CS1 - Oli and Mike's Bitter (B1 and B2)

[Mike]

Session Bitter recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. Brewed at Olis place with chilly-bin mashtun and 100L boil kettle. Pre boil wort yielded high gravity and so upped projected volume from 45L to 50L so as to not be to high OG for style. Missed our boil off volume by a fair margin (10L I think) and so instead of 50L of Session Bitter we ended up with 40L of Best Bitter at 4.7%. Split into two fermenters, B1 (Plastic) and B2 (glass). Fermented in the same fermentation fridge with STC1000 probe attached to B2, at 19C. I'm sure Oli can fill in anything I've missed/messed up.

[oliver]

Measured OG: 1.042, FG: 1.009

20g EKG dry hop in each fermenter.

Made two separate WLP007 starters - yeast harvested from a previous batch so this was the second batch made from the 007 vial. For some reason this culture went downhill really quickly, probably poor yeast handling on my part :p

I had one STC-1000 controlling both fermenters, I hooked the probe up to the glass carboy (B2) and temp controlled that, the other fermenter was in the same fridge, heating provided by a hairdryer in the fridge. 

If anyone missed out on either B1 or B2 feel free to drop by my place and pick one up if you want to do the comparison. Essentially you're looking at the exact same wort + yeast culture, main differences I can think of between B1, B2:

 - pitching rate

 - ferment temp

 - other process variations, sanitation etc.

[Crusader-Rob]

Can't establish what's what with these. I've got BZ and BZL based on what I can see, Drank BZL Pouring is nice and copper colour, good head retention. when I opened it, it overflowed , so I only got half a pint or so.

nice colour, good flavour. nice bitterness to it. 

[Mike]

That's sounds like 2x B2s Rob.I think B2L signifies the last bottle from bottling. Maybe it had a bit more yeast in it than the other, though i've found this batch in general needs to be fridged a few days and decanted immediately and slowly for best results...only carbed at around 1.8-2 vols (again, I don't have this on me, Oli will) but it seems to be quite lively...

[oliver]

Cheers Rob, yeh I'm thinking it might be infected as we aimed for low carbonation, somewhere around 1-1.5 vols I think, most of mine have been gushers :p

[Mike]

Haven't had any gushers yet with either but have definitely had to be careful with pouring...maybe I'm fridging mine for longer, shrug. Foam comes up very slowly over the top and have to pour slowly otherwise the jugs mostly head...

[Paul Fraser]

You just described how it poured for me Mike.

[Crusader-Rob]

Tasted good once i got it in a glass.

[Paul Fraser]

Just had your B2.

appearance - Popped and seemed over carbed during pouring but when tasting, carbonation seemed perfect for the style. Copper colour. Head disipated to a thin layer that lasted.

aroma - Nice malty caramel aroma. Nice hop aroma

flavour - Nice flavour with a caramel sweetness coming through. Med body with a smooth mouthfeel. Nice and drinkable.

 

During tasting i looked at the recipe and i noticed there aren't many caramel malts but re-tasted and that is the character that comes through for me. Nice beer.

[Mike]

How would you say it fits in the Bitter continuum Paul? Session-Best? Seem to style compared to other bitters? Being from the UK we'd appreciate your input. It's within the BJCP and I think it's pretty good but haven't cmpared it to many (fresh) commercial examples. Is that caramel maltiness to style, or should it be drier?

[Crusader-Rob]

Hads the other bottle on thursday had B2 on the bottle.

aroma, nice earthy aroma.

Appearance, nice colour, overcarbed from what i can see, disguising some flavours. niuce and clear colour. head ok, didn't last for me.

Flavour: Good Earthyu hops flavour, once I let it sit and wamr up and some of the bobbles had come out a bit, I got a good dark malt note.

[Paul Finney]

Hi guys,

Quick question on this as i am just drinking it now.

How long did you ferment for? i have also used this yeast and found it needs a lot longer in the fermenter as both my beers using it have had some sort of gushing.

Will post my feedback soon

 

[Mike]

From memory it was about 3 weeks in primary, needed time to clean up. Again, Oli has the details in his brew book.