Time to revive this little puppy.
Style: English Special Bitter (ESB)This time we are going to do a partial mash. The
mash is the process in which the sugars are extracted from the cracked, malted grains. Without going into too much detail, the grains are soaked in the appropriate amount of water (around 2.5-3 litres per kilogram of grain), and the resulting porridge is held at a certain temperature (60-68 degrees, depending on how full bodied you want the beer. A pretty good best-of-both-worlds temperature is 66, which is what I'm going to shoot for). Keeping the mash at this temperature activates enzymes in the grain which convert the starches into fermentable malt sugars. After the mash is finished, usually after an hour or so, the grain is rinsed with 75-80 degree water to wash out residual sugars into your boil pot. This is known as
sparging.
The best beers are made entirely from grains using this process, but as I am lacking the equipment to do this, I am going to use a smaller amount of grain in conjunction with liquid and dried extract. All up, the grain will contribute around 1/3rd of the total fermentable sugars and (most importantly) impart a fresher, less sweet flavour to the finished brew.
The English Special Bitter is a stronger, hoppier version of a ordinary bitter. They are generally quite malty, with a bit of fruit from the yeast and a strong bitter finish. The only example I can think of at the moment is Fullers's ESB which is fairly hard to find around here. Or, imagine a slightly stronger version of Boddington's.
Ingredients1.15kg of pale malt, 200g crystal malt, cracked. The guy at the homebrew store will do this for you.
1.5kg can of Cooper's light liquid extract.
About 500-700 grams of light dried extract.
1 packet of S-04 English ale yeast.
100g East Kent Goldings hops.
Packet of Calcium Sulphate to harden the water a bit (I'm using rainwater for the mash and boil; it's too soft for mashing. Tap water should be fine.)
The Mash: Brewing in a BagYou will need: An accurate thermometer, a large esky, two large muslin grain bags.
Before you start, pour about 5 litres of boiling water into the esky and the pot that you will be mashing in to warm it up, thus minimising heat loss to convection, and keep the mash temperature fairly steady. Splash it around a bit to make sure it warms evenly.
Put the pot in the esky and seal it for the time being.
Now, get 3.5 litres of water (or alternatively, use 2.5-3 litres of water per kilogram of grain) in a saucepan, and put it on the stove at medium heat. You want to heat this up to just under 75 degrees (
strike temperature). When mixed with the grains in the mash, the temperature should drop to around 66-67 degrees C, which is perfect.
Now is the time to add about 3/4 of a tablespoon of gypsum salts to harden the mash water. This will drop the pH a little, and make the mash slightly more efficient.
While this is happening, get your pot, stretch the bag over it and dump your grains in. Boil the kettle.
Dump the mash water into the pot, stirring to make sure all the grains are thoroughly wetted.
Check the temperature after stirring. If it is sitting at 66-67, you are laughing. If the temperature is below 66, add boiling water SLOWLY while stirring until the temperature is right. Cover the pot and put it in the esky, seal the lid.
All you need to do is wait for at least 40 minutes. Check the temperature at the halfway point. If it has dropped to 60 or so, add a cup of boiling water slowly to bring it back up to the mid 60s.
While you are waiting, put about 5 litres water on the stove. This is going to be the water with which you wash the sugars out of the grains, i.e. the sparge water. This needs to be hotter than the mash water so heat this up to about 80 degrees.
Once the mash is finished, you have to lift the bag out of the pot and put it in a colander sitting over the top. Slowly trickle the sparge water over the grains to wash out the residual sugars sugars. Use as much sparge water as your pot will fit. This is pretty tricky to do alone without burning yourself so get your wife / grandma to do it.
All done! You should have a pale soup of sweet malt. If it doesn't taste sweet, you failed.
Boil this for 15 minutes before adding the first batch of hops. A scum should form on the top- spoon it off as it develops. You can see some of the scum in the bowl on the left hand side of that picture. This scum is the hot break, and removing it will help prevent your boil from foaming up and making a mess. Once this is done, dissolve your can of extract, and half a kilo of the dried extract into the wort.
Hop AdditionsProtip: Put a second grain bag or stocking into the wort, and add your hops into this to stop the hop bits from glugging up the boil.
40g East Kent Goldings @ 60 minutes
30g East Kent Goldings @ 30 minutes
20g East Kent Goldings @ 3 minutes
Topped up to 22 litres and fermented using the S-04 English Ale dried yeast at 16-18 degrees for a week.
Racked into a secondary vessel for conditioning for a week, dry hopped with about 15g Goldings (dry hop means just chuck them straight into the fermenter).
Will be kegged and carbonated TOMORROW. Tastes and smells magnificent, going to be a beauty.