English Ordinary Bitter Design

[Ash in Perth]

gday. my next brew will be a 17L lower gravity english bitter. I want it nice and malty with relatively high hop aroma and bitterness

How does this sound?

86% Marris Otter (Bairds)
5% Amber (Bairds)
5% Crystal (Bairds)
3% Acidulated (Weyermann)

20g Styrian Goldings @60min
10g Styrian Goldings @30min
17.5g EK Goldings @15min
17.5g EK Goldings @5min
20g Styrian Goldings -Dry hopped

OG=1.038 @75% efficiency
32IBU
Wyeast 1275.
Mash temp about 66
Moderately hard Edinburgh type water (about 3g of CaSO4, MgSO4 and CaCO3 added to my water according to promash)

Cheers! Ash

 

[neonmeate]

looks great although i am a bit baffled by the acidulated malt?? i'd lower the pH with more gypsum instead and make it really burtony. yer malt and hops should be spot on for the style.

 

[warrenlw63]

gday. my next brew will be a 17L lower gravity english bitter. I want it nice and malty with relatively high hop aroma and bitterness

How does this sound?

86% Marris Otter (Bairds)
5% Amber (Bairds)
5% Crystal (Bairds)
3% Acidulated (Weyermann)

20g Styrian Goldings @60min
10g Styrian Goldings @30min
17.5g EK Goldings @15min
17.5g EK Goldings @5min
20g Styrian Goldings -Dry hopped

OG=1.038 @75% efficiency
32IBU
Wyeast 1275.
Mash temp about 66
Moderately hard Edinburgh type water (about 3g of CaSO4, MgSO4 and CaCO3 added to my water according to promash)

Cheers! Ash

Looks nice Ash. :beer:

I'd probably lower your Amber to 1-2% though. You'll find the flavour will dominate in such a small beer and probably skew your hops a bit. Take it from an Amber malt lover. :lol: In small amounts it leaves some really nice buscuity notes.

Also if you're going to the trouble of hardening your water is there any reason for using the acidulated malt?

Warren -

 

[mikem108]

Acidulated malt screwed my lager. I'm really down on that stuff now and won't put it into anything

 

[Ash in Perth]

Cheers. Ill lower the amount of amber malt.

My tap water pH is about 8 and i want to get it down to about 5.5 for mashing. I wasnt aware that gypsum lowers the pH. How much would i need to get the pH down in hardened water?

Ash

 

[goatherder]

I reckon that will turn out pretty tasty Ash. I love an OB, a nice easy drinker. The visitors seem to like it too. Here are some of my thoughts on OB:

My house ale is an OB, my recipe is this:

Maris Otter 84%
Crystal 80 12%
Brown Malt 4%
and all EKG for the hops, shooting for BU:OG of about 0.8. Yeast is S-04 but I've got some 1098 I want to try.

I like the flavour the brown malt gives it. I don't dry hop this one - there's a good aroma just from the flameout addition IMHO. Also, no secondary fermentation. 10-12 days on the primary cake, crash chill for another 2 then straight into the bottle. This is a beer that tastes great when fresh I reckon.

I run a low carbonation rate on this beer (1.5-1.7 vols) so it tends to have a pretty thin head when pouring. I'm considering altering the malt bill a little to add some wheat or carapils to make it stand up a bit taller in the glass. I'm OK drinking warm flat beer, this will be mainly for the benefit of the visitors.

 

[KoNG]

Yum,
i like the hop choice, i'm a huge Styrian fan... are they Slovenian or NZ...? flower - plug.?
i prefer to bitter with EKG that styrian, but have done a 100% styrian that came out great, i guess it depends on your stocks.
i agree with warren, that amber gets a little sketchy at 5% although i've heard bairds is smoother than jwm.
i always burtonize my bitters... but use quite a bit more salts than that. That said, perth water might be harder to begin with.. sydney being damn soft.

looks good

 

[Ash in Perth]

Thats the last of my english hops and i dont want to buy any more for now. Im using the Styrians as the bittering hop (pellets from slovenia) because i prefer the taste of the EKG so they will be my main flavour hops. But apparently Styrians make great dry hops so im throwing them in dry.

I have about 40g of target aswell but i prefer lower AA hops usually. the target did me no favours in my IPA.

Ill boost up the gypsum and then check the pH with the aquarium pH kit i have. if its still high ill throw in a percent or 2 of acid malt.

 

[neonmeate]

with sydney water i usually find 10g gypsum will get me down to 5.0-5.3.
but with all that amber malt and crystal you should get down even without it. should be no need for acid malt that's for sure. and the extra sulfates will give your hops an edge.

 

[Tony]

yep.

I find i only need acid malt in arelly pale beers.

The crystal and amber will do the trick.

In a bitter i like 8% crystal, 2% english amber or brown malt and 1% chocolate.

sounds good mate, let us know

cheers

 

[Tony]

Oh forgot to add.

Cypsum and calcium cloride will both lower your mash pH.

