British Brown Ale Bender's Oil (Gold winning Northern English Brown)

Ingredients

7.5 lbs Marris Otter
0.5 lbs Crystal 70/80
0.5 lbs Victory
0.75 lbs Special Roast
0.25 lbs Pale Chocolate

.9 oz Challenger @ 60 min
.6 oz Kent Golding @ 10 min

Mash
1.6 qt/lb
Strike 3.8 gal @ 162F
Hold Mash @ 151F for 60 minutes
Sparge with 165F water

Fermentation
Pitch yeast @ 68F
Ferment @ 64F for 18 days
Prime to 2.2 volumes of CO2

Ahh I love a good futurama reference. Where did this win gold? I was looking to make a mild to build up a yeast cake for a barley wine but I may just do this, with blackjack, and hookers.

It won gold at the M.A.L.T. competition in Montreal. It was actually based on a mild recipe I had which I bumped up the maris otter. It is a very easy drinking beer so try to control your fermentation to not produce too many esters.

Oh and byte my 8-bit metal ass. That's byte with a y. Hehehe...

So I followed the recipe almost exactly this past Saturday and put it into the carboy and it still isn't showing any signs (bubbling or churning) that the yeast has activated. Should I be worried?

This is my first homebrew and my first all grain in one so maybe I'm jumping the gun?

soj177 said:

So I followed the recipe almost exactly this past Saturday and put it into the carboy and it still isn't showing any signs (bubbling or churning) that the yeast has activated. Should I be worried?

This is my first homebrew and my first all grain in one so maybe I'm jumping the gun?

Click to expand...

Yep I jumped the gun, working like a champ on day 4!

I was looking at doing the innkeeper recipe from Northern Brewer, similar grain bill. The strike water is such a small volume, do you get a good boil volume by just sparging until you get 6 - 6 1/2 gallons?

Thanks

BerserkerPaul said:

I was looking at doing the innkeeper recipe from Northern Brewer, similar grain bill. The strike water is such a small volume, do you get a good boil volume by just sparging until you get 6 - 6 1/2 gallons?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Yup, it's a small strike volume because I don't want to get my mash too thin. You then just sparge until you get your desired pre-boil volume (which should be between 6 and 6.5)

Cool! Got it. Thanks for the reply.

Qcbrew said:

Ingredients

7.5 lbs Marris Otter
0.5 lbs Crystal 70/80
0.5 lbs Victory
0.75 lbs Special Roast
0.25 lbs Pale Chocolate

.9 oz Challenger @ 60 min
.6 oz Kent Golding @ 10 min

Mash
1.6 qt/lb
Strike 3.8 gal @ 162F
Hold Mash @ 151F for 60 minutes
Sparge with 165F water

Fermentation
Pitch yeast @ 68F
Ferment @ 64F for 18 days
Prime to 2.2 volumes of CO2

Click to expand...

Looking at using this recipe but beefing it up a little bit in the MO department soon. What yeast did you go with? I was thinking notty?

I used WLP023, I like the profile it gives. Notty seems too clean to me.

I scaled this recipe down to a 1.5 gal batch and got the grains and hops, however I goofed and came home with nottingham yeast, should I got get the right strain or just proceed with reckless abandon?

EDIT
I went ahead with the batch and used the nottingham yeast. After activating the yeast in some warm water I was surprised to see how active the yeast was even before pitching, and already this morning I am seeing some consistent airlock action!

Also, this being my second batch, I think I must have over corrected my strike water volume too much. My first "1 gal" batch of wort barely filled the carboy 2/3, so I figured that I would add 1/2 gallon to my initial water volume that I would be closer to 1 gallon of wort...
Well I ended up with a full 1.5 gallons of wort, not sure how that happened, but Im glad I had some growlers laying around to quickly sanitize and fill!

As it stands, I have 1 gal of "Nott Bender's Oil" and 1/2 of it with 2.5g of EKG thrown into the primary. Both seem happy and cool in my fermentation chamber!

I bottled my first batch of Benders Oil this past Saturday after 21 days in primary because I was too busy the previous handful of days.

This batch was 1.5 gal split 1gal and 1/2 gal with some hop pellets added prior to fermentation.
The 1 gal batch tasted delicious and like a brown ale with a little bit of fruitiness at the end and actually had what seemed like more hop flavor than the improperly dry hopped 1/2gal which had a large "grassy" flavor about it that Im hoping will develop further while bottle conditioning.

I didnt really prepare for priming the bottles and realized I hadnt bought any priming sugars yet and only had a 1.2oz packet of "priming sugar" for a 1gal kit. I dont remember the numbers I ran but I added .26oz of brown sugar and syrup'd and divided it out

Does that sound like an appropriate amount of priming sugars since I bottled instead of kegging?

Moving forward since I have an additional 2 gallons of this to bottle this weekend, what priming agent should I look for, and should I just follow a priming calculator for "American brown ale"?

--DATA--
OG 1.054
FG 1 gal 1.015 - 5.1%
FG 1/2 gal 1.013 - 5.5%

I opened the half bottle of my dry hopped version of Nott Benders Oil last weekend (one weekend early) with some friends, and it was AMAZING!
Fully carbonated, and I didnt taste any apparent off flavors from the half bottle that was full of air instead of beer.
It def had a nice english brown ale flavor and the grassy dry hoped batch was definitely more subdued and tasty, however I still think it has some room for improvement.
My friends on the other hand loved it, loved my blonde ale (kit), and even loved the wort samples from the batch I was brewing that day (single wide clone) as well as samples of the amber ale I was bottling.
I can hardly 8 more days till my batch of actual Benders Oil as well as a batch of Benders Oil with West Coast yeast to be conditioned. Then Ill be able to have a side by side by side taste test of the same beer with 3 different yeasts to see which direction I want to take this recipe (Am leaning towards a version of this beer for a wedding beer in September for my buddy)