April 26, 2014. This concept began as a Ringwood Old Thumper clone. My brother-in-law, also a brewer, once lived down the lane from Ringwood Brewery and still fondly remembers their brews. I blame him for my English ale obsession, so I wanted to brew some payback. Forum member Monkeybrew generously mailed me some Ringwood dual-strain yeast, which he received directly from the brewery. I loosely followed the Old Thumper grainbill and hop varieties, but snuck in several Americanized tweaks. Hence the name Javelina, get it?
More credit where credit's due: Mike C-Z shared the rye malt and rare Belma hops. Ehren from Schlafly shared the Yakima Challenger hops. Dylan from The Civil Life shared the English amber malt. Uncle Joshua shared the Australian Mauri yeast I used for the second-runnings. Talk about a collaboration brew…it pays to have brewer friends!
I got a late start, but still needed to finish-up in time for evening plans, so I rushed and made some stupid mistakes. I got a terrible efficiency because I didn't raise to a proper sparge temperature, sparged way too fast, and discovered a leak in my boil kettle…so my ESB only hit 1051 instead of the targeted 1057. That's the bad news. Unwilling to go down without a fight, I attempted to salvage the left-behind fermentable sugars, by stirring-in more specialty ingredients, mashing and sparging again while the ESB boiled, in order to make a smaller Dark Mild from the second-runnings. This is probably the closest I've dabbled to a traditional parti-gyle process, and I freely admit the math bewilders me. The good news is I squeezed-out two batches and still kept my time commitments. I'm equally excited about both resulting beers.
SEYMOUR JAVELINA ESB
5.5 US gallons = 4.6 Imperial gallons = 22.7 Liters (adjusted for loss)
GRAINBILL
85% = 10.2 lbs = 4.63 kg, Malting Company of Ireland Stout Malt
6% = .72 lb = 327 g, Muntons CaraMalt
5% = .6 lb = 272 g, Rye Malt
3% = .36 lb = 163 g, Crisp Pale Chocolate Malt
1% = .12 lb = 54 g, Torrified Wheat
+ Rice Hulls to prevent stuck sparge, and a pinch of Calcium Carbonate (chalk)
Total = 12 lbs/5.44 kg
MASHED 60 min around 154°F/68°C (relatively high, but in my experience, this Ringwood yeast is extremely attenuative)
HOPS
1 oz = 28 g, Yakima-grown Wye Challenger, First Wort Hops
.3 oz = 8.5 g, Yakima-grown Belma, First Wort Hops
.5 oz = 14 g, UK Wye Progress, 15 min remaining
.6 oz = 17 g, Yakima-grown Belma, at flame-out
.5 oz = 14 g, UK Wye Progress, at flame-out
BOIL vigorously, uncovered 60 minutes, added wort chiller and Irish Moss at 15 minutes remaining. Afterwards, I Ditch-drilled the hell outta it before pitching.
YEAST
Ringwood Brewery proprietary dual-strain, which originally came from Hull Brewery, possibly Samuel Webster before that. NOT the same yeast as the single-strain Wyeast 1187. Fermented ≈ 69°F/20.6°C. Bring-on the esters!
APPROXIMATE STATS: (terrible 63% efficiency, how embarrassing!)
OG: 1051 (reduced from the desired 1057)
FG: 1009
ABV: 5.5%
IBU: 50
COLOUR: 11°SRM/22°EBC, deep orange amber
Javelina mash
Javelina sparge
Prepping the hops
Waiting on the boil
See that handy-dandy thermometer and sight-gauge I added? Yeah cool, except I didn't seat the silicone washer correctly or something, because there was a steady leak throughout the boil. Aaarrrgh! Tightening the inside nut didn't fix the problem, so I had to just cut my losses and trudge on. I'll have to fix and test it another day. Geez, Seymour, didn't you test it ahead of time? I know, I know…rookie mistake.
That's my cat Max, apparently keeping lookout for boil-overs.
I used my equipment a little differently this time. After flame-out, and allowing the last hop addition to steep awhile, I racked into this separate kettle for chilling. Meanwhile, I racked the second batch of wort right into the bigger kettle to quickly resume boiling. This saved a lot of time, as opposed to chilling the entire big kettle, then waiting for the whole thing to heat back up to a boil.
Oh well, like I said, I tried to make the best of a bad situation by quickly cobbling-together a parti-gyle Mild Ale recipe.
SEYMOUR THIS LITTLE PIGGY MILD, get it?
3 US gallons = 2.5 Imperial gallons = 11.4 Liters
GRAINBILL: to the aforementioned grainbed, I stirred-in
4 oz = 113 g, Thomas Fawcett Amber Malt
7 oz = 198 g, Quick-Cook Steel-Cut Oats
2.4 oz = 68 g, Muntons Black Barley
I allowed more mash time, then drained a little wort into a sauce pan with 14 oz = 397 g Organic Brown Sugar, added a few drops of lime juice, and boiled an improvised dark invert syrup, which I eventually added to the main boil. I hope these molasses/black liqourice/toffee notes will help differentiate it from the tamer first ESB batch.
BOILED: 60 minutes
Here's another trick I learned on this forum: I left all the hops from the previous batch in the boil kettle, and racked this new wort on top, assuming the late aroma additions still have some bittering alpha acids to give. I added Irish Moss at 15 minutes remaining. At flame-out, I added 1 oz = 28 g Sorachi Ace hops, covered and let steep awhile. I immediately started picking-up some lemongrass/lime leaf/coconut milk/green curry type aromas. Very cool. Clearly, this is gonna be hoppier than most modern English Mild Ales.
Once chilled, aerated, and racked to a 3 gallon carboy, I pitched Mauribrew Weiss dry yeast. I love the well-rounded body and mouthfeel this leaves in my milds. Also fermented ≈ 69°F/20.6°C. I'm curious to taste a Ringwood-fermented mild too, but didn't have another starter ready.
- IF CONVERTED TO A NON-PARTI-GYLE RECIPE, MAYBE:
50.5% Stout Malt
10% Unmalted Oats
6% Amber Malt
3.5% CaraMalt
3.5% Black Malt
3% Rye Malt
2% Pale Chocolate Malt
.7% Torrified Wheat
20.8% Brown Sugar, made into Invert Syrup
+ Rice Hulls
Early hops: Challenger, Progress, Belma
Late hops: Sorachi Ace
APPROXIMATE STATS:
OG: 1040 (which seems to indicate the grains still had ≈ 20% of their sugars left?! Groan.)
FG: 1010
ABV: 3.9%
IBU: ≈30?
COLOUR: very dark reddish brown
Making the brown sugar invert syrup
Ready to pitch the yeast
Both batches were actively fermenting within a couple hours. Woo hoo, it worked!
Thanks again to everyone who contributed, I'm looking forward to sharing these beasts.
Also, when I wrote "lime leaves", I meant the Sorachi Ace and caramelized sugars smelled similar, that's all.
. But as they only sell the Ale malt to the US home brew market the penny dropped that home brewers have money to spend and now we are their best friends with detailed visits to look at how its done 
. The Lager malt goes to Heineken in Cork for Heineken,Murphy's and Beamish production and the Stout malt for Guinness. Low protein is a Guinness demand that has the Farmers not too happy because it creates lower resistance to crop disease but better extract. (and profit for the Diageo masters 
). Because it is so good regarding being super enzyme charged it can convert raw barley with rumours of up to 40% used in the mash. Cheap as chips. 
