Time to use a couple of new vials of White Labs yeast that I started a couple of days ago – Dry English Ale and British Ale. The recipe is a clone of Hardy Country Bitter, from the defunct Eldridge Pope Brewery in Dorset, England. The beer used to be one of our favourites back in the college days before the brewery was bought out and eventually shut down. Maris Otter pale, light crystal, and wheat make up the grist. Hops were Northern Brewer for bittering and East Kent Goldings late. Original gravity was 1.043, and it was the first time this year we had to use the two-stage chilling method, since the ground water is too hot to use solely the counterflow.

We also kegged the first half of the Simcoe IPA, dry hopping it with two ounces of Simcoe that had been removed from the freezer the day before. Taste was nice, but unusual, with the unique flavour of Simcoe imparting piney and minty notes. The beer was nice right after kegging, with no grassy notes that I would expect be present if the hops were used right from the freezer.

The yeasts have been pitched five times, so we’re not using them again. We racked version 17 of the Boathouse Bitter to the firkin today, then dumped out the yeast. The two finished quite low, with the English at 1.008 and the British at 1.009. No primings were used, so we’ll have to see how well the condition develops. We dry hopped with three and a half ounces of Northern Brewer, but I forgot to remove the hops from the freezer the day before, which seems to help. We tried that with the Two Hearted clone and it turned out really well. It allows you to serve a beer that’s been very liberally dry hopped immediately, without having to wait for the harsh grassy notes to subside first, which can take a week or two. Definitely the way to go with aggressively dry hopped ales.