer. I'm not going to go quite that far, although the "Brew in a bag" system is essentially a no-sparge technique, meaning that my wort will be similar to the first runnings from a parti-gyle. I have adjusted the numbers from the show a little, as I wanted a slightly lower OG - though increased efficiency means I ended up two points higher than I was aiming anyway. I have subbed some of the hops too, magnum for target for the bittering addition I don't think will hurt much. Subbing extra EKGs for challenger for the final hop addition will undoubtedly change the character of the beer, though I think the dry hopping will probably dominate over any potential changes from this.
I brewed this yesterday, and about 5 minutes after mashing out I had more element woes. No harm done but I how have a plug in RCD which is completely shot. I won't go into detail about this, but it meant I had to rip the insulation from my pot and carry it inside to my cook top. Luckily for me the big burner on our cook top is well able to get a rolling boil going with 26ish litres of wort, so the beer should turn out ok.
Here's the recipe:
Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (L): 22.50 Wort Size (L): 22.50
Total Grain (kg): 5.70
Anticipated OG: 1.056 Plato: 13.77
Anticipated EBC: 29.5
Anticipated IBU: 37.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Pre-Boil Amounts
----------------
Evaporation Rate: 15.00 Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size: 26.47 L
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.047 SG 11.79 Plato
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential EBC
------------------------------------------------------------
95.0 5.41 kg. Pale Malt (Maris Otter) UK 1.038 8
5.0 0.29 kg. Crystal 120L UK 1.033 317
Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
----------------------------------------------------------------
20.00 g. Magnum Pellet 11.00 31.2 60 min.
15.00 g. Wye Northdown Pellet 9.60 3.0 3 min.
25.00 g. East Kent Goldings Pellet 4.3 2.8 3 min.
21.00 g. East Kent Goldings Pellet 4.3 0.0 Dry Hop
Yeast
-----
WY1968 London ESB
Chilled to 20 degrees and pitched with a generous quantity of washed yeast from the Rebel rising brew (WY1968 London ESB). As mentioned before this ended up at 1.058 OG, meaning efficiency was really more like 73%. As I have been doing for other high OG beers, I did a mash out for 15mins at 75C. Mash temp was 64C to get the desired attenuation from the WY1968 yeast.
It's now in the fermenting fridge at 18C. I'll step this up to 20 over the next day or two and send it back down to 18 later on in the fermentation, somewhat mimicking the Fullers fermentation schedule.
Yesterday was meant to be a double brew day, with a Beamish clone being the second brew. The element blowing meant that this didn't happen so if I can get it fixed soon I'll be brewing up some Beamish later this week.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Brakspear Bitter
In choosing my latest recipe I had two criteria, that it came from my new book "Brew your own Real Ale" by Graham Wheeler, and that it would have a quick turn around. I'm all out of beer at the moment, and those kegs won't fill themselves. I chose to try the Brakspear Bitter recipe from BYORA because I had a good quantity of washed WY1275 Slurry from a previous brew. Also I've been keen to try using some invert sugar in my recipes, based on the experiences of mine host at perfectpint.blogspot.com. Invert is a traditional ingredient in British Ales, and it would appear that it has the dual benefit of adding flavour and decreasing the turn around time for the beer.
The BYORA book lists white sugar as an ingredient where the actual brewery uses invert, in the belief (stated in the introduction) that it adds no flavour to the beer. Several influential brewing bloggers dispute this, and claim that it does indeed add flavour and other characteristics to beer that white sugar can't provide. See http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com.au for lots of information on this.
To make my invert, I took 400ml of tap water to the boil, removed from the heat and slowly mixed in 350g of raw sugar. I also added a heaped tablespoon of glucose to help prevent crystals. To this I added a quarter teaspoon of citric acid and then put the mixture back on the heat. Once it was boiling I waited 20 minutes and then removed it from the heat and allowed it to cool. I ended up with something quite reminiscent of Lyle's Golden syrup, but less viscous. It certainly has more flavour than a simple white sugar syrup, with some tannic notes.
I kept things pretty simple equipment wise for this brew, and I've gone back to no-chill just for convenience. As my yeast slurry was getting sort of old, I decided to take around 2.5L of wort into a conical flask to serve as a starter. I also added the finishing hops to this starter since it was going to cool a lot quicker than the bulk of the wort. Hopefully this will preserve most of the finishing hop aroma.
The malt bill is pretty simple, Maris Otter with a little Dark Crystal (all Simpsons malt). I added the invert with the irish moss addition approximately 15 minutes from the end of the boil. My equipment stood up to the job really well, and I think I have a pretty reliable boiler now. I'm toying with the idea of turning my big keg into a double batch BIAB rig using a gas burner. This would mean I could do a single batch on the electric rig and a double batch on the gas, 3 kegs from one brew day - nice! We'll see how that idea develops.
My starter was a little slow to take off, about 30 hours, so I'm really glad I decided to use a starter. That has now been pitched to the main batch and things have kicked off with a rocky head appearing after about 12 hours.
