Bottling - Strong Bitter

No Caps!

Time to bottle the Strong Bitter brewed on the 9th of July. Fortunately I realised just before starting that I only had silver caps which I'd already used on my Best Bitter previously. Since I normally can't be arsed with labels I tend to use different coloured caps to distinguish between beers, especially important for two beers similar in colour. So after a quick trip to the local homebrew shop I was ready. The final gravity was 1.010 (exactly as forecast) - giving me 5.1% abv. I filled 28 x 330ml , 21 x 500ml and one 750ml swing top as I almost ran out of bottles.

Best Bitter Tasting

This is better best bitter

After the slightly disappointing result of my previous homebrew effort I was hoping that my recent attempt at a best bitter would deliver a more acceptable outcome. Fortunately it has! This is much better, nicely balanced, not too sweet and not too bitter. A very traditional tasting English ale, and totally clear as well!

Look! You can see through this one!

Another Pale Ale Tasting

Hazy, Cloudy, Murky

Time to finally report on the Pale Ale brewed on April 27th. I have tried this a few times since I bottled it but left it until now in the vain hope it might clear. Unfortunately it hasn't done so.

Usually I can see the logos on the other side of the glass through the beer, but not in this case so something is not quite right. Admittedly I did forget to add the Irish Moss to the boil but I've done that in the past and the beer has always cleared up a lot more than this one. On the bright side it is still quite drinkable, there is a bit of hop aroma and the carbonation is ok, but it has that hint of homebrew tang that reminds me of cheap kits brewed with sugar. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong and hazy beer is not a bad thing in itself. If I'd planned to brew a cloudy beer it would be fine, but I didn't so it's not.

Murky!

Brewday - 09/06/2017 Strong Bitter

Leftover Beer

I had sufficient spare ingredients left for one more brew, so I decided to make a strong bitter.

Recipe (BIAB):

• Mash for 1 hr at 67°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 30lt
• Maris Otter 4.4kg
• Crystal Malt 150g
• Carapils 140g
• Chocolate malt 12g 
• Saaz 50g (60 mins)
• Saaz 25g (15 mins)
• Goldings 20g (15 mins)
• Cluster 20g (15 mins)
• Irish Moss 1 tsp (15 mins)
• Goldings 22g (at turn off)
• Gervin GV12 English Ale Yeast 11g pack
• Cluster 22g (dry hopped 4 days)
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results:

I got 23lt in the fermenter, the OG was 1.050 (slightly higher than expected!) and hopefully it should finish around 1.010 (5.1% abv) with 35 IBU's.

 Fermentation is going well!

Bottling - Best Bitter

On The Eighth Day ...

... it was time to bottle the Best Bitter brewed on the 24th of May. 

Final Gravity was 1.010, ABV 4.6% and IBU 38. I think my recent brews have been a touch over carbonated, which is not good for a best bitter, so I primed this batch with 80g of sugar (about 1.8 vols of CO2) and bottled 21 litres in total. A quick sample tasting delivered a sweet malty flavour, pleasantly bitter with a little bit of hops in the background. I hope that after a couple of weeks of conditioning this will be a really nice beer.