This beer is kind of a culmination of me trying to nail down the creation of a well balanced highly drinkable bitter. There’s a couple of take aways I’ve noticed over the years:
- Unless using 100% RO water it’s a waste of time cutting tap with RO.
- Dry yeast is just as good as liquid if your willing to have less choice.
- When dry hopping in a airlock sealed fermenter you need to use A LOT of hops to have a noticeable effect.
- Unless your good at discerning when to stop a fermentation a mash temperature below 154F will give you a pretty dry beer with sugar in the grist.
- Aurora, Bobek, Celia, Stryian Goldings, and East Kent Goldings are all really great underappreciated hops. You can use each interchangeably for aroma but for taste I still think EKGs are the best – that beautiful marmalade flavor is unique.
For this beer I’m starting with Magnum which is clean and high alpha so trying to reduce the hop trub. After smelling this batch of Magnum I thought I’d split it up in the schedule to capture more of its flavor and aroma. Late additions are all Styrian Goldings. I moved an ounce to 15 minutes to try to capture more flavor than aroma. I’ve been doing 2 ounces at flame out and it seems to add wonderful aroma but with a lot of that aroma getting scrubbed out during fermentation unfortunately. 20 – 10 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for flavor and aroma being captured for me. I have no idea why and it’s purely anecdotal. Also I tried mashing a bit higher to get a tad more mouthfeel. Only lost 1 gravity point by mashing higher. I will be interested to see how all these subtle tweaks will work out!
6 gallons
Estimated OG: 1.048
Estimated FG: 1.011
Estimated Color: 5.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 39.5 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
ABV: 4.9%
Grain
10 lbs Maris Otter (3 SRM) 90.9%
1 lb Turbinado sugar (20 SRM) 9.1%
Schedule
60 minute Boil
7.00g Magnum [12%] – 60 min 9.4 IBUs
7.00g Magnum [12%] – 45 min 8.6 IBUs
14.00g Magnum [12%] – 30 min 14.4 IBUs
28.00g Styrian Goldings [3.3%] – 15 min 5.1 IBUs
28.00g Styrian Goldings [3.3%] – Whirlpool 10 min 1.9 IBUs
Whirfloc or Irish Moss 20 min
1tsp yeast nutrient 15 min
Mash and Sparge
100% Ventura (high bicarbonates and sulfates)
3g Calcium Chloride added to mash water
4ml lactic acid added to mash water
3g Calcium Chloride added to sparge water
3ml lactic acid sparge water
Mash in 4.25 gallons water 166F and let stabilize to 156F for 60 min
Mashout 170F
Batch sparge 5 gallons cold
Yeast
Safale S-04 English Ale Dry Yeast
Fermentation
Ferment until done 65F
Cold crash one day
Add gelatin and rack to keg and carbonate using your preferred method