Exe Valley Bitter - 16L
Brewed a version of this today. Inspired by the recipe
@pilgrimhudd posted, I took some of the ideas from Wheeler and added Motueka to use the end of a bag. Hopefully this will turn out good. The recipe was:
2.67kg MO (3.4ebc)
0.16kg Crystal 100
0.05kg Special B (300ebc)
Fuggles (6.4%AA) - 27g - @ 60mins
Sty. Goldings (2.1%AA) - 35g - @ 15
Motueka (4.9%AA) - 28g - @ 80oC for 20 mins
Yeast: CML Midland
Protofloc: 1/3 tablet @ 15.
OG - 1.042 (target was 1.040)
IBU: 40
EBC: 12.4
I decided to make a 16L brew with the aim of getting 14-15L into the FV, leaving 1.2L in the boiler below the tap level, this being the crud layer. Amazingly this worked for once, and I had c.14L. As I was slightly over target, I will have hit my numbers for once!! I'm putting this down to my reccently changed process, plus getting my recirculating pump back in action. For this one I mashed with 16L water @ 65oC for 60 mins, and then sparged with 6.6L water. The sparge is a new process for me and this is working well. I collected c.21L wort @ 1.036. Preboil gravity aim was 1.034 so I could have sparged with slightly more water. I'll have to slightly tweak my efficiency for the next one. As i only have a 15L FV I can't really collect much more that I get, so I'm happy to tweak the numbers on this slightly.
As Sty. Goldings and Motueka have similar characteristics, I decided to use up my remaining hops for these in this brew. I was going to use the motueka as a dry hop, but since i may be away at some point, I didn't want to add this and then have to leave them in the FV for too long, thus the hop stand addition.
The taste from the trial jar tastes great. Quite bitter, but nicely this is a mellow bitter! I'm hoping it doesn't lose too much of the bitterness. Will see.