Chalk (CaCO3) will raise it. Thats why ckalk is good to use in a stout or porter, it counters the low pH created by all that roasted malt and smoothes the beer out.

the darker the malt, the more it will lower the mash pH for a given amount.

cheers again

 

[Jazzafish]

Thats the last of my english hops and i dont want to buy any more for now. Im using the Styrians as the bittering hop (pellets from slovenia) because i prefer the taste of the EKG so they will be my main flavour hops. But apparently Styrians make great dry hops so im throwing them in dry.

I have about 40g of target aswell but i prefer lower AA hops usually. the target did me no favours in my IPA.

Ill boost up the gypsum and then check the pH with the aquarium pH kit i have. if its still high ill throw in a percent or 2 of acid malt.

Wow!

Thats interesting, considering Target is the common bittering hop in english beers. If it were me I'd use target to bitter... My english inspired beer was something like:

25 litre batch
4Kg Golden Promise
200g JW Amber
50g Jw Roast Black

14g Target 60min
28g EK Goldings 20min
14g EK Golgings 5min


I believed it was pretty good, but I'm still playing around with the malts to get what I'm after. Hop profile was nice too. Was the first beer I made without Crystal Malt! But I recon it needs it.

I'm not familiar with Perth water, so I guess you'll need to trust promash or other perth brewers.

 

[Pumpy]

Ash

I am not a great fan of the Amber Malt or the Acidulated

I would add 100Gms Wheat malt
plus 250 Grms Soft Brown sugar

Pumpy

 

[SteveSA]

Looks nice Ash.

I'd probably lower your Amber to 1-2% though. You'll find the flavour will dominate in such a small beer and probably skew your hops a bit. Take it from an Amber malt lover. :lol: In small amounts it leaves some really nice buscuity notes.

Also if you're going to the trouble of hardening your water is there any reason for using the acidulated malt?

Warren -

I reckon Warren is spot on here. Lower the Amber to 1-2%.

Lose the acidulated malt. Your gypsum addition can increase. This will lower your pH and increase the sulfates, which will accentuate the hop flavour and perceived bitterness.

Also mash temp needs to be higher to get any sort of body into such a low gravity beer. I'd be around 68-69C.

Nice looking recipe otherwise :beer:
Steve

 

[warrenlw63]

This is my current bitter and I must say it's drinking fantastic ATM. :beer:

Also has as liberal dosing of Kong water salts. My smile has never looked better. :lol:

Back on Your Bike Bitter

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L): 50.50 Wort Size (L): 50.50
Total Grain (kg): 8.40
Anticipated OG: 1.046 Plato: 11.44
Anticipated EBC: 23.6
Anticipated IBU: 29.4
Brewhouse Efficiency: 90 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
95.2 8.00 kg. Baird's Maris Otter Pale Ale UK 1.037 7
1.8 0.15 kg. Baird's Crystal UK 1.034 145
1.2 0.10 kg. Weyermann Caraaroma Germany 1.034 470
1.2 0.10 kg. Bairds Amber Malt UK 1.033 133
0.6 0.05 kg. TF Roasted Barley UK 1.033 1640

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.00 g. Goldings - Kent Plug 5.79 1.0 10 min.
14.00 g. Goldings - Kent Plug 5.79 0.0 0 min.
28.30 g. Goldings - Kent Plug 5.79 2.6 15 min.
36.00 g. Wye Target Pellet 11.00 25.8 60 min.


Yeast
-----

WYeast 1187 Ringwood Ale




Warren -

 

[KoNG]

Also has as liberal dosing of Kong water salts. My smile has never looked better. :lol:

Warren -

i was teased for years as a junior Warren... "train tracks" was the usual smart remark..... :lol:
now i look back with pride and my smile tells the story....
long live Bicarb...! :super:

just check my profile.. you'll see the smile.!

 

[warrenlw63]

just check my profile.. you'll see the smile.!

The reason for the smile becomes apparent. Looks like a good game of "Hide the Kong".

Warren -

 

[KoNG]

Ash... Warren refers to baking soda.... make it your friend.

 

[Ash in Perth]

I think i have missed something

Is ther any point to using Calcium Carbonate to get the water closer to burton water. i know this will raise the pH but i dont know if it will affect it enoguh to raise it over all after adding about 8g of gypsum and 4g of epsom salts.

Should i just add the sulphate salts and not worry about teh Carbonates?

Im a chemist but this is the first time ive used anything to harden the water an dchange the pH other than acid malt.

Cheers!

 

[Pumpy]

Ash , I just add the Calcium Sulphate to get the Ph to 5.6 for the Mash , if the Acidulated malt does the same I recon you will be OK . sometimes I reckon the fiddling with water is a waste of time .

I have tasted better beer than the ones produced in Burton on Trent and there is no reason why you cannot produce a world class beer .

I recently spent a bit of time in the UK and quite honestly I enjoyed the ten bottles of Ross' s brew he recently brought down, more than the real ale from the UK .

Pumpy