Ordinary Bitter

It has been a bit over a year since I brewed my first (and only) English Bitter.  It had a really nice balance of malt and hops and was very pleasant to drink.  For this English Bitter I'll be opting for a lower octane version - an ordinary bitter.  It will be nice to have a 3% ABV beer around for week nights.  I chose this recipe from homebrew talk (I also brewed this guy's English Mild and Saison which both turned out well).

The recipe is actually very similar to the last English bitter - same amount of crystal malt and very similar hop schedule.  The only major differences with this one is that is has less grain and that it includes 1 pound of victory malt (swapped for toasted Maris Otter) to get a bit of biscuit flavor.

I will be using Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast which is one I haven't tried yet.  I've been working my way through quite a few of these English yeasts of late.  It's getting a bit difficult to keep them all straight at this point - may need to build myself a little yeast chart to help with that.  I plan on using this yeast cake for an English Barleywine in a few weeks - this beer will serve as a good starter.

This would be a good beer to scale up to 10 gal due to it's small grain bill and low alcohol.  Due to the fact that I'm planning on re-using this yeast cake I've decided to keep this in one fermentor.  Next time I'll have to consider a larger batch.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lbs 5 oz Maris Otter
• 1 lb Victory
• 8 oz Crystal 20 L
• 4 oz Crystal 120 L
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Kent Golding (Pellet, 6.3% AA) at First Wort
• 0.5 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 4.2% AA) at First Wort
• 0.5 oz Kent Golding (Pellet, 6.3% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 4.2% AA) at 5 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 152 F (Target 151 F for 60 min)
• Boil:
• 90 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (62 to 64 F)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.036 (Target 1.035)
• Efficiency:
• 70% (Target 68%)
• FG:
• 1.010 (Target 1.011)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 72% (Target 68%)
• ABV:
• 3.21% (Target 3.15%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5/1/15 - Prepared a 1.5 liter yeast starter with 7.5 oz of DME and 1/8th tsp of yeast starter.  Setup the starter on a stir plate to propagate

• 5/3/15 - Brew day - 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM including setup and cleanup
• Brought 5 gal of strike water to 175 F - took 15 min
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the boil kettle
• Added 12 qt of strike water to the mash tun and let settle for 10 min - ended up at 165 F
• Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate dough balls
• After 10 min the mash was at 153 to 154 F
• Stirred after 30 min - mash was at 152 F
• Brought remaining 7 gal of sparge water up to 195 F - took 25 min
• After 60 min the mash was at 151 F
• Added 3.5 gal of mash out water, stirred, vorlaufed, and drained (slow at first and then full speed) - Mash out water raised temp to 173 F
• Added hops to the mash out

• Added 3.5 gal of batch sparge, stirred, vorlaufed, and drained (slow at first and then full speed) - this brought the mash up to 185 F
• Collected 9 gals
• Brought to a boil - took 12 min
• Once the beer had boiled down to 6.5 gal I added the Irish moss
• At 6.25 gal I added the 5 min hops
• Added the wort chiller at flameout to sanitize
• Chilled down to 65 F in 10 min

• Transferred to fermentor (Dropped a couple feet to aerate)
• Collected 6 gal of wort
• Pitched the yeast starter and left at ambient basement temps to ferment.  Setup the fermentor with an airlock - I don't anticipate a heavy fermentation for this small beer
• 5/4/15 - The beer was bubbling vigorously by the next morning
• 5/22/15 - Moved the beer to a 35 F fermentation chamber to cold crash
• 5/23/15 - Added gelatin for fining
• 5/24/15 - Bottled today.  Collected 6 gal which got me 60 12 oz bottles.  Measured the gravity as 1.010.  The beer has a very pretty gold color.  At this point the balance is a bit more towards the hops (which will probably settle down a bit over the next few weeks) but there is also a nice bit of malt flavor there as well - toasty/biscuity flavor.  I think I'm going to be happy with this one.
• 7/24/15 - Tasting - A nicely balanced and easy drinking beer at 3.2%.  I can drink several of these in a sitting without any ill effects which is very nice.
• 4/22/16 - Drank my last bottle of this beer today.  Still tasted very nice.  Had a good level of bitterness and was still nicely balanced.  It may be time to brew up another one of these as a starter for my next Barleywine.

Lessons Learned:

1. Getting very close to having RIMS setup complete.  I plan on fly sparging and using a refractometer to measure the gravity as I collect worth.  This same tool would be very handy for the batch sparge.
2. My sight glass has become almost unusable as the rubber o-rings I used to mark the tube have either slipped or fallen off.  The tube itself is also badly warped from being overheated in my previous burner setup.  I need to replace the glass and use a sharpie to mark it.