Thoughts on my Best Bitter recipe

I am hooked on AG BIAB now. I just finished brewing a few days ago and already planning my next. This is an important one because I want this to become my house session ale. I want a traditional bitter that has a roasted malty flavor with a mild balance of English hops.

As always, I have relied on this forum to help me generate the recipe. I put together my own recipe from lots of other posts on this ale.

I'm calling it Foggy Old London Bitter. Here is my favorite bluegrasser to sing along as you review the recipe:


Recipe Type: AG (BIAB)
Yeast: Wyeast 1275 Thomas Valley Ale yeast
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.5
Original Gravity:
Final Gravity:
IBU:
Strike Water: 8.5 gallons at 160F
Boiling Time (Minutes): 90
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 14 Days at 64 Degrees
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): N/A


7.5 lbs Maris Otter malt
1 lb Flaked corn
4 oz Victory malt
8 oz Crystal 60L malt
1 oz British Chocolate malt
1 tsp Burton water salts

Mash at 150F for 90 min

90 min boil

.75 oz Challenger, 60 mins
1.5 oz EKG 6.8%, 15 mins
Whirlfloc ½ tab @ 15 mins
.75 oz EKG 6.8%, 5 mins

1 oz EKG 6.8%, Dry hop


2 weeks primary @ 64F

Prime with 1.5 oz Dextrose and bottle

I would back off of the biscuit malt a bit..maybe do half of a pound. Marris Otter already has a little bit of a toasty biscuitness to it. I'm sure some will disagree, but I think a whole pound is over the top. You could add a hint of roasted barley for color if you want. Just a touch won't impart much flavor.

Agree with dbsmith here. My advice is to simplify and reduce. Cut way back on the Victory malt, pick one crystal and if you want to use a corn adjuct use 10%, 5 oz isn't really going to accomplish much.

7.5# MO pale
.25# Victory
.5# Crystal 60L (even better; find some UK 55L) or .25# Crystal 120L
1# flaked maize (optional, or just use another # of MO)

Thanks,
I thought the corn was helpful for mouthfeel or head retention or both.
Would 3 oz of chocolate malt be ok for color?

Cider123 said:

Thanks,
I thought the corn was helpful for mouthfeel or head retention or both.

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It does neither. Corn will lighten the body and flavor slightly.

Cider123 said:

Would 3 oz of chocolate malt be ok for color?

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Way too much, IMO. Maybe 1/2 to 1 oz if you want a deeper tone to the color of the beer.

Ok, I updated my recipe. I found some suppliers have British chocolate malt so will try that for the authenticity factor.

So on a different note, what is a good resource (book) to learn more about ingredients, how they affect beer, how much or what to add to get different characteristics? I want to build my knowledge on this stuff. I have learned a lot just on this forum.

'Designing Great Beers' by Ray Daniels will really help you out on recipe creation.

Wow, This is a good sign. I have a birthday coming next week and was asked by my SWMBO what I wanted. This book that you listed is what I decided on after reviewing in Amazon. I also asked for Brewsmith 2. That's gotta be a good sign.
Thanks

Cider123 said:

Wow, This is a good sign. I have a birthday coming next week and was asked by my SWMBO what I wanted. This book that you listed is what I decided on after reviewing in Amazon. I also asked for Brewsmith 2. That's gotta be a good sign.
Thanks

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Books are definitely a good idea. If you do not have one already buy a general purpose homebrewing book first. Palmer's "How to Brew" is the consensus best choice for comprehensive and up-to-date information. Daniel's book is very good but it will mean more if you have a basic knowledge base developed first. If you have access to a good LHBS taste the available malts and grains. Learning what the ingredients taste like is a very good way to help determine what to use in various recipes.

Just brewed up an ESB lastnight with a very similar malt bill to yours. I used more MO though, and instead of chocolate malt, used 0.75 oz of black patent. Hops were EKG for FWH and bittering and Styrian Goldings at the end (~50 IBU). However, I plan on having a much different beer since I only had US-05 on hand and not US-04. I plan on doing the same recipe with US-04 next weekend and comparing them side by side.

