With my stocks of beer starting to dwindle, I thought it was time to get another brew on yesterday. I love Fuller's ESB and this is my attempt at a strong, hoppy and malty bitter in that style.
Due to an awful hangover, I only started around lunch time. I also knocked up a new hop filter with 2.5mm holes on the underside as the previous had allowed a fair bit of hop material through.
Recipe:
Batch Size: 10l
Expected ABV: 5.1%
Expected OG: 1.051
Expected FG: 1.012
Colour: 22.1 EBC
IBU: 32.3
2.00 kg Maris Otter (UK): 86.6%
120 g Crystal Malt - Light (UK): 5.2%
80 g Crystal Malt - Dark (UK): 3.5%
60 g Amber Malt (UK): 2.6%
40 g Biscuit Malt (UK): 1.7%
10 g Black Malt (UK): 0.4%
16 g Northdown - 60 mins: 20.8 IBU
13 g East Kent Goldings - 20 mins: 7.9 IBU
10 g East Kent Goldings - 10 mins: 3.6 IBU
1 Whirlfoc Tablet - 15 mins
Safale S-04
Mash Schedule: 60 minutes at 66ðC.
Started by treating 15l of Sainsbury's Caledonian Water with 2 campden tablets. I then added a further 3.5l of tap water as needed 18.5 for mash and batch sparge. At some point I will look into water treatments, but my brews so far have been ok with either bottled or tap. I then had a Fuller's ESB (medicinal, of course) and set to work.
Turns out the Black Malt I have is very old, so I replaced this with some fresher Carafa Special III. As it's only a small addition for colour hopefully it'll be ok. Oh, I didn't have Biscuit as I thought I did, so substituted this for Aromatic. They sound fairly similar so again hopefully this won't have been a disastrous move.
Obligatory Grist Shot
Mashed in as per temp calcs from Beersmith. Unfortunately, once doughed in and mash tun wrapped up the mash temp was only 64ðC, so I'll need to tinker with the settings. On the plus side, my ghetto mash tun did not drop a single degree during the hour which is pleasing.
Less pleasing was the thermometer breaking shortly after the mash was completed, it's now reading around 70 degrees at room temp. I'm going to take the plunge and buy a thermapen now as I've already spent about �ã20 on various thermometers.
Pre-Boil Wort
After adjusting SG for temperature, the pre-boil gravity was a good few points too low. I added 120ml of Golden Syrup which bumped it up a bit, but was still lower than recipe called for.
Hop Additions
Additions added as per recipe. Boil was fine.
My new filter worked very well, although the plastic tap on my boiler takes far too long to drain. I will upgrade this to a ball valve tap before my next brew.
Draining
The arms on my Immersion Chiller are a bit too short for my plastic boiler. I was also in a rush so decided to transfer the boiled wort into a smaller stainless pot and the use both the IC and ice bath method. This worked very well and I was down to pitching temp in about 20 mins.
Chilling
I was still a bit short of the expected SG (even with Golden Syrup addition) at 1.049, but with the colder mash the FG should be a bit lower than expected so should hopefully the ABV will end up 5%+
Finished Wort
Sprinkled with S-04 and then tucked up in the spare room as getting too cold in the shed.
Magic Sprinkles
In the end I got 9.5l in the FV, but there was at least another litre in the boiler that I could have drained but it was just going too slow and I was running out of time I decided to go with what looked like 10l.
S-04 is munching through it quite vigorously.
Overall it was a fairly stress-free brew day and I look forward to kegging this once the White IPA has kicked the bucket. I may also do a small dry hop (0.5g/l) but not decided yet.
Due to an awful hangover, I only started around lunch time. I also knocked up a new hop filter with 2.5mm holes on the underside as the previous had allowed a fair bit of hop material through.
Recipe:
Batch Size: 10l
Expected ABV: 5.1%
Expected OG: 1.051
Expected FG: 1.012
Colour: 22.1 EBC
IBU: 32.3
2.00 kg Maris Otter (UK): 86.6%
120 g Crystal Malt - Light (UK): 5.2%
80 g Crystal Malt - Dark (UK): 3.5%
60 g Amber Malt (UK): 2.6%
40 g Biscuit Malt (UK): 1.7%
10 g Black Malt (UK): 0.4%
16 g Northdown - 60 mins: 20.8 IBU
13 g East Kent Goldings - 20 mins: 7.9 IBU
10 g East Kent Goldings - 10 mins: 3.6 IBU
1 Whirlfoc Tablet - 15 mins
Safale S-04
Mash Schedule: 60 minutes at 66ðC.
Started by treating 15l of Sainsbury's Caledonian Water with 2 campden tablets. I then added a further 3.5l of tap water as needed 18.5 for mash and batch sparge. At some point I will look into water treatments, but my brews so far have been ok with either bottled or tap. I then had a Fuller's ESB (medicinal, of course) and set to work.
Turns out the Black Malt I have is very old, so I replaced this with some fresher Carafa Special III. As it's only a small addition for colour hopefully it'll be ok. Oh, I didn't have Biscuit as I thought I did, so substituted this for Aromatic. They sound fairly similar so again hopefully this won't have been a disastrous move.
Obligatory Grist Shot
Mashed in as per temp calcs from Beersmith. Unfortunately, once doughed in and mash tun wrapped up the mash temp was only 64ðC, so I'll need to tinker with the settings. On the plus side, my ghetto mash tun did not drop a single degree during the hour which is pleasing.
Less pleasing was the thermometer breaking shortly after the mash was completed, it's now reading around 70 degrees at room temp. I'm going to take the plunge and buy a thermapen now as I've already spent about �ã20 on various thermometers.
Pre-Boil Wort
After adjusting SG for temperature, the pre-boil gravity was a good few points too low. I added 120ml of Golden Syrup which bumped it up a bit, but was still lower than recipe called for.
Hop Additions
Additions added as per recipe. Boil was fine.
My new filter worked very well, although the plastic tap on my boiler takes far too long to drain. I will upgrade this to a ball valve tap before my next brew.
Draining
The arms on my Immersion Chiller are a bit too short for my plastic boiler. I was also in a rush so decided to transfer the boiled wort into a smaller stainless pot and the use both the IC and ice bath method. This worked very well and I was down to pitching temp in about 20 mins.
Chilling
I was still a bit short of the expected SG (even with Golden Syrup addition) at 1.049, but with the colder mash the FG should be a bit lower than expected so should hopefully the ABV will end up 5%+
Finished Wort
Sprinkled with S-04 and then tucked up in the spare room as getting too cold in the shed.
Magic Sprinkles
In the end I got 9.5l in the FV, but there was at least another litre in the boiler that I could have drained but it was just going too slow and I was running out of time I decided to go with what looked like 10l.
S-04 is munching through it quite vigorously.
Overall it was a fairly stress-free brew day and I look forward to kegging this once the White IPA has kicked the bucket. I may also do a small dry hop (0.5g/l) but not decided yet.