Here's the recipe:
3.86kg Simpsons Maris Otter
0.13kg Simpsons Dark Crystal
0.35kg white sugar - I substituted invert as per instructions above
54g Target (I subbed 45g Challenger) at 60mins
11g Styrian Goldings at flameout
"Dry hop with a few cones of Goldings" is the final instruction, whatever that means.
The BYORA book lists white sugar as an ingredient where the actual brewery uses invert, in the belief (stated in the introduction) that it adds no flavour to the beer. Several influential brewing bloggers dispute this, and claim that it does indeed add flavour and other characteristics to beer that white sugar can't provide. See http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com.au for lots of information on this.
To make my invert, I took 400ml of tap water to the boil, removed from the heat and slowly mixed in 350g of raw sugar. I also added a heaped tablespoon of glucose to help prevent crystals. To this I added a quarter teaspoon of citric acid and then put the mixture back on the heat. Once it was boiling I waited 20 minutes and then removed it from the heat and allowed it to cool. I ended up with something quite reminiscent of Lyle's Golden syrup, but less viscous. It certainly has more flavour than a simple white sugar syrup, with some tannic notes.
 |
| This is the invert ready to use |
I kept things pretty simple equipment wise for this brew, and I've gone back to no-chill just for convenience. As my yeast slurry was getting sort of old, I decided to take around 2.5L of wort into a conical flask to serve as a starter. I also added the finishing hops to this starter since it was going to cool a lot quicker than the bulk of the wort. Hopefully this will preserve most of the finishing hop aroma.
The malt bill is pretty simple, Maris Otter with a little Dark Crystal (all Simpsons malt). I added the invert with the irish moss addition approximately 15 minutes from the end of the boil. My equipment stood up to the job really well, and I think I have a pretty reliable boiler now. I'm toying with the idea of turning my big keg into a double batch BIAB rig using a gas burner. This would mean I could do a single batch on the electric rig and a double batch on the gas, 3 kegs from one brew day - nice! We'll see how that idea develops.
 |
| Mash in Progress |
My starter was a little slow to take off, about 30 hours, so I'm really glad I decided to use a starter. That has now been pitched to the main batch and things have kicked off with a rocky head appearing after about 12 hours.
Here's the recipe:
3.86kg Simpsons Maris Otter
0.13kg Simpsons Dark Crystal
0.35kg white sugar - I substituted invert as per instructions above
54g Target (I subbed 45g Challenger) at 60mins
11g Styrian Goldings at flameout
"Dry hop with a few cones of Goldings" is the final instruction, whatever that means.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Landlord
I can remember quite vividly the first pint of Landlord I ever drank. I was in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne for the weekend with my girlfriend and another couple. Not knowing Joe all that well, the girls suggested we head for a pint while they went shopping. We found a dingy pub upstairs over a shop, and both ordered our first ever pints of cask ale. By some miracle it just happened to be Timothy Taylor Landlord. It was an extraordinarily fine pint of beer. As a stout drinker from Ireland, lightly carbonated cellar temperature beer wasn't the huge jump in beer drinking experience it might have been for some. I think we had one or two more before Joe rang the girls to ask for more time, which was duely granted. We ended up more than slightly tipsy on a Friday evening at about 5 O'Clock. Nice.
I was lucky enough to find it in one or two pubs in London a couple of years later, and again it made a huge impression on me. Cask Landlord is the kind of beer craft brewers should be aiming to make. First and foremost it's drinkable, as my mother would say "There's a taste of more off it". This drinkability comes from a perfect balance. You can taste everything that's gone into the making of Landlord, but nothing dominates. It has a gentle yeast character, beautiful styrian golding aroma, nutty maltiness.
Unfortunately I have not been able to source a decent bottle of Landlord anywhere here in Australia. Every example I have tried has been badly oxidised with zero hop character, as well as costing a small fortune. As a moderate alcohol, relatively moderately hopped beer (well compared to some hop monsters anyway), I suppose it was never going to travel very well. There's only one solution available to satisfy my thirst - brew it!
Luckily I'm not alone in my Landlord obsession. It's got to be one of the most talked about beers on UK and Aussie homebrew forums. In particular Dr Smurto's Landlord on Aussiehomebrewer is frequently mentioned as a particularly tasty clone. My only worry with these clones is what people are aiming to clone. In this case is it fresh Landlord on cask? Is it 4 month old multiple heat/cool cycled bottled examples such as the one I paid $14 for a couple of weeks ago in a Brunswick establishment which thinks it's god's gift to beer?
Fermenter samples of the session bitter are a bit inconclusive on the late hop character. Unfortunately the WY1275 has been pretty slow for an English ale yeast, it's now at 1.025 after 6 days. Not that slow, but slower than I expected. I'm not yet ready to say if the 'method argonoise' from aussiehomebrewer is a good option for me when looking for that late hop character with no-chill, we'll just have to wait and see.
