Help - can someone help me balance this recipe

[worcshopshop]

I brewed the following beer tasted ok but the initial taste was a bit thin and no body.

The beer was brewed with Nottingham and mashed at 66 c
I was thinking of maybe changig the hops to target for a lingering bitterness and adding maybe 10 - 15% munich malt.

Mashing at 68c and using S04 instead.

Berrow Pale Ale
----------------
Batch Size (L): 28.0
Total Grain (kg): 5.739
Total Hops (g): 126.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.045 (°P): 11.2
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012 (°P): 3.1
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.31 %
Colour (SRM): 5.6 (EBC): 11.0
Bitterness (IBU): 40.6 (Rager)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
4.911 kg Maris Otter Malt (85.58%)
0.599 kg Caragold (10.43%)
0.229 kg Wheat Malt (3.99%)

Hop Bill
----------------
13.0 g First Gold Leaf (8.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.5 g/L)
13.0 g Northdown Leaf (9.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.5 g/L)
40.0 g Cascade Leaf (7.2% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (1.4 g/L)
60.0 g Cascade Leaf (7.2% Alpha) @ 1 Minutes (Boil) (2.1 g/L)

[seymour]

My tips (unsurprisingly, if you're familiar with my posts) would be:

-increase your mash temp a degree or so

-consider a more characteristic English ale yeast such as Fullers or any great historical strain

-forget adding Munich Malt, your CaraGold is already serving the same purpose. What you want is an unmalted grain for added body, mouthfeel, head retention, and lace: torrified wheat, steel-cut oats, flaked barley, rye, etc.

-your hops look great to me, actually, but perhaps you could increase the late additions a bit, allow them to steep longer after flame-out, or add some dry hops after primary fermentation dies down (this can add a little desirable body as well)

-if you typically filter or use flocculating agents, I encourage you to try a batch without and see what you think

[worcshopshop]

Will do I leave the 1 minute hop additions for 30 mins before cooling. Might increase 1 minute hops up to 100 grams was thinking of adding some citra instead of the cascade.

I will try adding some flaked barley and use the S04 whitbread yeast and mashing at 68c

[seymour]

Beautiful. Keep us posted on your results.

[worcshopshop]

I'm tempted to try this now I've been looking around at your recipe's:-

Seymourillo

Original Gravity (OG): 1.053 (°P): 13.1
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (°P): 2.8
Alcohol (ABV): 5.48 %
Colour (SRM): 11.3 (EBC): 22.3
Bitterness (IBU): 61.3 (Rager)

78.49% Maris Otter Malt
9.69% Brown Sugar, Dark
8.91% Caramalt
2.91% Flaked Oats

1.8 g/L Amarillo (8.7% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
0.6 g/L Amarillo (8.7% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes (Boil)
1.2 g/L Amarillo (8.7% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)


Single step Infusion at 67°C for 60 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 20°C with Safale S-04

[seymour]

You won't regret it. If for some reason you aren't 100% satisfied, I'll refund the royalties in full.

[Blackaddler]

I brewed the following beer tasted ok but the initial taste was a bit thin and no body.

The beer was brewed with Nottingham and mashed at 66 c
I was thinking of maybe changig the hops to target for a lingering bitterness and adding maybe 10 - 15% munich malt.

Mashing at 68c and using S04 instead.

Berrow Pale Ale
----------------
Batch Size (L): 28.0
Total Grain (kg): 5.739
Total Hops (g): 126.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.045 (°P): 11.2
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012 (°P): 3.1
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.31 %
Colour (SRM): 5.6 (EBC): 11.0
Bitterness (IBU): 40.6 (Rager)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
----------------
4.911 kg Maris Otter Malt (85.58%)
0.599 kg Caragold (10.43%)
0.229 kg Wheat Malt (3.99%)

Hop Bill
----------------
13.0 g First Gold Leaf (8.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.5 g/L)
13.0 g Northdown Leaf (9.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.5 g/L)
40.0 g Cascade Leaf (7.2% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (1.4 g/L)
60.0 g Cascade Leaf (7.2% Alpha) @ 1 Minutes (Boil) (2.1 g/L)

I brewed a very similar recipe a couple of years ago.

Illegally Blonde
Batch Size (L): 48.0
Total Grain (kg): 7.104
Total Hops (g): 151.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.038
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 3.5 %
Colour (EBC): 7.3
Bitterness (IBU): 24 guestimate [Tinseth]
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 86
Boil Time (Minutes): 90
Yeast: Nottingham [repitched 120ml from previous brew]
Mash: 66C - 90mins
Water Treatment: AMS [CRS]
Fly Sparge


Grain Bill
----------------
6.200 kg Maris Otter Malt (87.27%)
0.704 kg Caragold (9.91%)
0.200 kg Wheat Malt (2.82%)

Hop Bill
----------------
90.0 g Wild (4.0% Alpha - guestimate) @ 90 Minutes
38.0 g Wild (4.0% Alpha - guestimate) @ 10 Minutes
23.0 g Wild (4.0% Alpha - guestimate) @ 1 Minute

Fermented at 20C to 16C over 7 days. Chilled to 8C for 2-3 days and then racked.

This was a very pale, light bodied spring/summer beer, which I remember, drank particularly well from the bottle after only a week [if still a little hazy].

I don't like too much bitterness, so kept the IBUs down to near a mild level. They still gave enough of a bite, though [enough for me, anyway]. Maybe I underestimated the AA of the wild hops, or maybe it was the late addition. I doubt that they would have been more than about 4% AA [most likely a Golding variant] as they were about 6 months old.

Anyway, the result was a very nice quaffable beer for the spring. Just the thing for a sunny lunchtime drink.

I think that you might need to get your efficiency up a little as it seems a bit on the low side. Maybe recheck your water treatment?

With spring [hopefully] just round the corner, I intend to brew this one again very soon...

[seymour]

Will do I leave the 1 minute hop additions for 30 mins before cooling. Might increase 1 minute hops up to 100 grams was thinking of adding some citra instead of the cascade.

I will try adding some flaked barley and use the S04 whitbread yeast and mashing at 68c

Bump.

I was wondering if you had tried some of the tweaks we talked about. If so, what did you think of the resulting beer?

Cheers,
-Seymour

[Barley Water]

Maybe it's just me but anytime I brew anything too much lower than 1.050 O.G. I always worry about ending up with a beer that just tastes too thin. Once the O.G. starts to drop I immediately start doing everything I can think of to trick the drinker (typically me) into thinking that the stuff is actually bigger than it really is. My typical methods are increasing the mash temperature, using a yeast strain that will attenuate less, adding character grains that result in more unfermentable sugars (like crystal malt for instance), using flaked barley or oats just to name a few. Also, if you add simple sugars to low O.G. beers, it's doing to tend to thin them (and dry them) out. One thing I have learned by skulking around on these forums though is that folks in the UK are used to beers that tend to be more "watery" by their very nature which makes me think that my idea of beer "body" is somewhat screwed up. Perhaps that can be explained by the use of beer engines on your side of the pond as versus pushing beer using CO2 like we do over here. Warmer, less fizzy beer is going to tend to seems fuller than the same beer carbed up and cold. Maybe what I need to do is spend some money and get myself a proper hand pump set up.

[seymour]

Barley Water, I have some of the same questions. It sounds like we both need to take a field trip to Fuggledog's house for some sensory calibration.