MK50 40L Brewing Journal

Started 26th May 2017

Special celebration recipe for Milton Keynes 50th Year. This is an extra special bitter styled recipe containing crystal and chocolate malts for colour and a good helping of Fuggles hops for flavour.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Recipe	Measure
Brew Length	40L
Pale Malt (EBC 4 or less)	9000g
Crystal Malt	800g
Chocolate Malt	100g
Admiral Hops (Start of Boil)	20g
Challenger Hops (Start of Boil)	25g
Fuggles Hops (Start of Boil)	15g
Fuggles Hops (Last 10 Min)	30g
Yeast (Using Starter)	WLP002
Mash Liquor	24.5 Litres
Strike Heat	72C
Mash Temperature	66C
Mash Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Sparge Temperature	77C
Mash Efficiency (estimated)	75%
Boil Time	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Fermentation Temperature	18.4C
Expected OG @ 80%	1054
Actual OG	1048
Expected FG	1013
Actual FG

Water Treatment:

Recipe	Measure
CaCo3 Adjustments
Calcium Carbonate CAC03	176 ppm
Calcium Carbonate Required	30 ppm
Adjustment Necessary	146 ppm
CRS per Litre Required	0.8 ml/L
Total CRS to add to Mash (24.5L)	19.6 ml
Total CRS to add to Sparge water (9.66+24.5L)	7.6 + 19.6ml
*Chlorine Treatment*
Campden Tablets (half in mash, half in sparge)	1 tablet
Calcium Adjustment (using brupaks calculation)
Calcium in Water	126 ppm
Calcium Required	180 ppm
Adjustment	66 ppm
DLS (using GW Calc it suggests adding none)	1 Tsp

Water Schedule:

This brew will be batch sparged, so the water will be scheduled as follows:

Mash = 24.5L using 19.5ml of CRS +1/2 Campden Tab
Top Up = 9.66L using ml of 7.6 CRS
Final Batch Sparge = 24.5L using 19.5 ml of CRS and 1/2 campden tab

Mashing:

As it was such a hot day (27C), I did not pre-heat the mash tun or ensure the grain was at room temperature.

Mash water heated to 78c and treatments added.
Added 24.5L of water to mash tun, which settled quickly to 72C, so doughed in with 1 tsp of gypsum.
After 5 minutes the temperature was 67C, so the lid was sealed for 1 Hour 30 Min.
The final Mash temperature was 66c.

Sparging

25L of sparge water was heated to 85C and treated
10.66L of water was added to the Mash tun at 85C and left for 15 minutes.
HLT filled back to 25L, treated with CRS, Campden and heated to 79C
First drain of mash tun into boiler and colour looks good.
Mash Tun topped back up to 25L with water at 79C for final sparge, stirred and temperature checked at 76C which os perfect.
2nd Sparge left for 15 Min before draining.
Final batch to boiler.

Boiling

Boiler switched on as soon as first few litres of wort were drained from mash Tun.
First batch of hops added once the boil started.
Last 15 minutes - inserted immersion Cooler
Last 10 minutes - Final hops and Protofloc.
SG is lower than expected at 1048, which seems to be due to excess volume
44L of wort was collected

Fermentation:

A 1.25L yeast starter of Yeast WLP002 was started 2 days before and refrigerated on morning of brew day. This was not long enough to ensure all yeast flocculated but there was still plenty.
The starter was taken out of the fridge 2 hours prior to pitching.
Most of the liquid was poured away and the remaining 0.25L was mixed well with the yeast.
26/05/16 19:00 - Yeast pitched, temperature 20C. The chiller is running so this will fall quickly to 18.4C.
27/05/16 09:00 - Fermentation is underway. The first signs of a thin Krausen is forming and bubbling is clearly showing in the middle.
27/05/17 23:00 - Thick krausen has now formed and fermentation is going well. Temperature controller raised a little to 19C.
28/05/17 11:00 - Temperature now at 19.4 and some trub showing on top of krausen which shows it is fermenting well.
28/05/17 17:00 - The wort is now fermenting violently with a thick krausen and some very large bubbles. The chiller has fired up a few times today, so fermentation must be generating a lot of heat. Outside temperature was around 21c, so it would easily be too warm without some form of temperature control.
29/05/17 14:00 - Fermentation still going strong. Yeast is visible on the surface bubbles, so this is being thrown up by the vigor of the fermentation.
31/05/17 - Fermentation is now slowing and krausen is thinning out.
01/06/17 - Just a few bubbles left.
02/06/17 - A few bubbles remain and little to no sign of activity is left. A refractometer reading is showing 6.8 Brix which is around 1.015/1.015 SG, so the beer has reached final gravity. The beer will be left for another day to allow the yeast to clean up.
03/06/17 - Temperature set to 7C to encourage yeast to drop. It was dropping about 1C per hour once the chiller was switched on.
04/06/17 - Temperature is stable at 7C.
05/06/17 - 8 bottles and 2 Kegs cleaned & Sterilised. I had a few swing top bottles, so used these as well. Kegs purged a few times and set at 20psi to carbonate. Beer looks relatively clear already, so should be able to draw a sample by the weekend.

Tasting Notes:

Dark amber in colour with a rich smooth malty flavour. Bitterness is not too high and could go a little stronger without spoiling the balance, there is a good complex bitter aftertaste. The Fuggles hops give a really nice traditional hop flavour, which works well with this style of beer. Mouth feel is superb but the head retention seems a little poor at the moment but it has only been in the keg 1 week and due to warm weather has probably not fully carbonated, so may improve with ageing.

3 weeks later and this is proving to be a very tasty brew. The head retention is much better now but still not as good as it could be. However, it tastes so good that I would not want to change the recipe to cure head retention and spoil the flavour.