AG#6 : Bitter and Twisted Clone

I'm planning on doing this recipe today (found on some forum somwhere)...

Could folk cast their eye over the recipe and tell me if it is ok? The grain bill seems a bit light to me. The original poster mashed for 2 hours and got 62% efficiency, which doesn't sound ideal. I plan to mash for 90 mins like usual, and I've typically been getting 80% efficiency. So maybe 3Kg of Marris Otter will result in 20l of reasoable strength beer in the FV, but it just seems low to me...


Bitter & Twisted

Brewed 31/3/07

Marris otter 3Kg
Crystal malt 200g
Flaked Barley 200g
Torrified Wheat 200g

Mashed at 66oC for 2 hours

Fuggles AA5.9% 2oz 90min
Styrian Golding AA2% 1oz 15min
Irish moss 1tsp 15min
Styrian Golding AA2% small hand full added when boiler turned off.

Yeast safale S-04

Collected 5.2 gallon
Finish 4 gallon
OG:1036
FG: 1012
Effic: 62.2% (A little low.)

is your brew gonna be 5 gallon english ? as this is 4 gallon and maybe in usa ,

Yep, my normal brew results in 20-25l in the FV, depending on how much I liquor back (so 25-30l goes into the boiler). So as long as there is enough sugar in 3kg of MO to get me there (at 80% efficiency), and resultin a beer around 3.8%, I'll be happy. But it looks at least a kg lighter than any grain bill I've done so far...

Here's another recipe (from the barleybottom website)... It uses the same grain but different hops (I went with the first recipe as I have Styrian Goldings in stock). It seems a bit closer to what I would expect weight-wise...

4.00 kg Maris Otter
0.20 kg Crystal Malt
0.20 kg Barley, Flaked
0.20 kg Wheat, Torrefied

56.00 gm Fuggles 90 min
28.00 gm Bobek 15 min

1 Protafloc Tablet 15 mins boil
1 pack of S-04 yeast.

MK, have a play with Beersmiths free trial for 3 weeks you can scale your recipes according to various factors :thumb:
I'm about to stick your recipe in and have a play myself :lol:

according to beermate the original recipe for 23 litre brew length gives you an OG of 1.047 equating to approx 4.3% abv
90 min mash and boil

Bitterness 26.5
and colour EBC 16.4

If its of any interest then the actual B&T recipe uses challenger and hallertau hersbrucker as bittering hops. Any of the Slovenian hybrids are great for aroma and flavour (Syrian Golding, Nobel or celiea).

Excellent - thanks for all the help guys. Where else can you have all your questions answered by 10am??? :thumb:

piddledribble said:

according to beermate the original recipe for 23 litre brew length gives you an OG of 1.047 equating to approx 4.3% abv
90 min mash and boil

Bitterness 26.5
and colour EBC 16.4

Click to expand...

You can download brewMate for free.

http://www.brewmate.net/

Its easy to use and I guess not as accurate as Beersmith and others but its good enough to play around with when designing beers or altering brew lengths etc

+1 for brewmate. I tried brewtarget and got very confused. Brewmate is free and easy to use.

That's for the software suggestions - I tried brewmate, which is indeed very easy to use. It calculated that the original recipe with 3kg of MO would come out at 3.6%, which is a wee bit feeble for my liking, so I increased the MO to 3.5kg (giving a beer of around 4.3%)

So the final recipe is...

Marris otter 3.5Kg
Crystal malt 200g
Flaked Barley 200g
Torrified Wheat 200g

Mashed at 67oC for 90 mins

Fuggles AA5.9% 58g 90min
Styrian Golding AA2% 14g 15min
Irish moss 1tsp 15min
Styrian Golding AA2% 14g when boiler turned off.

Yeast safale S-04

I ended up post-boil with 23l of wort @ 1045 (which attenuated to 1012 would give 4.3% - perfect). Brew efficiency was 80% (at least that seems to be consistent)

I had trouble with mash temperature again, after thinking I had it nailed after the previous brew. More determined than ever to build a HERMS system...

And to cap off a busy day (was baby-sitting the wee man, so was forever running back and forth from the shed to the house to check he wasn't microwaving the cat or anything like that) I made a total balls-up of the wort cooling. I had constructed a counter-flow chiller, and was using it for the first time. Earlier testing had shown that there was no way the boiler would drain through 10m of 8mm copper pipe under the influence of gravity alone, so I was using the wee solar pump to help. And I had installed a bypass valve on the pump so I could control the flow rate.

It all was working very well (the wort was coming out quite cold, due to the counter-flow water from the tap being damn near freezing) but about half-way it all ground to a halt. It turns out I hadn't ensured the hop filter was properly fitted, and it had come lose. So I had just pumped my new chiller and bypass valve full of hops!

I finished draining the boiler manually with a sieve, and ended up with 18l of murky wort in the FV. We'll see how it turns out - hopefully I haven't stuffed it up too much. And I then spent ages back-flushing and cleaning out all the pipes. I circulated some hot sanitiser through it for an hour or so, so hopefully that has removed all the gunk. What a rookie mistake!

So with the running around, no piccies, sorry. Next time!

Oh the joys of brewing.....

Yep, I seem to find a new and interesting way of messing things up every time

One day, I'll have a nice, calm, relaxing brew day... one day...