Ordinary Bitter - First All-Grain - Please Critique

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bigben

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Actually, don't critique cuz I already bought the ingredients, lol :)

I wanted to do an Ordinary Bitter...I had to change a few things because of what was available at the LHBS...so here is the recipe.

BlackHoleBitter.png


Ferment:
First I have a question. Can I use one of those thermometer strips on a plastic bucket???
I will try to ferment at 68 degrees for 3 weeks, then bottle or keg.

So let me know what you peeps think. Thanks.
 
An ordinary bitter is one of my house beers. I love the complexity that comes from simplicity. Yours is definitely darker than mine, looks tasty though! I may have to try some aromatic malt but I prefer the hops flavour and aroma in mine. I like the malt to be a solid backbone, but in the background nonetheless.

I too love EKG, my favourite hops by far! I also have those thermometer strips on all my fermenters, they're nice since they give you the wort temp instead of the air temp (which is always lower than the wort temp).

I dry hop mine personally, but it's not required by style, you could do a flameout addition instead and still get a decent hop nose to it.
 
yea i hear ya on the aromatic. I wanted 'special roast' malt but the lhbs didnt have any and didnt know what it was, and neither did i, i was just trying to follow JZs recipe.

So will a half pound of the aromatic add a lot of malt flavor? Should i do 1.5 oz at 60 mins to bring up the Ibus to about 37?
 
0.5lbs might be a little much but I'll admit I don't have much experience with aromatic. Hopefully someone more knowledgable will chime in. According to the wiki the max in batch is recommended at 10%, so if you have more than that I would probably dial it back.

Special roast is for adding a toasty or biscuit flavour, not a malty flavour (which aromatic will give you). On the other hand it will still probably be really good. :) If you can't get special roast, biscuit or victory malt (they're the same thing) is really good and is what I use. Special roast is a little darker than biscuit/victory, but that's not really a big deal.

According to promash the max IBU for ordinary bitter is 35, I think mine is at 33 or 34. With the extra maltiness of the aromatic it might help keep the balance however.

Any way you slice it, it sounds tasty though. :mug:
 
dang it... I wouldve gotten the victory malt had I known they were the same, oh well.

I have no experience with the aromatic and I'm not sure I know how it effects the beer. I'm still pretty new to brewing so I'm not even sure i know the difference between malty, biscuity, caramelly, roasty, etc
 
From what I've read special roast and biscuit/victory are basically the same, special roast is just biscuit/victory's big brother in terms of flavour and colour.

Sounds like experiment time to me. Do the batch again after this one but with biscuit or victory instead of aromatic and then you'll see the difference. :)
 
I've updated it with some new numbers. The 1.5 oz at 60 will bring it to 35 IBUs...right at the max. So I guess that's what I will do.

I may also still do the dry hop in the primary after about 10 days. Does 0.5 oz sound good for the dry hop?

Thanks!!!
 
2/3 of what i make are bitters of one gravity or another, your recipe should be very tasty! look into british cara malts, they taste different. OB's are also nice because they are so fast from mash to glass. i use target for bittering, UK fuggle for flavor and EKG for aroma. i think i could spend years working on just bitter recipes
 
If your concerned about it being a bitter, then your IBUs are a little high, but if that is how you like it, then go for it.
 
I like hops. I was originally shootingfor 30 IBUs, but since Im using Aromatic now, I figured I'd step up the IBUs to help balance it a little.
 
I usually use 30g to dry hop (that's about an ounce I think). The hop nose is a little strong at first but since it tails off pretty quickly it helps it stick around longer.
 
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