First of the year

[Mayor of Simpleton]

Onto my third AG brew and first of 2016. Making a Butty Bach clone. I have no idea how it will pan out as my t'internet searches gave me a couple of recipe choices so I ended up going off piste a bit.

Anyway, 23 L in the FV yesterday from the following:-

4.2 Kg Maris Otter
0.2 Kg Flaked barley
01 Kg Crystal malt

90 mins mash in 14.25 L water (heated to 76C)
Temperature mash at start = 65C and at end 61C. Hmmm OK I think.
2 step Batch sparge with 8.3 and then 18 L water at 76C

46.6 g East Kent Goldings - 90 min boil
46.6 g Fuggles - 5 min boil
29.8 g Bramling Cross 5 min boil

I ended up with about 22 L cooled wort in the FV which I was happy with. I added 200g Wheat malt at this point also - although I wasn't sure when I should add that. It didn't dissolve great in my cooled wort so perhaps I should have added it earlier?

Original SG was 1.046 which was pretty much bang on what I was hoping for.

I pitched with White labs WLP002 - unfortunately this had been sitting around in the kitchen for 4 days at room temperature because I forgot to fridge it Hoping it will be fine.

All in all, a successful day and fingers crossed for a nice beer.

 

[Sandimas]

Nice one, let us know how it turns out.

I'm not far from Wye Valley and did a brewery tour last summer, they had a lot of Target and Celeia hops plus 3 other varieties: I think one was Willamette. Worth harvesting their yeast from bottle conditioned brews if you can.

 

[Mayor of Simpleton]

So, it's out of the primary FV with sg of 1.012 and into the secondary FV for a week. All good so far. Darrellm - I haven't thought about harvesting yeast from bottled conditioned ales before. Perhaps i should consider for future brews? That would bring a whole new aspect to brewing.

 

[Mayor of Simpleton]

I managed to get hold of a bottle of Butty Bach to do a side by side comparison. I have to say that i am surprised at how close the recipe i used was to the original. My beer was slightly more amber in colour and had a slightly fuller body with a more malty taste. Hop notes and sweetness were spot on.

I actually brewed this as for my brother in law's 60th. He was well chuffed with it.

 

[MyQul]

I think it was more malty and fuller bodied because of the WLP002. I haven't used this yeast before but I've read it's got a malty profile. If you decide to make this again, Butty Bach's has the Wye Valley primary yeast strain in it so you can culture it up from a bottle (on my list of yeast's to culture up) and possibly get even closer