John Bull IPA Partial Mash Ideas

HisDudeness · Sep 2, 2015

This is the last 1 can kit I have from a recent splurge in the Tescos sale and I want to do a partial mash with it, aiming for a nice strong traditional style IPA something like a Marstons Old Empire, as such will be brewing short to 18L to the following recipe

1.8kg JB IPA
1.6kg Maris Otter
0.2kg Crystal 40

Should give
1.053
1.010
5.7%

I am not sure on the hops at the moment, no indication of IBU for the kit so not sure whether to add any bittering or not, I have EKG, First Gold, Challenger, Fuggles and Admiral in terms of English hops and could also mix it up with some American hops perhaps. Any suggestions for a hop schedule/combination for this type of beer? :wha: Quite fancy having the First Gold involved in some way as I keep noticing Darth Clibitus saying its a great hop ;-)

Covrich · Sep 2, 2015

HisDudeness said:
This is the last 1 can kit I have from a recent splurge in the Tescos sale and I want to do a partial mash with it, aiming for a nice strong traditional style IPA something like a Marstons Old Empire, as such will be brewing short to 18L to the following recipe

1.8kg JB IPA
1.6kg Maris Otter
0.2kg Crystal 40

Should give
1.053
1.010
5.7%

I am not sure on the hops at the moment, no indication of IBU for the kit so not sure whether to add any bittering or not, I have EKG, First Gold, Challenger, Fuggles and Admiral in terms of English hops and could also mix it up with some American hops perhaps. Any suggestions for a hop schedule/combination for this type of beer? :wha: Quite fancy having the First Gold involved in some way as I keep noticing Darth Clibitus saying its a great hop ;-)

You could try the First Gold, I haven't tried them either but might do an English IPA with them.. I think they are similar to EKG which I think are great too.

HisDudeness · Sep 2, 2015

Covrich said:
You could try the First Gold, I haven't tried them either but might do an English IPA with them.. I think they are similar to EKG which I think are great too.

Yeah I think first gold are a definite, whether to combine with anything else is what I'm wondering now. Not knowing what the kit is hopped with it might be better to stick with a single hop addition to avoid it getting too mixed up? Then again lots of different hops works fine in plenty of other IPA style beers :hmm:

What about late additions of challenger and first gold and dry hop with first gold?

Or even late additions as above and dry hop with cascade (have just read that this is similar to what marstons do for Old Empire)

decisions, decisions....

Redron · Sep 2, 2015

Just bottled a John Bull Traditional English Ale partial mash with 2.1kg MO and 150g crystal malt plus 20g First gold whole leaf at 60mins plus tsp of Irish moss at 5 mins and safale-04 yeast.
Og was 1045 and fg 1014 and tasted lovely on bottling. That said, all my recent PM's have tasted great having recently graduated from the kits... Night and day, as they say.....
I was doing BIAB so maybe my efficiency wasn't the best as I am pretty new to this grain mullarkey !

HisDudeness · Sep 2, 2015

Redron said:
Just bottled a John Bull Traditional English Ale partial mash with 2.1kg MO and 150g crystal malt plus 20g First gold whole leaf at 60mins plus tsp of Irish moss at 5 mins and safale-04 yeast.
Og was 1045 and fg 1014 and tasted lovely on bottling. That said, all my recent PM's have tasted great having recently graduated from the kits... Night and day, as they say.....
I was doing BIAB so maybe my efficiency wasn't the best as I am pretty new to this grain mullarkey !

Interesting, has that cranked up the bitterness quite a bit? Im brewing short to 18L so if you did 23L I guess that 1.045 isnt too bad efficiency wise

Redron · Sep 2, 2015

HisDudeness said:
Interesting, has that cranked up the bitterness quite a bit? Im brewing short to 18L so if you did 23L I guess that 1.045 isnt too bad efficiency wise

It's far from being overly bitter, perhaps that's to do with using Safale-04 which I have recently learned produces more of a bready/malty brew. It has a lovely hoppy kick/aroma but as said, not overly bitter. I brewed to 21L BTW.

I know what 'bitter' is after following the 'instructions' on a Festival Landlord kit and bunging the hops in 4 days into the ferment, it took 3 weeks to ferment out thereafter, boy, was it bitter !!!!! Took 3 months in a keg to become drinkable. As a Yorkshireman, I wasn't going to throw it away

I'm still learning myself, particularly with hops and yeast . First Gold is the only hop I have used to date other than dry hopping some premium kits with the packet of pellets they came with, which I didn't take much notice of.....
Good luck and I'd be interested to hear how it goes. I still have some kits left which I intend to use for partial mashing. In the meantime I am about to indulge in full AG BIAB

clibit · Sep 2, 2015

You could use any of those hops very successfully. Shortening to 18litres will increase the bitterness so I'd provably just add a mix of two or three hops at 5 to 10 minutes left in the boil, but there are lots of ways to hop it. You could maybe pair either First Gold or EKG with either Admiral or Challenger. About 40g total maybe.