Of course the obvious solution to capturing late hop character is chilling - and at last this is an option for me! I dislike half baked solutions, so I decided to wait until I had all the bits and pieces I needed to plumb in a plate chiller before buying one. It's not just about the chilling, you need to be able to clean the things properly too. Backflushing with a pump being the optimal solution. Anyhow, it's fitting that my first beer through the plate chiller should be one of my all time favourites.
Here's the recipe.
Dr Smurtos Landlord
A ProMash Recipe Report
Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (L): 22.50 Wort Size (L): 22.50
Total Grain (kg): 4.36
Anticipated OG: 1.045 Plato: 11.14
Anticipated EBC: 12.9
Anticipated IBU: 29.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
96.4 4.20 kg. Pale Malt (Golden Promise) UK 1.037 4
3.6 0.16 kg. Crystal 60L UK 1.035 158
Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
42.00 g. Fuggle Pellet 4.00 24.5 60 min.
21.00 g. Goldings - E.K. Pellet 5.00 5.2 20 min.
31.50 g. Styrian Goldings Pellet 5.25 0.0 0 min.
Yeast
-----
WYeast 1469 West Yorkshire
Yeast choice is pretty straightforward here. 1469 is the closest you're going to find to Timothy Taylor, and I had about 60ml thick slurry of washed yeast from a very recent brew.
Malts for this one are Simpsons Golden promise and Simpsons Crystal (medium). Both the mash and the wort smelled amazing this morning. Bodes well for the finished product.
Plate chilling went quite well. The only issue was cheap K-mart water hose female connectors, which didn't match well with the male connectors I bought with the chiller. That will be fixed for the next time.
I was lucky enough to find it in one or two pubs in London a couple of years later, and again it made a huge impression on me. Cask Landlord is the kind of beer craft brewers should be aiming to make. First and foremost it's drinkable, as my mother would say "There's a taste of more off it". This drinkability comes from a perfect balance. You can taste everything that's gone into the making of Landlord, but nothing dominates. It has a gentle yeast character, beautiful styrian golding aroma, nutty maltiness.
Unfortunately I have not been able to source a decent bottle of Landlord anywhere here in Australia. Every example I have tried has been badly oxidised with zero hop character, as well as costing a small fortune. As a moderate alcohol, relatively moderately hopped beer (well compared to some hop monsters anyway), I suppose it was never going to travel very well. There's only one solution available to satisfy my thirst - brew it!
Luckily I'm not alone in my Landlord obsession. It's got to be one of the most talked about beers on UK and Aussie homebrew forums. In particular Dr Smurto's Landlord on Aussiehomebrewer is frequently mentioned as a particularly tasty clone. My only worry with these clones is what people are aiming to clone. In this case is it fresh Landlord on cask? Is it 4 month old multiple heat/cool cycled bottled examples such as the one I paid $14 for a couple of weeks ago in a Brunswick establishment which thinks it's god's gift to beer?
Fermenter samples of the session bitter are a bit inconclusive on the late hop character. Unfortunately the WY1275 has been pretty slow for an English ale yeast, it's now at 1.025 after 6 days. Not that slow, but slower than I expected. I'm not yet ready to say if the 'method argonoise' from aussiehomebrewer is a good option for me when looking for that late hop character with no-chill, we'll just have to wait and see.
Of course the obvious solution to capturing late hop character is chilling - and at last this is an option for me! I dislike half baked solutions, so I decided to wait until I had all the bits and pieces I needed to plumb in a plate chiller before buying one. It's not just about the chilling, you need to be able to clean the things properly too. Backflushing with a pump being the optimal solution. Anyhow, it's fitting that my first beer through the plate chiller should be one of my all time favourites.
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| Plate chiller ready for action. It may be plumbed in but it's not properly mounted - to do! |
Here's the recipe.
Dr Smurtos Landlord
A ProMash Recipe Report
Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (L): 22.50 Wort Size (L): 22.50
Total Grain (kg): 4.36
Anticipated OG: 1.045 Plato: 11.14
Anticipated EBC: 12.9
Anticipated IBU: 29.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name Origin Potential EBC
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96.4 4.20 kg. Pale Malt (Golden Promise) UK 1.037 4
3.6 0.16 kg. Crystal 60L UK 1.035 158
Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
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42.00 g. Fuggle Pellet 4.00 24.5 60 min.
21.00 g. Goldings - E.K. Pellet 5.00 5.2 20 min.
31.50 g. Styrian Goldings Pellet 5.25 0.0 0 min.
Yeast
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WYeast 1469 West Yorkshire
Yeast choice is pretty straightforward here. 1469 is the closest you're going to find to Timothy Taylor, and I had about 60ml thick slurry of washed yeast from a very recent brew.
Malts for this one are Simpsons Golden promise and Simpsons Crystal (medium). Both the mash and the wort smelled amazing this morning. Bodes well for the finished product.
Plate chilling went quite well. The only issue was cheap K-mart water hose female connectors, which didn't match well with the male connectors I bought with the chiller. That will be fixed for the next time.
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