English Bitter-Ye Olde Time Miracle Elixir

Another "semi planned" brew session here. I find myself doing this more frequently nowdays..I will get a loose idea of what I want to brew, grow up an appropriate yet starter and crash it out in the fridge with the plan in mind to brew at some point within the following week.

Pic of Ye Olde Miracle Elixer to the right...directly in front of my Sanyo 4912 fridge...guess what thats going to turn into :)

And thats what I did here with the Ordinary Bitter (aka Ye Olde Time Miricle Elixir). It was a late Friday brewday which included 2 stuck sparges (yep I have forgotten my cardinal rule of no mashing without rice hulls) which I have found to be the most frustrating thing that can happen to me while brewing. On a side note my next hardware project will be a way to reinforce or apply a seal around the perimeter of my steel false bottom, or by opening up the diameter of my fittings round the drain valve. Anyhow...

This is basically Jamil Z's award winning recipe for his bitter and hopefully I can come close to that version (but I wont really have any other way of being able to tell if I do or not), the main intent of this batch is to get some homebrew back up on the shelfs here at home in a short time frame-I plan on bottling directly from primary in 1.5 weeks.

Grain:

-6 lbs Maris Oter

-.5 lbs Caramel 20L

-.35 lbs Special Roast

Hops: All US Kent Goldings-4.2% AA

-1oz U.S. Kent Goldings 65 minutes

-.75oz U.S. Kent Goldings 30 minutes

-.25oz U.S. Kent Goldings at flameout

Yeast: White Labs WLP002 English Ale Yeast

-Pitched 400ml slurry, decanted prior to addition.

Stats: 80 minute mash. Water to Grain Ratio 1.25 : 1 -Batch sparged
-154F at mash in -148F after mash-Sparge water temp 179

**Batch may be more fermentable than planned, after 2 stuck mashes.

-65 minute boil

04A. Bitter And English Pale Ale, Ordinary Bitter
All-grain

OG
1.042
FG
1.011
IBU
31
ABV
4.0 %
SRM
6

Saison...

Hands down one of my favorite beer styles to enjoy..and has been for some time now. I've been looking forward to brewing my own version of this Belgian/French Farmhouse ale for a long time now..and coming off of both an insanely busy work week and a very interesting culinary week-we went to Anthony Bourdains book talk and signing earlier in the week..which was a great experience-I was ready to get some brewing done!

This beer is loosely based on Ommegangs Hennipin (which by the way is both one of my favorite Breweries-Ommegang, and favorites of this style- this Saison is amazing), a little more complex in terms of malt bill and process than a Saison Dupont, which is said to be made of only 1 malt-Belgian Pilsner, but was not by any means a complicated beer to make.

Knowing that the malt bill is fairly straightforward (Belgian Pils, Belgian 2 row, cane, and Belgian candy sugar my focus was primarily on getting the wort down to the mid 60's F and very carefully control the fermentation temps..starting mid 60's and ramping up to as close to 90F I can around day 10 in primary..this should be much easier to accomplish in the cold (and snowy as of today) winter season of Chicago (as should all my temp issues) than it was all summer here..which was brutal and a true challenge to keep temps under 80 in most cases.

I will update as primary moves forward. Cheers!

Fermentables:

Grain:
-7 lbs Belgian Pilsner -
-2 lbs Belgian 2-row (it came uncrushed so I had to take the roller pin to it...)

Other:
-1lb Belgian clear candy sugar

-1 lb Cane sugar

*Sugar accounts for 18.2% of the fermentables.

Hops:
Bittering:
-2oz Czech Sladeck 7.8%AA-80 minutes
Flavor/Aroma

-.15 oz of Bitter orange peel

Yeast:
-Wyeast Belgian Saison, 400ml yeast slurry started for primary.

Stats:
80 minute mash. Water to Grain Ratio 1.25 : 1
-Batch sparged

-152F at mash in
-148F at sparge
-No Mash out

-85 minute boil

-Irish moss added at 5 minutes to flame out
-Final Volume 4.5 gallons

-SRM-5 *This is one point below the low end for style.

-IBUs-31
-Original Gravity: ??? You tell me..my hydrometer went tits up and started letting in water..but according to my tastybrew.com calculations we should be right around 1.070.