AG #8: Adnams The Bitter Clone - 29/09/2012

[seymour]

Great answer, Hogarth. Thanks.

[Kegman]

Glad it turned out well. How does it compare to the real thing? Mine's nothing like, but it's a bloody nice pint: one of my finest.

It's similar in colour and that's about it, but likewise, it's an awesome pint.

[Kegman]

I reckon it could be all sorts of things. I got an OG of 1041 and an FG of 1006, which gives me an ABV of 4.5%. That's way too high, cask Adnams is 3.7%. I didn't use caramel, which apparently does lend a taste to the beer. The recipe might have been wrong. The yeast ... who knows? I used all the yeasty dregs from a 5l keg, growing them up in 600ml then 2l of wort. I don't know what yeast I ended up with ... but I will say that this beer is quite similar to one I once made with Wyeast 1335, which is supposed to be one of the Adnams strains. Other factors might be the shape of my fermenter and the fact I'm not brewing it in Suffolk by the sea. The fact is, it's difficult enough even to recreate one of your own beers accurately, so to clone a distinctive beer like Adnams is probably very hard indeed. But I'm going to keep trying.

Fully agree and this is why the brewery were fine with me photographing the ingredients chart.