Recipe check please

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My first time going freestyle so I'd appreciate a second pair of eyes on a proposed recipe - many thanks.

Planning to do a bit of a user-upper and end up with something fairly session-able (4%) along the lines of a Best Bitter.
I should also say I'm deliberately under-bittering a tad to suit my taste-buds and mash regime.

I tend to get a BHE around 86%.

Malt
  • 3kg floor-malted MO
  • 120g biscuit (user upper)
  • 150g medium crystal
  • 20g black (solely for colour)
Hops
  • 15g WGV @ 60 min (5.6% alpha)
  • 30g WGV @ 30 min
  • 40g WGV @ 0 min
Yeast
  • WY1028 London Ale
Water
  • 200 sulphate / 150 Chloride
 
Not sure on that TETB hopefully somebody will add in its not the one I use but I thought they are all reasonably strong in flavour, do not forget though what one likes another might not.
I do not use more than 150G personally
 
It looks fine. The biscuit maltsters recommend 5-15% usage and you're going for 3% so I reckon you're erring on the safe side there. However, I must confess I've never used it.
 
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The recipe looks fine to me. We don't know the gravity, IBU etc. and I've never used wgv on its own, but not necessarily a problem.
 
It's not exactly the same as a bitter and it's not exactly the same as biscuit malt, but I use 12.5% amber malt in my Hoppy Amber Ale so at 3.6% I reckon you'll be fine with biscuit malt as I believe is in the same ballpark as amber.

(Also 12.5% Victory malt - similar stuff again - in my English Amber Ale to use it up, but that's still in the FV so I haven't tried it yet)
 
Thanks all - collecting the RO now, to brew it tomorrow AM.
Decided to go for a slightly less mineralised water profile for a change, so instead of the Murphy's Bitter (400 Sulphate / 200 Chloride) I'm going 200 Sulphate / 150 Chloride.
I guess time will tell whether this was a good idea or not... athumb..
 
OK all brewed and in the FV.
I wish I could say everything went smooth as silk, but...
  1. As there was no wheat in the grain bill, I thought I'd be a smarty pants and miss out the 45º beta glucanase rest. BAD IDEA: mash ran really slowly for the first 15mins and I had to throttle the recirculation pump to stop it scavenging (note to self: fit pump bypass valve).
  2. Pre-boil gravity was a few points under so I decided to do an extra-vigorous boil. BAD IDEA: overdid it by a couple of litres and ended up being short on volume and over gravity
  3. Decided to start the run-off while collecting more RO to do a bit of liquoring back. Two thirds the way through the run-off I realised I'd forgotten the final hop addition - aaaargh: OK, stop the runoff, chuck in the final hops; boil up the RO and pour it into the kettle. Now that's what I call a late hop addition...
  4. Finally in a fit of over-optimism I'd decided to use a Wyeast smack-pack that was only a week short of it's 'best before' date. Activated it last night but it still hadn't inflated by this afternoon. Oh Bu99er. Quickly kegged the Vienna that's just finished clearing down and pitched using the slurry from that: OYL-111 German Bock. Should be... interesting...
OG came in at 1.044 - bit higher than planned: looks like the BHE came in at 88% again so maybe I should start planning for that.
According to BS3 the bitterness should be about 26.3 IBU and the colour 20.5
 

Attachments

  • TETB Bestish Bitter.pdf
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