Finally got to make this today. I ended up with an OG of only 1.042, thought it would be a little higher than that. The wort has good flavor and it cleared real nice. This should end up a good session ale. I upped the whirlfloc to a whole tablet. I also downed the hops additions to:
.5 oz Challenger at 60 min
1 oz EKG at 15 min
.5 oz EKG at 5 min
I'll do 1 oz EKG for a dry hop

I made an extract IPA a few months ago and bittered with only 1 oz of EKG. For some reason it came out very bitter, so I'm a little fearful of the bittering addition.

Nice, let us know how it tastes.

I reviewed my efficiency for my last two brews. This bitter and a Wit. Both were my first BIAB AG. I am calculating around 60 to 65% for both brews. I thought I was pretty decent at maintaining my mash temps (within 2-3 degrees most of the time). I ordered the grains pre-crushed by Brewmaster's Warehouse. For the second brew above, I asked to double crush. I have no idea if they noticed the request.

What I have been doing is holding back about 1.5 gallons of water of my total pre-boil, which I heat to 170F. After mashing, I pull and drain the bag. Then I pour the 1.5 gallons through the bag as sort of a sparge. In fact, for the above recipe. After pouring most of the water though. I dunked the whole bag in the sparge water like a tea bag. Then I squeezed the bag well. I thought I got a bunch more fermentables.

So I want a higher efficiency for my next brew. It's gonna be Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde. Again, I ordered from BMW and asked for a double crush. Additionally, I ordered a Barley Crusher from the BC company. I don't think the BC will get here before the grains, but now I'm thinking that I will wait.
Is it bad to potentially crush the grains a third time? I believe I would set the BC to around .036. My fear is that the Blonde ale only has a 3.8% ABV if you have good efficiency. I don't want another 60% efficiency and end up with water beer.

Hmm I wouldn't pour your sweet wort back through the grains, because you aren't trying to vorlauf, you're just trying to get the sugars out. What ever sweet 'first runnings' have come out, just keep them in the pot. I don't think runnings would be the correct term here, but you know what I mean. Just pour regular hot water over it, or do more of the sparge/steep maneuvers. Solutes will dissolve into the solvent more easily when there are less solutes already dissolved in the solvent. The sweet wort is already pretty concentrated with sugar, among other things. About the triple crush...I haven't heard about anyone needing to do that, so I would look elsewhere for the problem. Though, since you aren't sure if they even double crushed it for you, I would just go ahead and crush it again this time. Next time just do all the crushing yourself.

I do plan on crushing all myself in the future. I ordered the grains before deciding to buy the crusher.

I think I didn't describe this well. I am not pouring wort through the grain bag. I was holding back 1.5 gallons of hot water from the initial mashing. So Beersmith told me to use a total of 9.5 gallons of water. So I mashed my grains in 8 gallons. Then I pulled the bag and "teabagged" it in 1.5 gallons of hot water. Then I squeezed the bag and poured that 1.5 gallons into the 8 gallons of hot wort and boiled.
Sorry for the confusion.

Ahh ok, that makes sense. Maybe you could try to increase the amount of your dunking water, to give it two 'dunks'. How many pounds of grain are you using, by the way? 8 gallons of mash water sounds really really thin unless you are going some higher gravity 10 gallon brews.

It's about 9.5 lbs of grain and a 90 min boil. Brewsmith gives me a total water amount of 9.5 gallons. So 8 plus 1.5 gallon sparge gives me my 9.5 gallons. After boil off and trubb loss, I get about 5.5 gallons in my fermenter. It does seem like a lot of water, but if my eff was in the upper 70's to 80's, I'd be getting a spot on OG.

Dunking twice sounds like a good idea, thanks

This might be a problem...IMO you are mashing wayyy too thin. You need to have the correct substrate concentration for ideal enzyme activity. You should be mashing with 1.25-2 qts of water per pound of grain. You are currently mashing at about 3.4 qts/lb. You should try using something around 14 quarts for your mash, and use the rest of the water for dunking and top-off.

And not trying to critique every aspect of your brewing, but do you have to collect 9.5 gallons of wort to boil down to only 5.5? Seems super high to me...for a 5 gallon brew and a 90 minute boil, I usually only need to collect about 6.3-6.5 gallons. Are you sure about your volumes?

