Today was brew day for my Landlord-style bitter. The overflowing Brewlab Yorkshire yeast starter was taken off the stir plate after 3 days on Friday night, 500ml saved back in a kilner jar and the remaining litre chilled until today. I seemed to make a lot of yeast this time even allowing for some of it stuck in sticky chunks around the neck of the flask!
The recipe today has a few changes from my usual procedure. The first is that shock horror I'm not brewing with Ashbeck this time. The reason for this is that I want to test out Brewlab's claim that this yeast favours a high-mineral wort and with all the gypsum Ashbeck's bicarb level would result in a low mash pH somewhere in the 4's.
So for the first time in as long as I can remember I'm not brewing with Ashbeck. Instead I'll be using what Tesco sell as Elmhurst (you can get the same water under other names at other supermarkets). The base profile for Elmhust is Ca:40 Mg:14 Na:6 SO4:6 Cl:11 CaCO3:136 so it's a low mineral water with a medium alkalinity. I'll need to beef it up with a lot of additions to even get close to what Murphy's consider to be a good profile for a bitter. Here's the recipe:
Code:
Recipe Specifications
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Date: 14 November 2021
Batch Size (fermenter): 24.00 L
Estimated OG: 1.042 SG
Estimated Color: 16.5 EBC
Estimated IBU: 38.4 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 75.6 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Water profile: Ca:236 Mg:39 Na:6 SO4:353 Cl:177
Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type %/IBU
29.41 L Tesco Elmhurst Water -
10.70 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash) Water Agent -
6.30 g Calcium Chloride (Mash) Water Agent -
6.10 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) (Mash) Water Agent -
3.500 kg Crisp Maris Otter (7.9 EBC) Grain 81.7 %
0.750 kg Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner (4.0 EBC) Grain 17.5 %
0.035 kg Weyermann Carafa II (1150.0 EBC) Grain 0.8 %
2.20 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Sparge) Water Agent -
1.30 g Calcium Chloride (Sparge) Water Agent -
1.30 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) (Sparge) Water Agent -
28.00 g East Kent Goldings (EKG) [6.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 22.1 IBUs
28.00 g Styrian Goldings [4.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 13.0 IBUs
20.00 g Styrian Goldings [4.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 3.4 IBUs
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 7.0 mins) Fining -
1.0 pkg Brewlab Yorkshire (Brewlab #Yorkshire) Yeast -
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 4.285 kg
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Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 24.44 L of water at 74.6 C 68.9 C 60 min
Sparge: Dunk sparge with 5L
I expected it to be difficult to dissolve 12.9g of gypsum and indeed it was. Even after splitting it into a couple of grams a time and using a stick blender I still ended up with a small amount of it sitting undissolved on the bottom of the kettle.
I had a bit of pilsner malt left over from all the lager brewing so I used some of that along with the more traditional Maris Otter and some Carafa II to adjust the colour. I mashed in at 68C, a little higher than usual to try to stop the yeast attenuating all the way down to 1.004 like it did last time.
I got the planned 24 litres of wort and was able to chill quickly down to 22C.
Extraction was higher than planned and I ended up with an OG of 1.044. High efficiency seems to be a feature of Crisp Maris Otter for me so I'm going to start bumping up my expected efficiency in future brews. Although this started off as a Landlord recipe I can see that a combination of the high efficiency and the high yeast attenuation means that I'm probably in for a Landlord ESB at the end of the day.
It's now sitting in the Brewfridge at 20C with the blowoff tube routed through the keg that will hold this beer so it gets CO2 purged during fermentation.
) I thought I'd check that all was well!
