AG#1 Fullers ESB Clone

Dave1970 · Dec 4, 2011

So far...

Aiming for 23 litres
Grains
Maris Otter 5.6kg 85.5%
Crystal Malt 0.6 kg 9.16%
Wheat Malt 0.35 kg 5.34%
Hops
90 mins
Challenger 9g
Northdown 9g
Target 15g
10 Mins
EKG 12 g

Am currently relaxing while mashing takes place, photos so far

Grains

Into the mash tun, got it to 67 degrees after a bit of adjusting

Hops, weighed out & labelled by my assistant

And a bit of boiled dme added to yeast harvested from Bengal Lancer

Eric_S · Dec 4, 2011

Good luck with the brew! What S.G. and F.G. are you aiming for?

Dave1970 · Dec 4, 2011

Brewmate says 1063 OG, as for FG hard to be sure, Brewmate says 1016 giving 6.2% abv, but I have no idea what the attenuation on the Bengal Lancer yeast will be.

Dave1970 · Dec 4, 2011

forgot to take pic of the first runnings but

Main run off from mash tun

Sparging

Nice rolling boil on the Buffalo Boiler...that's a relief

Chilled and just about to transfer to FV

I seemed to get a nice cold break, with nice clear wort but quite a lot of this break material seemed to make it through to the FV. Im guessing I need smaller holes on the hop filter, maybe wrap some SS gauze around it? Is this going to leave me with a hard to clear beer or will it settle in the FV?

Overall
Ended up with 21 litres at 1062, that includes topping up a litre of water from the kettle during the boil. I think I stopped sparging too early because I had bigger evaporation losses than expected. I stopped at 27 litres, gravity was still plenty high enough at that point. Will sparge to 30 litres next time. The whole brewday started at 10.00 and I was completely packed away by 4.00. The wort seems to have cleared reasonably well in the FV so I guess that cold break material must've dropped. Wort tastes good, much more complex than kit wort which hopefully bodes well for the beer.

graysalchemy · Dec 5, 2011

My house bitter is Fullers esb made northern with wheat malt :lol: :lol:

It is a really good beer. I make mine to about 5.5% using Nottingham yeast which gives a very slight fruity note to it. Pleanty of complex malt flavours to and of course the EKG shines. The flavour develops over time, I had a bottle the other week which was a year old and by far the best beer I had tasted in long time. :thumb:

You will not be disapointed with this beer. i am brewing it on thursday.

: cheers:

Dave1970 · Dec 5, 2011

I was always planning to do ESB as AG#1 but you're responsible for the inclusion of a bit of wheat in mine , so thank you :thumb:
Not sure I'll be managing to leave it a year, maybe once I've built up a bit more stock. How long does it need before it's ready to drink? I get the impression from other posts on here that AG brews are a bit quicker to mature than kits.
Should I be concerned about the lack of cold break material in the boiler?

graysalchemy · Dec 5, 2011

It will need about a month in the bottle for conditioning. but it may take longer with the high og. as a general rule it needs 1 week for each 10 points of og.

Green Ninja · Dec 5, 2011

Well done on the first AG!

Don't worry about it not being too clear yet.

My first AG (a month ago) was clear a week after bottling. Much clearer than any kit I've ever done.

I was drinking it after 2 weeks as well and it was fantastic.

However I had my 3rd to last bottle of it Saturday and it was unrecognisable from the 2 week old one.

SO much better.

Leave it a month if you can (I can't)

graysalchemy · Dec 5, 2011

sorry I forgot

Welcome to the darkside :clap: :clap: :clap:

: cheers:

Hawks · Dec 5, 2011

Sounds very uneventful.... which is impressive for a 1st AG brew - Well done !! :thumb:

May have to take a crack at this sometime, sounds good !

graysalchemy · Dec 5, 2011

I can't wait till thursday as I am brewing it agian hope fully it will be ready for my birthday in feb. I am drinking its rather poor sibling at the moment. I had a problem mashing with the last lot and I still have 80 bottles of a rather poor session version. However I have one bottle I will be drinking on Christmas eve along with a few bottles of the barley wine.

rich27500 · Dec 7, 2011

WOW Dave you really got tooled up before setting out on your journey to the darkside. I think you'll be very surprised how are brewing styles differ. My style is all about the bag and I stay as far from software as I can get away with. You might want to check out the art v science debate on http://www.mashspargeboil.com/

Looking forward to how this turns out and even more to our easter swapsies. Don't forget the mantra of Ian at Copper Kettle: "you can't make a bad all grain beer!" Even I struggle to disprove that!!!

Dave1970 · Dec 21, 2011

just to revive this thread, couldn't wait 4 weeks so tried one today
I can tell it's going to improve with time but it tastes remarkably like...Fullers ESB! It probably shouldn't surprise me but it does, I expected decent beer but not the clone to be so close

graysalchemy · Dec 23, 2011

It also gets better with time. Tonight I have having the last bottle from the brew I did last december, so it is a year old and will be well worth the wait. Just a pity I drunk all here sisters. :lol: :lol:

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