HisDudeness · Sep 2, 2015

Redron said:
It's far from being overly bitter, perhaps that's to do with using Safale-04 which I have recently learned produces more of a bready/malty brew. It has a lovely hoppy kick/aroma but as said, not overly bitter. I brewed to 21L BTW.

I know what 'bitter' is after following the 'instructions' on a Festival Landlord kit and bunging the hops in 4 days into the ferment, it took 3 weeks to ferment out thereafter, boy, was it bitter !!!!! Took 3 months in a keg to become drinkable. As a Yorkshireman, I wasn't going to throw it away

I'm still learning myself, particularly with hops and yeast . First Gold is the only hop I have used to date other than dry hopping some premium kits with the packet of pellets they came with, which I didn't take much notice of.....
Good luck and I'd be interested to hear how it goes. I still have some kits left which I intend to use for partial mashing. In the meantime I am about to indulge in full AG BIAB

Good stuff! If you have done partial mashs the full AG should be no problem, I like the partial mash option for achieving a full scale brew while I only have basic equipment. Think a full size boiler might well be on my Xmas list though so I can start doing larger AG batches

HisDudeness · Sep 2, 2015

clibit said:
You could use any of those hops very successfully. Shortening to 18litres will increase the bitterness so I'd provably just add a mix of two or three hops at 5 to 10 minutes left in the boil, but there are lots of ways to hop it. You could maybe pair either First Gold or EKG with either Admiral or Challenger. About 40g total maybe.

Excellent I think I shall go with challenger (as I have loads) and first gold as I haven't tried this one yet. Going to dry hop as well to keep it authentic!

How about
10g challenger @ 10
15g first gold @ 5
15g first gold @ 0
20g first gold @ 5 day dry hop

Yeast wise does anyone have a particular favourite for strong IPAs? I have some burton ale yeast but I have read a few articles that recommend cleaner high attenuating yeasts for English IPA and when I did use this in my old peculiar it was very very estery almost Belgian at first, otherwise it would be us 05 or gervin but I wouldn't mind getting an alternative yeast going that I can harvest for other brews

clibit · Sep 2, 2015

Not used it but the Scottish ale strains from white labs and wyeast are highly recommended. Plenty of other choices.

HisDudeness · Sep 7, 2015

Got this one up and running over the weekend, had a last minute change of heart with the hops and went for EKG and challenger (decided I need to start using up old packets instead of opening new ones!). I also brewed it to 20L instead of 18 so increased the grain a bit to achieve the same OG. Hit target bang on and is bubbling away nicely, very dark extract and wort for an IPA but smells nice so hopefully will be a good one. Was too lazy to get a different yeast in the end so went with the slightly boring but reliable Gervin again. Still tempted to chuck in some cascade or similar for the dry hop but will see how I feel in a week or so :hmm:

clibit · Sep 7, 2015

That all sounds great, have a taste in a week or so and decide if you want to dry hop.

HisDudeness · Sep 7, 2015

clibit said:
That all sounds great, have a taste in a week or so and decide if you want to dry hop.

Probably a sensible approach considering the kits hoppiness is a bit of an unknown! I think it's quite easy to get caught up in automatically throwing lots of hops at beer when you're still quite new at this

HisDudeness · Sep 16, 2015

Had a little taster and its not bad so far but felt like it could benefit from some extra punch from the hops so chucked in 10g of EKG and 20g of cascade. Sample was at 1.009 so should be finishing at a fairly pokey 5.8% plus priming, should be a good one!

HisDudeness · Oct 16, 2015

1 Month on and here is the result so far, its pretty dark for an IPA but has a nice full flavour and good bitterness with a nice dense creamy top that lasts. It does remind me a bit of Marstons Old Empire which was the sort of thing I was aiming for so pleased with that but there is a slight harshness there at the moment and maybe a bit of twang which will hopefully go with a bit more conditioning, if it does smooth out a bit more this could be a real belter. From recent experience I reckon in a months time it will have changed quite dramatically! :whistle:

BeerCat · Oct 16, 2015

I wasn't able to keep mine a month so i wouldn't be able to say apart from i enjoyed it very much. Think i will get another one next week. :)

clibit · Oct 16, 2015

Looks great that Dude. Be patient, time will improve it for sure.

HisDudeness · Oct 16, 2015

clibit said:
Looks great that Dude. Be patient, time will improve it for sure.

Indeed! What I need is a big enough stock so that I don't drink my way through the beers before they are really in their prime. The new BIAB kit ive just received from HBC should help with that though, its going to be a busy weekend!

HisDudeness · Oct 30, 2015

Left this alone for a couple of weeks and its definitely on the up, bit smoother now and fruityness is really coming through. The cascade is a bit more prominent than I expected from the dry hopping but overall still pleased with it, reckon its still going to improve though.....

clibit · Oct 30, 2015

Cascade will dominate EKG, in equal quantities.

John Bull IPA Partial Mash Ideas

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