Planned brewday for Sunday, and it’ll be my entry for the Great British Homebrew Challenge 2013. I want to brew a strong bitter, but as a meddling homebrewer I also want to play around with it and hopefully compliment an English backbone with some New Zealand hop zing!…. well, spice actually, but you know what I mean. Here’s what I’m aiming for:
Original Gravity (OG): 1.052
Final Gravity (FG): 1.010
Alcohol (ABV): 5.6%
Colour (SRM): 33 (EBC)
Bitterness (IBU): 41.0 (Average)
(87%) Golden Promise Pale Malt
(5%) Caramalt
(4%) Biscuit Malt
(2%) Black Malt
(2%) Pale Wheat Malt
Pilgrim (FWH)
Green Bullet @10 minutes from the end (Boil)
Green Bullet @5 minutes from the end (Boil)
As you can see, it’s not the strongest of strong bitters, but I’m trying to stay on the right side of ‘sessionability’, given that the winning beer is destined for the pub. I’d explain myself further, spelling out that I appreciate how strong beers sell too, but I can’t be bothered *smiley face*. I’m wanting to give the beer malt character and a pleasing colour with the crystal and biscuit malts, but with a punchy bitterness with the Pilgrim hops. I put a small amount of biscuit malt in my Black IPA and it gives a great flavour, and I’m told that Pilgrim will provide the clean bitterness I’ll need if I’m not to overpower the beer. Will this create a balanced beer? I hope so. The bitterness ratio (BU:GU) for a special/best/premium bitter is around 0.75, that is to say my target bitterness units (IBU) of 40 divided by my original gravity (OG) 1.049 = 0.81. (nb, you need to take the fractional proportion of the OG e.g. 0.049 x 1000 = 49). See more detail on BU:GU rations on Mark Dredge’s blog. I’m creeping a little out of best bitter territory and towards an IPA, but I’m brewing for my tastes too, so there you go.
The complicating factor, as I understand it, is that attenuation can muck this ratio/balance up. For this beer I am using some yeast kindly given to me by Saltaire Brewery. The brewer told me that the yeast is feisty and will go to town on any sugars available. He also suggested that if I mashed high that this will help tame the b(y)east. So the mash temp will be 69C. Reason being for this is that I don’t have the luxury of temperature control, therefore I can’t stop the fermentation that easily. If the high mash temp doesn’t seem to be working and the FG starts dropping below 1.010 then I’ll transfer off the yeast and give it a stern talking to (while drinking a homebrew and chilling the f*ck out).
Eyes down, HLT at the ready.
Updated 10/12/12: The brewday went well, although I managed to collect 20L at 1.061, so liquored back (a little too far, due to lack of concentration) to 24L at 1.052. I pitched the Saltaire yeast early evening and as of this morning there was no visible fermentation.
I tweaked the recipe once I’d had a chance to look at it through the eyes of my BrewMate software. The colour was on the pale side and the only crystal malt I had was Caramalt, which wasn’t going to add any real colour. I opted to add 100g Black Malt, somehing I haven’t tried before, but was happy with the resulting colour.
One other observation from the brewday. My brewkit is annoying me…. again.
Updated 07/01/12 – sadly this brew didn’t make it beyond the FV. It was tasting of fusel alcohol. Not terrible, but not worth bottling and certainly not good enough to enter into the competition. I think the issue could have been fluctating temp or that the yeast got too hot in the FV – autolysis? Anyway, moving on to my next brew…..
broadfordbrewer 
Sounds like a well thought out beer, something I haven’t considered with my US/OZ IPA! This is the great thing about the homebrew world, the learning from others and seeing people’s thought process.
Thanks. I try to post before my brewday now as it helps me to think things through, and more often than not I get some helpful pointers too. What happened with your IPA?