AG7 – D&S Ale (Harveys’ Sussex Bitter Clone)

[Jon474]

D&S Ale because it is Dad and Samuel’s Ale.

Samuel is 10, and tomorrow he is in charge of all bucket and water filling duties. It'll be nice to have an Assistant.

This is going to be a 28 litre batch brewed for my friend's 40th Birthday Party. He specified a Harveys Bitter-clone.

Because of limitations with the size of my mash tun, I am going to do this by making up a 20 litre batch of wort at 1.080 and then add 33 litres of treated water to bring it down to 1.030. After the boil this should end up at 38 litres at 1.040-ish.

Yeast will be recovered WLP013 – London Ale Yeast.

[Just an aside: Found a Home Brew shop in Kirkstall, Leeds today. Went in to the shop in my work gear – suit and tie, business-face, you know – and at first I really thought the bloke was just taking the p*ss out of me at first but after talking to him it turned out to be a genuinely nice man and seemed to be a really knowledgeable brewer. Spent quite a long time and a few quid with him but would have been happy to spend a bit more. I go to Leeds quite a bit with work and I will definitely get in to see them again. He wasn't impressed with JBK though!!]

Mash stuff:
Pale Malt 6610 grams
Flaked Maize 345 grams
Crystal Malt 465 grams
Target out of mash tun:
20 litres
Grain weight 7.423kg
Dead space 1.2 litres
False bottom space 3.2 litres
Grain/liquor ratio 2.5l/kg
Grain absorbed l/kg 1
Initial water 4.4
Mash liquor 18.56
Absorbed -7.42
Mash out 14.33
Mash in 0
Sparge water 5.67
Into boiler 20

Will then dilute with 33 litres of treated water and boil up with the hops.

Hop schedule ONCE DILUTED…
Fuggles Whole 4.90% 60 mins 0 lbs. 2.1 oz 61 grams 29.20%
Challenger Whole 7.60% 60 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 11.70%
Golding Whole 5.70% 20 mins 0 lbs. 1.7 oz 49 grams 23.40%
Bramling Cross Whole 6.30% 20 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 11.90%
Fuggles Whole 4.90% 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 11.90%
Golding Whole 5.70% 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 25 grams 11.90%

Bring it on.

[micmacmoc]

Thats gonna have that superb Harveys hop aroma. My fave is their sussex pale the pale blue bottle, occassionally I get a bottle from the wife's uncle who lives in Kingston near Lewes. Is that what this is? I tried a Harveys clone a while back but it did'nt have half the aroma hops you've used....I've copied this and added it to my ever growing 'to do' list.
Best of etc and let us know!
That Thomas Paine ale is a corker too....and bonfire boy....hell, they're all good!

[Jon474]

My assistant has gone out to play on his bike!

[Jon474]

I am brewing outside again so it is very likely that bits of Icelandic volcano are dropping into my beer.

I am so far behind my schedule for today that I may run out of daylight before this is finished. I really should have washed and cleaned ready for today last night but I drank Styrian Madness instead! I was too happy to scrub.

As might have been predicted, the small Assistant Brewer lost a little of his enthusiasm when I asked him to carefully weigh out 6.6kg of pale malt. He became a bit more excited at the request to measure out 62 litres of water into a 10-gal bucket though. That went quite well. Then the excitement became too much and off he went on his bike. Not seen him since.

Going to do two new things today. Underletting into the mash tun (there has been some discussion on JBK this week about underletting, so I thought I'd see if it worked for me) and diluting the pre-boil wort. Hmm...more hot-side aeration and a test to see whether my OG x OV = FG x FV maths are good enough.

Water treatment...


Mineral lode...


Some grain...


The underletting arrangement. No pumps just a gravity feed.


Underletting lost me too much temperature. Almost certainly heat has been lost through the transfer pipe arrangement. I did get a better mash constituency with less stirring and less lumps, so it definitely works. i will do it again but I will need to sort out the temperature issue before I do. I had to tip in nearly a whole kettle-full of boiling water just to get to 65-ish C. Oh well, it's a forgiving mistress this beer stuff. pH measurement at 10 mins gave somewhere between 4.9 and 5.5 so that will have to do as well. Since I started to add epsom salts to the minerals I am getting my pH a bit too low. I probably need to reduce the gypsum.

Mashed out at just 64.5C so I was a bit on the low side. Drew off the first runnings and then batch sparged with a just six litres of additional water. That's what the calculations said but I should have added a bit more as I ended up with just 15 litres at 1.074. I wanted 20 litres at 1.080 but as the mash did not go as planned that is probably reasonable.

Added 30 litres of treated water and ended up with 45 litres at 1.035 in the kettle.

Boil started at 4:25. It should have started earlier but after 30 minutes I realised that the second element was not plugged in properly. D'oh.

Massive foam over at the start - not seen that before. It has settled down a bit now.


Hops are ready...


Probably another two/two and a half hours to go?

[Jon474]

Finished this brew at 7:40pm

Don't need to talk about the boil...these two pictures of the aroma hops pretty much say it all...enough for me anyway.




Forgot to put the minerals in the boil. Oh well.

