Home Brew Forum

OK, tomorrow's the day. I'm not planning to use the recipe from the thread in the recipes section, but I'm basing it on the Real Ale Almanac description posted on that thread: -

Bitter Dave wrote:Black Sheep Special Bitter OG 1046 4.4%
Marris Otter Pale Malt (83%), Crystal Malt (7%), Torrified Wheat (10%), roast malt extract (0.005%). 26 units of colour*. Fuggles, Challenger, Goldings and Progress whole hops. Late hopped with Goldings. 36 units of bitterness.

My interpretation of that is:

3.7 kg Marris Otter
300g Crystal
450g Torrefied Wheat
5g Roast Barley

Fuggles - 9 IBUs
Goldings - 9 IBUs
Progress - 9 IBUs
Challenger - 9 IBUs

Late hops: Goldings 10g, also 10g in the Primary (this worked very well with my last brew).

I didn't really know how to divide the hops so just went for equal IBUs of each. The malt quantities are rounded off and I've assumed 80% efficiency. I wasn't sure about the Roast Barley, so I've just added a touch. Yeast will be Ringwood Brewery.

Any thoughts on this??

DaaB wrote:I think you'll need a little more roast to have any significant efect on colour, I used 20g in a similar brew recently and thay didn't have a huge impact.

I'd be tempted to use the fuggles and goldings as late hops and add them along with the goldings you already have as late hops with 10 mins to go. You should get around 10-12% utilisation.

Hope it goes well tomorrow what every you do, will there be any pics ?

OK, I'll up the roast - I had a feeling 5g wouldn't do much, but the RAA gave such a low %age that I didn't want to put too much in. Also, I'm worried about pH.

I'll need to go to work on the hop calculator to work out what weight to use, though. I wonder if I'll need differential equations.

I may take a few pics if I'm not too hung over.

I've got some calcium carbonate, so I'll use that if the pH looks dodgy. I think we discussed ph5.2 before and there were some doubts as to whether it will work on a low pH wort - it's more designed for the correction of high pH (that was my understanding, anyway).

Re the hops, I get:

11g of Progress (7.3% AA) Util 25%
15g of Challenger (5.6% AA) Util 25%
46g Fuggles (4.5% AA) Util 10%
48g Goldings (4.3% AA) Util 10%

I've used a slightly higher figure for the utilisation than I normally do, as I reckon (as we discussed before) that I actually get more than 20%, hence my dislike for supposedly highly hopped brews .

DaaB wrote:

Jim wrote:I may take a few pics if I'm not too hung over.

btw special occasion tonight Jim ?

Of course. Saturday night!

Well, my pH did turn out a bit low (4.9 ish) but I decided to leave it, as I've brewed with that pH plenty of times.

I had a bit of a scare when I realised that before I put my fermenters away last time I put bleach solution in them and didn't rinse them. Since that was about 3 weeks ago I doubt if there was a trace left, but just in case I ditched the filtered water I'd put in one of them and refilled with fresh. Unfortunately I'd already topped up the boiler to heat the sparge water so that had to go as well.

A small amount of water from the unrinsed fermenter went into the mash, but hopefully there'll be no effect. The trouble is, with having to heat up all my sparge water from scratch while the mash was going on I miscalculated and ended up having to use water at only 75C. The sparge went a bit slowly as a result, but hopefully everthing will be fine (fingers crossed!).

DaaB wrote:Blimey Jim, and it's only half 9

I would imagine any chlorine would be well gone by now. I suppose there may be a trace of whatever remains once that's gone (surfactants or caustic ?) but doubt a faint dusting over a fermenter dilluted down by 30 litres of liquid will have any significant effect.

That's what I'm hoping. Only a couple of litres of the suspect water went in the mash - the fermenter had the 'cold' in and the boiler (which was rinsed) had the hot, which was the majority of the mash liquor.

DaaB wrote:
Did you manage any pics inbetween the moments of frustration ?

One or two! I'll post them when I get finished.

Far too ealry for a Sunday brew
Keep up the good work Jim

Not good news. Starting gravity only 38.

Probably the sparge temperature to blame, as I did a starch test at the end of the mash and it was OK. Pity really, cos I had high hopes for this brew - now it's going to be over-hopped for the gravity.

a bit of time will sort it out won't it?

I reckon you'll be pretty close Jim, how long is the boil ?
90 mins should nail it.

Vossy1 wrote:I reckon you'll be pretty close Jim, how long is the boil ?
90 mins should nail it.

That was measured after cooling, unfortunately. Anyway, here's some nice pics.

The mash:


Digi thermometer moment before it suddenly decided to read 10 deg high (nearly giving me a heart attack in the process till I checked the spirit thermometer).


Sparging (stopped at 14):




And the rest:

DaaB wrote:Nice shots

You wont exceed the (suggested max) bu/gu ratio of 1 (36/38 )

I think the reason your thermometer suddenly read high is because the probe is submerged beyond the joint with the plastic. I've found the glue always fails on any of the probes i've tried. If you dry it out in a low oven or even with Carols hair dryer it should be fine

Yeah I did wonder if some liquid had got into it. It was fine last time though.

Re the brew: - I'm sure it will be drinkable, but it won't be the beer I set out to make.

It will probably be closer to Black Sheep Best Bitter rather than Black Sheep special Jim, I'm sure that you will still have an enjoyable beer.

You're both right, of course, it will still be a nice pint I'm sure.

Anyway, it's well away now. I'm not going to put dry hops in the fermenter as originally planned.

Looking good gr8 photo's all round
I have had problems with that thermometer also and it wasn't submerged past the metal either!

Had a little taster of this last night for the first time.

It isn't fully cleared yet, but nevertheless has a nice clean taste. The bitterness, surprisingly, has mellowed and is quite acceptable - I especially like the flavour of the progress hops, which is very noticable - I've not used that variety before.

The only fault is it has a 'thin' body - I don't think that's just down to it being under gravity, I reckon my mash was too acidic (presumably exacerbated - it's alright they can't touch you for it - by the dark malt).

Next brew I'm going to use some calcium carbonate in the mash. I've checked the records of the last brew I adjusted in this way, and it turns out I also added Gypsum (the records don't say why ) so maybe that explains why I found it a bit harsh.