After the horror of losing my Summer Lightning clone to an infection, I decided for my next brew that I would take a plunge into writing my own recipe.
I wanted to make a house bitter, that I could repeat easily, was relatively low in alchohol and also not too hoppy... an easy drinking beer for people visiting
Also needed to have a snappy cricket related name to continue my brewery's cricket theme...
So Botham's Beefy Bitter was born after some tinkering with Beer Engine software to get the right levels of ingredients, colour and hoppyness..(is that a word??)
(I am sure someone on here will point out something wrong with it... don't burst my bubble folks... i was right proud of myself!!)
Recipe was as follows:
23 litre batch
OG 1040 ABV
4.%
14 units of colour
MARIS OTTER PALE MALT 3900g
CRYSTAL MALT 170 g
HOPS boil time 90 minutes
Goldings 40g
Add 9gms Goldings last 15 minutes
Estimated final gravity 1009
All went very well, and it is noticible how better I am becoming at making the brews that a) I was able to mow the lawn, watch the footie and cook a roast chicken while I was brewing, and b) the whole thing only took around 5 hours... from water on to to clean up!!
Also for the first time I managed to get exactly the amount of beer I wanted, 23 litres, into the fermenter and at the correct OG... so all my processes are becoming more and more under control!!
Here are the obligatory pics... (not so many this time as I was doing all the other stuff at the same time!)

Grains.. (didn't use the fruit in the bowl.)


Collection in the boiler

The boil

Collection in FV from boiler