British ESB Brewday Saturday September 14, 2013
I usually expect a few changes on brew day. But this one changed more than usual. I’ll get into that in a bit. First thing I did on Friday was to get the yeast starter going. I used a 2l flask and put it up on my homemade stir plate made out of an old Apple Mac Mini. This all worked out great.
Now onto brewday. First I started to look at my recipe and was wondering what in the world was I thinking. So I was able to rework it as follows for a 10-gallon batch:
18lbs Maris Otter
2lbs Simpson Medium
3oz of Willamette at 60
2oz of East Kent Goldings at 15
Super Moss and Yeast Nutrients at 10
Normally, my 10 gallon orange Home Depot lauter tun on the top of my latter (I guest you can say by lauter latter) is like a flag for the neighborhood that it is brewday. We live on a corner lot in the woods, but that bright orange can easily be seen through the trees. But sadly, brewday started with just me and my dogs. Fortunately, a neighbor did show up right after I finished the mash and was starting the boil so I had someone to hang with!
Everything went a long just great. The weather was perfect (about 70F) and a lot of sun. One of those few great weather days. Most days feel like 95-101F or have a high around 10F. But this day was perfect!
Estimated OG should have been 1.050 and I came in at 1.060.
British ESB
Tomorrow I'm brewing a British ESB. The yeast starter is about to begin. I will be using White Labs WLP013, London Ale Yeast. This will be a 10 gallon batch with 12 pounds English Maris Otter and 1.5 pounds of Simpsons CaraMalt. It will be hopped with 2 oz of UK Kent Goldings at 60, 1 oz at 15, and 1 oz at flame out. I will be doing a single step at 155 for an hour. At 10 minutes I'll be adding 1/4 tsp of Super Moss.
We had a lot of parties and went through all four kegs the past couple of weeks, so I'm out of beer! I have one secondary of Baltic Porter and two secondarys of Alt lagering in the basement fridge. Plus I have an American Pale in a secondary and a SMASH American Pale made with home grown hops in a primary. Need more beer!