Just thought of this: When you are doing your 'dunk' sparge, don't just steep the bag up and down like a tea bag. Put the bag around the rim of your pot just like your BIAB mash, and stir up the grains and let them sit in the water for a few minutes before pulling out the bag.. You may already do this, but it just sounded like you dunk it up and down like you're steeping a small tea bag, making it hard for the grains in the center to get rinsed.

dbsmith said:

This might be a problem...IMO you are mashing wayyy too thin. You need to have the correct substrate concentration for ideal enzyme activity. You should be mashing with 1.25-2 qts of water per pound of grain. You are currently mashing at about 3.4 qts/lb. You should try using something around 14 quarts for your mash, and use the rest of the water for dunking and top-off.

And not trying to critique every aspect of your brewing, but do you have to collect 9.5 gallons of wort to boil down to only 5.5? Seems super high to me...for a 5 gallon brew and a 90 minute boil, I usually only need to collect about 6.3-6.5 gallons. Are you sure about your volumes?

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Of all the brewing literature I've read, I've never heard of a problem in mashing "too thin" as related to enzyme activity. How else would you do a no-sparge?

grimstuff said:

Of all the brewing literature I've read, I've never heard of a problem in mashing "too thin" as related to enzyme activity. How else would you do a no-sparge?

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If it works, then great. The thing is that concentration affects other variables relating to the quality of your wort. Is the pH still going to be in the correct range at that dilution? It's just that I've never heard of anyone doing a water-to-grist ratio that high. If you were doing a no sparge, you could mash relatively thin and add top off water. This doesn't really apply to him, though.

As for his case, he does a sparge anyway, so I'm saying that if you are going to do a sparge, you might as well use the correct volumes. Instead of mashing too thin and sparging too thick, why not mash and sparge closer to the appropriate H2O to grain ratio? Maybe you're right and it won't change anything, but I tend to trust the practices of brewers before us, though I know there is a difference in the modification of the malts.

Anyway, the point is that he is trying to boost his efficiency. No sparge is just not going to be as efficient. If it were more efficient to mash super thin and sparge only a little, then it would probably have been done this way traditionally. I just know that most brewers are able to achieve a higher efficiency, so all I can do is show deviations from the norm which may be the reason for the low efficiency.

Thanks for the thoughtful insight. I think I'm going to check in at the BIAG forum to clarify my water volumes. I understand that even if Brewsmith calls for a volume of water and BIAB is supposed to allow you to mash with all the water, doing so might affect my eff.

I just checked my FG for the second time (after 11 days in primary) and I've seemed to stop at 1.014. That gives me a ABV of 3.8% which is ok. I'm more about the flavor and it has a nice flavor already.

I just dropped 1 oz of EKG in a hop bag and added it to the fermenter. Would it help with clarifying the beer to move it from the 64F room to my 45F garage as sort of a cold crash for the final week before I bottle?

Cider123 said:

Thanks for the thoughtful insight. I think I'm going to check in at the BIAG forum to clarify my water volumes. I understand that even if Brewsmith calls for a volume of water and BIAB is supposed to allow you to mash with all the water, doing so might affect my eff.

I just checked my FG for the second time (after 11 days in primary) and I've seemed to stop at 1.014. That gives me a ABV of 3.8% which is ok. I'm more about the flavor and it has a nice flavor already.

I just dropped 1 oz of EKG in a hop bag and added it to the fermenter. Would it help with clarifying the beer to move it from the 64F room to my 45F garage as sort of a cold crash for the final week before I bottle?

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A little time in the garage definitely wouldn't hurt. If you bottle without allowing the temp to rise back to room temp, make sure to account for the low temp in your priming sugar calculations.

Yeah, with BIAB you can use all the water at once, and it is quick, but I think that efficiency is the trade off. You just won't get great efficiency with BIAB. All you have to do is spend an extra buck or two on grains though (probably about 1.5-2 lbs of extra grain per recipe). The key is just figuring out the numbers for your system, and then adjusting accordingly.

Good luck with you beer

Thanks again Blair.
I guess that is why BIAB folks look for a finer crush in their grains, to make up the difference. I'll have to keep fiddling with it. I did order a barley crusher to start crushing my own.