Chiller...


Up close with the IC...


Trub stuff...such a shame to boil these beauties for twenty minutes and five minutes and then just throw them away. I'd like to perhaps take them out for a meal, maybe a club after...


OG into the fermenter was a bit lower than I wanted...1.036-ish. I was looking for 1.040 to be honest.


The yeast re-starter. WLP013 London Ale Yeast. Hopefully more than I need in that jar.


Cold break...


The finished article in its water bath set at 20C. Once again, no cold side aeration and a drop of olive oil in the re-starter.


Come back tonight after a few Theakstons and a couple of Pedigrees and no activity in the beer. WLP013 did this to me last time. It does nowt for twelve hours and then goes wild...I hope.

Most useless beer-making piece of kit...this spoon from H&G. Heat anything up to...oh let's say 35C...and watch it bend into unbelievable shapes. Try and stir anything with it? No chance. Totally f-ing useless. Going over next door's fence tonight.


Going to bed a tad anxious about my WLP013 but all in all, a good day. Loved brewing today.

Yours in beer
J

[WishboneBrewery]

Buy a nice long wooden one, much more sturdy

[Jon474]

Cheers pdtnc - going to order a stainless steel spoon.

I need not have worried...after 15 hours...


and after 36 hours...


Lovely aroma coming off this. Worried about whether or not to drop this but have decided not to touch it. It's doing fine. Leave well alone.

Don't like to see all that cold break though. Worried it will pick up contaminants which will then drop through the beer when the head drops.

It's like being a father all over again.

J

[Jon474]

Six days on the WLP013 and the Brix reading at 19:57 tonight suggests 4.2 = 1.012.

Yesterday morning the reading was 5.0 = 1.016.

My target finish is 1.008.

Tastes nice. Very pale in colour.

I’ll leave it in the FV until Saturday, if I can. Then it’s into a KK with 80g of DME.

Feeling hopeful about this.

J

[floydmeddler]

I've wanted to do a Harvey's clone for a while now but am waiting patiently until I get my hands on their yeast. For me, their yeast is the most prominent flavour in their beers. Can't imagine anything tasting even remotely like a Harvey's unless that yeast character is there. Am I wrong?

Cheers

[RichardG]

floydmeddler, It may be worth looking at M&S (bear with me on this!). They do a range of beers now, which are bottle conditioned, and include a Sussex bitter. I've included (hopefully!) a link below which will take you to the details. In the store near where I work (Coventry) they sell them individually. Not cheap at £2.00 plus each, but if you could culture the yeast it may solve your problem given that it's brewed at the Hepworth brewery in Horsham. In fact, the rest are brewed by existing brewers as well, e.g., St.Austell & Woodfordes. Could be interesting.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/Real-Ale ... oding=UTF8

BTW, how do you turn the above link into a single word or phrase as I've seen done on here?

[floydmeddler]

floydmeddler, It may be worth looking at M&S (bear with me on this!). They do a range of beers now, which are bottle conditioned, and include a Sussex bitter. I've included (hopefully!) a link below which will take you to the details. In the store near where I work (Coventry) they sell them individually. Not cheap at £2.00 plus each, but if you could culture the yeast it may solve your problem given that it's brewed at the Hepworth brewery in Horsham. In fact, the rest are brewed by existing brewers as well, e.g., St.Austell & Woodfordes. Could be interesting.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/Real-Ale ... oding=UTF8

BTW, how do you turn the above link into a single word or phrase as I've seen done on here?

Cheers Richard. However, they don't seem to sell Harvey's bottled conditioned ale. Are you saying that Hepworth use the same yeast as Harvey's?

Cheers

[RichardG]

Sorry floyddie, no, I wasnt trying to suggest that. I've no idea either way, but I suspect not. The head brewer at Hepworth is the former head brewer at King & Barnes, so if he doesn't use a new, different yeast, I'd guess he'll be using the same yeast as at K&B; but that's just a guess. My idea was that, whilst it may not be exactly what you want, the yeast in the M&S Sussex Bitter may give you a decent tasting 'Sussex' bitter. I think I may just get a bottle for the weekend and see what I think of it.

[RichardG]

Apropos nothing, I've just been looking at the Harveys website, and note that they make a porter, which they produce in bottle conditioned form. Obviously I can't say if it's the same yeast they use in their bitter, but you can get it from the website, and it may be worth considering.

[floydmeddler]

Apropos nothing, I've just been looking at the Harveys website, and note that they make a porter, which they produce in bottle conditioned form. Obviously I can't say if it's the same yeast they use in their bitter, but you can get it from the website, and it may be worth considering.

Yes, I've seen this too. Plan is to get a sanitised bottle's worth from a pub then add a T spoon of sugar and leave it for two weeks. Hopefully it will create enough yeast at the bottom of the bottle to build up a starter with. Obviously this method isn't the most sanitary way of doing it but it's worth a try! Mentioned this method in a post before and one guy seems to have had success with it: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=27048&hilit=ales&start=30

Bit of a chance but if you don't try these things...

[RichardG]

Absolutely; aim high.... you never know!