Home Brew Forum

Quite an uneventful brew day, which was nice

Got the mash on and went out for an hour or so, got back and after doing stuff around the house got the sparge water on started the batch sparging on after nearly two hours. Mash only dropped a degree or so

Collected 32l of lovely dark wort and started the boil. One slight hiccup- while storing out the hops I couldn't find the challenger so bunged in 24g of Northdown instead- only to find them when it was too late Hopefuly it'll still be something like OP and drinkable

I'm still playing around with my water treatment and as my LHBS didn't have any Calcium Chloride in so I put a teaspoon of Gypsum in the mash and in the boil.

I woke up today with krausen all over the sides boiler and the plastic sheet I fortuitously placed the FV on. The good 'ol So4 obviously took kindly to the extra calcium

Cheers,
Jamie

Sounds good, am sure the change of hops wont make too much difference.

I assume you mean the FV and not the boiler?

I assume you mean the FV and not the boiler?

Whoops - edited!

i brewed OP at the weekend, but same as you i didnt use challenger, i used fuggles instead, and i added 200g of black treacle too, so i hoping it will come out something like, if no im sure it will be nice non the less, oh i also used hens tooth yeast.

all the best with yours!

cheers, kev

I've just had a pint of the GW OP, and its <hic> pretty good.
can't remember what the real thing is like side by side (I'll get a bottle to test), but its pretty darn good for me!
You'll enjoy

and i added 200g of black treacle too

I thougt about that as there is a tin in a cupboard somwhere- but thought I'd follow the recepie (more or less!) and then try it with treacle another time- with the right hops as well

I'll get a bottle to test

Yep, i'll be doing that too

It's still going great guns in the FV, and smelling fantastic too!

Cheers,
Jamie

would be interesting with treacle, but mines flavoursome enough.
lots of complexity going on in there.
and more fermentables would make it even stronger, which at 6.3% I don't really need.
2 pints of mine and I'm wasted!

If anyone is interested, I have made a couple of these and primed the keg with 100g of black treacle as recommended by Dave Line and the result was very good. Theakstons used to use a 'blend of sugars', but this is not the case now (according to The Real Ale Almanac) so i think the recipe has probably changed. If you want to reproduce the original OP, I can recommend the black treacle.

Cheers Jubby,

Treacle for priming it is then! I assume boiling up with a little water is the procedure? As I'm currently only bottling I'd add it to the bottling bucket before transferring the beer from the FV and then fill bottles via a bottling stick.

Jamie

ive been disappointed with recent bottles of O.P
it doesnt tsate like it did twenty odd years ago lol

i was thinking about bottling up my OP with 100gms of black treacle ..but that would make 300gms worth in there, maybe a little too much,ill just bottle it as normal.

JabbA wrote:Cheers Jubby,

Treacle for priming it is then! I assume boiling up with a little water is the procedure? As I'm currently only bottling I'd add it to the bottling bucket before transferring the beer from the FV and then fill bottles via a bottling stick.

Jamie

I normally draw off a litre of beer from the FV and boil it with the sugar, cool it and in your case mix it back into the main batch in the bucket.