I had heard great things about this recipe on the morebeer.com forum, so I thought we’d give it a try. It follows the late hopping method recommended in a recent Zymurgy article (May/June 2006 issue). It’s an amber/pale ale of high gravity with lots of hop flavour and aroma. The recipe called for pale ale malt, crystal, biscuit, munich, and chocolate, with Amarillo and Centennial hops at the 20-, 10- and 0-minute boil intervals. I used Galena instead of Amarillo because Amarillo is difficult if not impossible to obtain. Gravity was 1.069. I used the no-sparge method for the third time, which didn’t work very well, but not because of the method. The problems started when the digital probe thermometer that I usually use to get the right strike water heat was reading incorrectly, resulting in a mash temperature of 1.045 instead of 1.054. I had to recirculate the wort while I heated the mash to boost the temperature, there being no room left in the tun to add more hot water to increase the temp. I think the heating/recirculating caused problems with grain getting under the false bottom, because the three wort recirculations were all horribly cloudy and full of grain husks. To collect for the boil, I put the first 5 gallons of collected wort into a grant, and then began to collect the rest in the boil kettle. At that point it was running clear, and Steve added the 5 gallons back to the mash in small amounts. It continued to run clear, so much so that I think we got a clearer runoff than we usually do, but at the expense of more time and work. Everything after that point went smoothly.

We racked the Burning River clone to secondary and sampled it. The hop character from the home-grown Cascade is different than it was last year, better we think, so far. Last year it was somewhat sweet, this year is more spicy. We also blended the cider with blackcurrant syrup, needing a whole 750 ml bottle of it, and then kegged it. The British ale yeast fermented the cider out well, about 1.003 with good clarity. Finally, we vented and tapped the nine of Harvey’s Sussex Best Bitter, which was quite lively.