perfidy

Brew #4

Very Special Bitter

6.6 lbs (2 cans) John Bull light liquid malt extract
1/2 lb crystal malt 60L
1/2 lb caramunich malt (~40L)
1 pkg water crystals
1.25 oz Northern Brewer hops (pellet)- bittering
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops (whole)- aroma
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops (whole)- dry hopping
1 pkg dry Windsor yeast

Steeped specialty grains for 45 minutes in muslin bag at 165 +/-5 degrees in 1 gallon filtered tap water, and squoze bag out real good upon removal. Brought 2.2 gallons filtered tap water to boil and added steeping water to make 3.2 gallons of wort, more or less. Added malt extract and water crystals and returned to boil. Added Northern Brewer and started the 60-minute timer. At 48 min added the EKG in a muslin bag and boiled 12 minutes. Removed from heat, removed hop bag and squoze out real good.

Transferred to bathtub with 24 lbs ice plus cold water. Got the wort down to 113 degrees in less than half an hour.

To fermenting bucket added 2 gallons refrigerated distilled water at about 40 degrees. Added wort, filtered out break material and hop sludge, and poured back and forth to aerate. Final temperature was about 78 degrees. A little warmer than I'd like, but I was pinched for time.

Rehydrated yeast in 8 oz water at 90 degrees. Let stand 20 min, and pitched at about 85 degrees. I was worried about the temperature difference beween the yeast slurry and the temperature of the wort, but again... pinched for time. After 24 hours the yeast was working fine, so I know it's not dead. As to whether the high start temperature will affect the final flavor through production of
undesirable byproducts, I won't know until I taste it. I think I should be fine. Ish. Fermentation temperature is between 70 and 72 degrees, again a smidge higher than Windsor reputedly likes, so I might end up with some funny flavors like diacetyl butteriness.

Presuming the fermentation is pretty much wrapped up by Thursday, on Friday I will dry hop the primary with the second ounce of EKG and leave for 15 more days. That will hopefully be enough time for the hop flavor to reasonably fully extract. I paid enough for them, so I want my dang old money's worth.

Original Gravity: unknown. I managed to melt my plastic hygrometer flask trying to take boiling gravity reading. Meh. I'm gonna call it 1.045 for the hell of it. Who cares, anyway, as long as the beer turns out tasty?

With this one I am after something not entirely unlike Fuller's Extra Special Bitter. Even though ESBs can't really be done in bottles, the Windsor yeast and full pound of specialty grains (as well as the John Bull extract, which I'm told tends to be high in unfermentable sugars) ought to result in a nicely malty, very fragrant and estery beer with a balance bitterness. I love the aroma of East Kent Goldings, and my first tasting suggests they play very very well with the Northern Brewers. The only slightly sad part at this point is that the gas coming out of the airlock smells decidedly of EKG, which means that there's not a lot of aroma necessarily staying in the beer. Oh well... that's what the dry-hopping is for. I only hope it doesn't come out too bitter with the curranty bite I dislike in the local microbrew's ESB, which sometimes verges on the undrinkably awful. We shall see.

Other notes: used B-Brite as sanitizer. It's a percarbonate, not a peroxide, which some people argue makes it less effective as a sanitizer (and indeed it's marketed as a heavy-duty cleanser), but I
think it'll be okay. I bottled my brown ale using B-Brite as the sanitizer, and it is turning out fine. Nevertheless, I'll be ordering some One-Step right soon now. With One-Step there is no need to rinse as the hydrogen peroxide residue actually ends up contributing a tiny amount of oxygen to the brew, which might even help the fermentation but isn't enough to risk oxygenating the beer when it's bottled. As if a batch would stick around long enough to go stale. Please.

[wik] Upon bottling, the beer is delicious! Malty and sweet with a nice caramel bite and estery softness from the yeast, balanced with a proportional bitterness and that lovely, lovely EKG flavor. I think if I dry-hopped in secondary fermentation instead, the hop aroma would be even more pronounced. I expect that the hoppiness will fade a little over time as the free oxygen in the bottle (in headroom and the minute amount from the no-rinse One-Step) reacts with the hop oils. That's cool. I will drink it all before that becomes much of a problem. This is one I expect I'll be making again. Oh.... right. Used 4.3 oz corn suger to prime before bottling.

[alsø wik]Finished four of the last five bottles over the weekend of March 10, and this beer is better than ever. In fact, it seems to be coming into its own. I do think that the high fermentation temperature contributed an untoward amount of fruitiness to the flavor, but the basic idea behind the beer is very sound. Next time, it would be interesting to throw even more caramel malt into the mix, maybe 2 oz of 40L and 4 oz of 80 or 90L crystal, and dry hop in secondary for three weeks with 1-2 oz of Kent Goldings. Maybe also up the alcohol by adding a pound of dry malt extract, make this into a Big American Beer... With Tailfins! Also, 4.3 oz of corn sugar was too much. Next time cut it back to 3.5, more in line with how an English Ale should be. Also, next time I will break up the flavoring hops a bit. Instead of 1 ounce of EKG for 12 minutes, I should go with 1/2 oz for 20 minutes and 1/2 oz for 5. I want to get a little more grapefruity flavor out of the hops, and also a little more nose. Basically, I'm just surprised that this beer lasted since Thanksgiving!