To the extent that England is known for producing really awful warm uric lagers, they are also known for producing a delightful assortment of ales, especially bitters and porters. Two weeks ago, I brewed up a batch of Porter which, right now, is looking like it's going to turn out delightful. It is currently undergoing secondary fermentation and bottle conditioning, that is, it was bottled with a bit of sugar to carbonate the beer while the flavor continues to develop and mature. Now that I have liberated my fermenter, it's time to brew something else. In England, the term "bitter", as a classification of beer and not a flavor characteristic, refers to a pale ale. Bitters are further classified by their strength, ranging from session/ordinary to best/regular to premium/strong. The ESB, by and large an American appellation, is the latter category. Bitters are typically very balanced, with moderate hop and malt qualities. They should be easy to drink, though richer and darker as they get stronger.
The first step to beer making, after acquiring ingredients, is preparing the yeast culture. At least, it should be. I was foolish and began the grain mash before dealing with the yeast. As you all will recall, I cultured yeast to ensure a limitless supply at low input cost. Begin by making a starter wort, as described before. Allow the wort to cool and allow the refrigerated yeast culture to come to room temperature. Note, the starter shown below is not bubbly from yeast action but from being hot and agitated.
Fill the test tube containing the yeast with some of the room-temp starter. You'll need some form of long, skinny tool to extract the yeast. I used the back end of a mini-whisk. Scrape the yeast off the gelatin, then pour into the starter wort. A couple tries may be necessary to extract all the yeast.
After a few hours, I was worried that the culture didn't work. The starter was quite still and dead looking. To get things going, I took a bottle of highly active homebrew porter from the counter, agitated it to distribute the solids, popped it open, and poured about a teaspoon of it into the starter. Yes, I cheated. I can't know for certain whether the porter yeast or the test-tube yeast (although, admittedly, they're the same yeast) is responsible for the ensuing fermentation. To jump to the end of the story, I was really happy this morning when I woke up and saw 1/2 inch of foam atop the wort in the fermenter, a sure sign of vigorous fermentation. Next time, I'll make the yeast starter a day in advance to ensure that it's actually working right. But back to the beer.
The ingredients for the beer are as follows:
The large bowl at the bottom contains 2.5 lbs of 2-row pale malt. The smaller bowl, right to left, contains 5 oz Belgian CaraMunich malt, 3 oz flaked wheat, and 1 oz chocolate malt. The CaraMunich provides a caramely flavor and brownish-reddish color. The flaked wheat (had I not been following a recipe, I probably should have used flaked barley) adds a bit of grainy flavor, creamy texture, and head retention. The chocolate malt adds a darkness to the color and a toasty coffee/chocolate flavor. The bag at the left is US Goldings hops; I also used Fuggles, more on that later. The vial to the right, obviously, contains the yeast starter.
As usual, begin by adding 130ish F water to the grains in a big pot to get things going. Allow to protein rest for about 20-30 minutes at 125F. Slowly raise the temp to 150ish F for starch-to-sugar conversion, aka saccharification. Let it sit here for about 90 minutes to ensure full conversion. There's a starch-conversion test that involves iodine, but that just seems excessive for me right now. Maybe some day. Raise to about 175F for about five minutes, then lauter/sparge/etc. to extract the wort from the grain. Place the wort back on the heat.
Here's a nondescript picture of the mash because why not?
Once the clear wort is placed back on the heat, add the first round of hops. First, I added 1 loose cup of light brown sugar to add a bit more texture and punch to the beer. I mixed the 1 oz Goldings and 1/2 oz Fuggles in a bowl and added in 1/4 increments. I'm in no way a hopologist, but I wanted a balanced profile, so this seemed the way to go. Both Goldings and Fuggles are traditional aroma hops in English ale brewing. The total boil time was to be 60 minutes. Add 1/4 of the hops at the beginning, 1/4 after 30 minutes, and 1/4 after another 30 minutes. Then chill to room temp. I added the remaining 1/4 of the hops to the room temperature wort. The last of the hops spent about 3 hours in the wort before being filtered out. Cold hopping gives the freshest hop aroma to beer while hot hopping provides mainly bitterness.
Here's the wort just before being added to the fermenter:
Original gravity is 1.06, so I expect the alcohol by volume to be in the 5.5-6.5% range after the 10-14 day primary fermentation period.
As I said before, the beer is bubbling and therefore fermenting quite powerfully. This is just about the best picture I could get. It's at least 1/2 inch of foam. This is after about 12 hours of fermentation, 18 hours after making the starter wort. I'll definitely have to make the starter a day early just to make sure that it's working well. But just look at that foam. Glorious. I was delighted, practically giddy, when I saw it this morning.
Prost!
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