Moorehouse's Pendle Witches Brew

[Jocky]

The gas rings on my cooker just about get 11 litres up to a boil in a 30cm (19 litre) stock pot, unless I use multiple of them at once. It means I don't quite get the bitterness needed for IPAs, and need to up the hops to make it work.

On a side note, I tried Witches Brew for the first time the other day, and thought it was a lovely beer.

[twentyfootwilf]

I wonder if when doing an extract brew I could put a portion of the wort (say 4 or 5 litres) into a smaller pan for the purpose of boiling the hops and this being a smaller volume would be much easier to keep at a vigorous boil. Then at the end of the boil add the bittered wort back to the main batch which has been simmering slowly. 'Where there's a will there's a way' as the saying goes.

[Jocky]

Yes, you could do that. You may want to check whether it would affect the hop extraction rates though (I don't know). Also vacuum packed hops expand enormously once in hot water - make sure you have plenty of space to allow for that.

I've considered doing stuff like that, but at the end of the day it's simpler for me to just adjust my hopping rates.

[twentyfootwilf]

Yes I can use a large enough pan to cope with hop expansion it will just be easier to boil 4 , 5 or even 6 litres than 9 or 10. So I'm going to give that a go, It should work in theory.

[twentyfootwilf]

Just a quick update on the resulting brew. Actually tastes bloody good. I don't know what the commercial brew tastes like, but this stuff has a definite citrusy malty sweetness with nice hop flavour coming through. A definite result, very encouraging.

[Monkeybrew]

Nice one matey, glad to hear that