Moorehouse's Pendle Witches Brew

[twentyfootwilf]

I thought I'd better start a new thread for this after semi hi-jacking monkeybrews thread. After some chopping and changing of ingredients/amounts etc I've come up with this recipe for Pendle witches brew, the percentages are pretty close to those in the recipe in BYOBRA, by Graham Wheeler so being my first attempt at an extract brew having only done kits so far, I would appreciate comments from the more experienced (which should about be everyone on the forum )

Brew length: 18 litres
1.5kg light malt extract syrup 50.3%
750g light DME 25.2%
200g Wheat Dme 6.7%
200g Crystal 60 malt 6.7%
330g Golden syrup 11.1%

55g Fuggle pellets (approx 4% AA) 60min boil
12g Fuggle pellets 15 min boil
Gervin Ale yeast

OG 1051 FG 1009
abv 5.5%
colour 20 EBC
Bitterness 31 EBC
any thoughts

[Fuggled Mind]

I can't see anything wrong with that. Get it brewed is what I say. I guess this book could be revised again now that wheat DME is widely available.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers

Jason

[Monkeybrew]

As Jason says, go for it mate!

When are you planning your brewday?

MB

[twentyfootwilf]

I've got a Ditch's stout in the FV at the moment, 4 days into it's ferment so I shall be hoping to get started on this one by the weekend. I've only got space to do one brew at a time. I've plenty of storage space for bottles so I can brew pretty much as much as I want so long as it's one at a time. I'll give it a go and report results

[timbo41]

Looks good...and tempting not got guidelines to hand what style would you say it comes close to?

[twentyfootwilf]

In BYOBRA by Graham Wheeler, it's described as ' A deceptively pale strong bitter, dangerously potable. Sweet grain in the mouth, deep, dry finish with good hop character and vanilla notes ' Yum yum, now if my attempt comes anywhere near that I will be very happy! I can always live in hope.

[timbo41]

Now I really am tempted cheers!

[twentyfootwilf]

Now I really am tempted cheers!

Yeah but be careful, I'm old enough to remember those telly ads that made even 'Watney's Red Barrel' sound good!!!!

[themadhippy]

A deceptively pale strong bitter, dangerously potable

Aint that the truth,bloody stuff seems to creep up on you in the taxi home,tap you on the shoulder and remind you that youve just supped sevral pints of the stuff and now its time to be very drunk.

[twentyfootwilf]

A deceptively pale strong bitter, dangerously potable

Aint that the truth,bloody stuff seems to creep up on you in the taxi home,tap you on the shoulder and remind you that youve just supped sevral pints of the stuff and now its time to be very drunk.

You've experience of the genuine article then ?

[themadhippy]

You've experience of the genuine article then

o yes,sevral times, i never seem to learn.Think my first,or at least one of my earliest introductions to it was the cematery in rochdale,a good 25 years ago.

[twentyfootwilf]

......and do you actually encounter those famous Lancashire witches after a session on the brew ?

[twentyfootwilf]

Well my first attempt at an extract has been in the FV for 6 days now and is down to 1008 and a taste from the trial jar is tasting promising at last!
But what a bloody game I've had with it! I'm hoping I'm not the only one that has had to adapt and re adapt when starting out on the next step up from brewing kits. I finally used the following recipe
1.5kg tin of Coopers LME light
500g light DME
165g wheat dme
165g crystal malt
275g candi sugar
35g fuggles pellets at 90mins
10g fuggles pellets at 15mins
1tsp Irish moss
Coopers ale yeast
Brew length 15 litres
OG 1053
So far so good.
After two days it didn't seem to be fermenting so I roused it and added a sachet of Gervin and things got going....phew!!
Then after a couple more days I checked th SG and sure enough it was down to 1014 (very quickly I thought), but the taste it was so sweet that it was clear to me I had extracted virtually nothing of the hop bitterness during the boil. I'm thinking that I didn't boil it vigorously enough. So to try to save the brew I MIXED UP SOME dme in water and boiled vigorously 40g of fuggles pellets (all I had left) for 60mins and 20g of willamette leaf hops (in lieu of fuggles) for 15mins
and then cooled the resulting 1litre of bittered wort and added it to the FV and at the same time added a sanitised bag containing 25g Willamette to the FV to dry hop. I know I'm lucky to get away with this buggering about but I had to do something. I'm left with 16 litres in the FV down to 1008 (I know I'll have lost a little gravity with the added bittered wort) and it's tasting as I have said very promising and it has a lovely citrussy bitternes (not too bitter though).I've no idea if this tastes anything like Moorehouses Pendle Witches Brew (I suspect not). I'll leave it for another week to finish off in th FV before bottling. Watch this space.........

[Monkeybrew]

Well done on your first attempt, sorry to hear that you have had to bugger about with it, but if it was easy it would be boring I suppose!

My first BIAB brew that I did was the Exmoor Gold recipe from GW's book and I also thought that I had just brewed alcoholic barley juice, but with time in the bottle it turned out quite nice.

I assume that you were boiling on your kitchen hob? I have been testing a 19L stockpot that I have recently purchased and I don't think that my gas hob has enough oooommmph!

Anyway at least you have brewed something, and you never know, it will probably be super

Let us know how it turns out.

MB

[twentyfootwilf]

I think your right about the cooker hob not having enough guts to vigorously boil a substantial quantity. I was boiling mine in a large preserving pan that holds about 12 litres so I was boiling about 9 litres. The thing with a preserving pan is they are made very wide for their size in order to boil off water when making chutneys etc so they lose a lot of heat through the large surface area. Next time I shall use a large 11 litre stock pot I've got which is much taller and narrower and has a lid which is capable of retaining most of the heat produced. We live and learn. Currently the brew in the FV is actually tasting really good (I'm getting pretty good at tasting from the FV and predicting the quality of the end product). I'm definately going to have another go.