Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Ordinary Bitter Recipe

On September 12, 2008

I wrote recently about my best beer ever brewed so here is the recipe. It’s very simple, which is one of the reasons it’s so good. It’s also cheap on ingredients too.

Far from ordinary this beer provides a great malty flavor and plenty of classic English hop character. This beer goes down smoothly and has a low ABV, so you can enjoy quite a bit of it with out getting blitzed. You’ll find some recipes for this style using a little more darker crystal malts, I liked mine a little drier than that and lighter in color. I also like the reinforcement of the nutty biscuit flavors so I use a good dose of victory malt also.

Brew this one in good health! I may need to go brew this one this weekend!

Pub Bitter

8-A Standard/Ordinary Bitter

Size: 6.5 gal
Efficiency: 70.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Original Gravity: 1.037
Terminal Gravity: 1.009
Color: 9.75
Alcohol: 3.63%
Bitterness: 29.6 (tinseth formula, 10% pellet hops adjustment)

Ingredients:

8.45 lb English 2-row Pale (Marris Otter or Golden Promise)
0.65 lb Crystal Malt 40°L
0.65 lb American Victory (or English Biscuit malt if you can get it)
1.95 oz East Kent Goldings (5.0%) – added during boil, boiled 60 min
1.3 oz East Kent Goldings (5.0%) – added during boil, boiled 2 min
White Labs WLP002 English Ale (or Safale-04)

Mash

Mash Temp = 154F, 60 minutes

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.0

Here is an alternate version for a darker more malt complex Bitter.
I added more crystal and a touch of chocolate malt to add some deeper/richer depth to the beer.
We’ll see how it turns out. I left the biscuit/victory addition out. I wanted to see how the Maris Otter alone carried the malt profile…along with that 1oz of chocolate malt in there too.

Bitter#2

Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
8.25 lb	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)	Grain	91.06 %
0.50 lb	Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L (60.0 SRM)	Grain	5.52 %
0.25 lb	Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)	Grain	2.76 %
0.06 lb	Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)	Grain	0.66 %
0.50 oz	Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (60 min)	Hops	13.4 IBU
1.00 oz	Goldings, East Kent [3.00 %] (30 min)	Hops	7.3 IBU
1.00 oz	Goldings, East Kent [3.00 %] (10 min)	Hops	3.4 IBU
1.00 items	Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min)	Misc
1 Pkgs	English Ale (Fermentis #Safale-04)	Yeast-Ale

OG 1.037
IBUs 24
SRM 11
Mash temp 154F
Ferment at 68F

Homebrew Equipment Calibration

By Mike

On September 11, 2008

In Equipment

First and foremost, I believe in buying the best equipment that I can. I think its worth taking a little extra time to save a little extra change to get “the next step up” when it comes to certain pieces of equipment. My main reason for that is because proper calibration then becomes less of a concern.

And that brings me to some bad news for everyone… you CANNOT CALIBRATE a hydrometer or thermometer. Calibration by definition, testing a known sample then SETTING that equipment to the known sample. There is no way to RESET a hydrometer or thermometer. These are preset closed instruments that were pre-calibrated by the manufacturer (hopefully correctly, see the opening paragraph).

Now before I get a lot of nasty comments about calibration, you can do what is referred to as Correction. You can test your hydrometer in 60F distilled water for its accuracy at zero. You can also test it in water with a pre-weighed amount of sugar to a desired gravity (assuming your scale is accurately calibrated too! You may be able to calibrate your scale). If the hydrometer doesn’t read zero where its supposed to you can determine a Correction factor. Which means you know that at zero water your hydrometer reads 1.004. That means to get to true zero you need to subtract 4 points from your reading. That means that a 1.054 reading is actually 1.050 SG. What you have just done is determined your equipments correction factor and you need to work that into your brewing notes.

I know many people refer to that process as calibration, but as I lab guy I have to stand strong here and say that it’s not.

The last problem with using correction is that sometimes instruments do not react linearly across the whole scale. Meaning that although your hydrometer reads 1.004 at “1.000” that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to be off by 4 points at all gravities. (1.054 for 1.050 and 1.074 and 1.070) In fact it usually gets worse as you move away from zero. So the best thing to do is make a solution of sugar water to a specific gravity at the highest you normally brew at and something in the middle (say 1.085 and 1.040). You can then see if the drift is up or down as you go up the scale and adjust accordingly with future, “real world” samples.

It’s not the end of the world, it’s just something to be aware of and how to deal with it; functionally and terminologically (is that a word???). At least now you have a good argument for chat over the brew kettle with your buddies next time.

Cheers.

Brown Porter Recipe

By John Krochune

On September 7, 2008

In Recipes

With Autumn on the way, I thought I would post a recipe for the season. This is a nice, smooth drinking, Brown Porter. I am following a partial mash procedure for this brew.

Ingredients:

3.5 lbs. English 2-row Pale
3 lbs. Dry Extra Light Extract
4 oz. British Black Patent
5 oz. English Chocolate Malt
2 oz. Crystal Malt 60°L
2 oz. Crystal Malt 120°L
0.6 oz. Northern Brewer Pellets boiled 60 min.
0.5 oz. Fuggles Pellets boiled 15 min.
0.5 oz. Fuggles Pellets boiled 1 min.

Yeast: White Labs WLP005 British Ale

Mash the grains at 152F for 60 minutes. Boil wort for 60 minutes, adding hops in at the times specified above. Add the extract with 15 minutes to go in the boil. Cool the wort to 68F and ferment for 2 weeks.

Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.011
Color: 23.99 °SRM
Bitterness: 26.5 IBUs
Alcohol: (%volume) 4.8 %

Related Posts

Here are some other recipes for Fall:

Octoberfest Ale Recipe

Doppelbock Recipe

Maple Porter Recipe

Ahtanum Hops

By John Krochune

On September 5, 2008

In Hops

Ahtanum Hops are a hop variety to be used for the typical American hop aroma and flavor. Very citrusy and floral, it is a fine alternative to Cascade or Amarillo. From what I read, Ahtanum hops have less bitterness than Cascade so that might be something to keep in mind when crafting up a recipe…or altering an existing recipe.

Origin: USA -Yakima Chief Ranches

Aroma: Similar to Cascade or Amarillo – Citrus (Grapefruit) and Floral. Some woodsy, earthy notes too.

Alpha Acid: Usually between 5.7-6.3%

Typical Usage: Aroma for the most part. Some texts had it as a moderate bittering hop too.

Beer Styles: Pales, IPA, and a nice American Brown.

While you are here, check out other popular Brew Dudes hop profiles:

Willamette Hops

Galena Hops

Northern Brewer Hops

Light Dry Malt Extract

By John Krochune

On September 3, 2008

In Extract

Mike and I were working on a project on Sunday and we were discussing some Brew Dudes tips. One of those tips was about the use of Light Dry Malt Extract.

We feel a best practice for extract brewers is to use the lightest malt extract available. For color and flavor, steeping grains should be used.

For an extract brewer to transition recipes to an all grain procedure, it’s probably best to have your “base extract malt” to be light to better match the base malts like American 2 row or Pilsner. A darker malt extract would harder to replicate since it is based on a secret recipe.

We feel steeping grains give the brewer more control over flavor and color too.

Now, I am not sure where we stand on the dry vs. liquid debate. I like dry because it is easier to measure and I have had good results in making light colored worts.

What do you think?

Home Brewing Ingredients