Saturday, March 30, 2013

English Style Ordinary Bitter

So we're back up and running with another brew day in New Westminster.
Matt, Kristi and I have decided to take a little more methodical approach to our brewing these days.
We've spent the last few months trying to learn as much as we can about the homebrewing process. To that end we've decided to try a couple of straight forward recipes and follow the instructions as close as we can to see how things turn out. As we get more comfortable with the process we'll start doing wild and crazy things again.

Today we brewed a 5 gallon batch of an English Ordinary Bitter based on the Humpty-Dumpty English Style Ordinary Bitter (see p 292 The complete joy of home brewing 3rd edition by Charlie Papazian).

6 lbs. Marris Otter
1/3 lb Crystal 30
1/4 lb. Honey Malt (original recipe calls for aromatic malt)
6 oz. Dried sugar cane juice (original recipe calls for rapidura)
1.6 oz. Fuggles (Boiling)
1 oz. Goldings (flavour)
1/2 oz Goldings (dry hop)
1/4 tsp. Irish Moss
White Labs British Ale Yeast WLP005
Target OG 1.038-1.040
Target FG 1.006-1.008

Brewing Notes:
-We heated 13L of water for sparging to 170F. We poached some of the water from here to raise the temperature during the mash process (133F to 149F to 158F to 167F)

-To complete the starch conversion we held the mash at 158F for 15min

-Our pre-boil volume was aprox. 5 gallons with an OG of 1.035

-Post boil volume was a little less than 4 gallons with an OG of 1.049

-Our final volume was 5 gallons with an OG of 1.039  and wort temperature of 70.6F

Picture and more info to follow....