No brewing last weekend, and I wanted to use the current yeast culture once more, so despite recovering from some virus, I brewed today. The recipe was the fourth batch of Harvey’s Sussex Best Bitter. The original gravity target was 1.040, but because I just used what was left of a bag of Golden Promise for the base malt (12.75 pounds), I was short on the gravity. Expected gravity was 1.035 after the mash, but with a hard boil I made it up to 1.037, so not that far off. Perhaps more of an ordinary bitter than a best, at that strength. The yeast had been decanted into flasks last weekend, so I pitched some starter wort into them on Friday night.

Hops are an eclectic mix of Fuggle, Phoenix, Bramling Cross, and First Gold, at about 45 IBU. The rest of the malt bill was caramunich in place of dark crystal malt and some Special B for added colour. The chill went reasonably well using the frozen pot containing the immersion chiller, getting a wort temperature of 72F after running the wort through at full speed. Perhaps if we run the wort at half speed during the height of summer we can still get to the proper pitching temperature. I chilled the fermenters down to 68 before pitching the yeast. The aeration stone was not working so well, but after changing the sanitary air filter for a new one it was much better.

There was no beer to rack today, although the first half of the Boathouse Pale Ale with the homegrown Cascade ran out last week, so I kegged up the other half on Thursday of this week. Once the Spitfire and the Harvey’s Best are on the handpump our cask lineup will be five ales. The first half of the Bishop’s Farewell ran out during the brew, so we will have a total of 8 corny kegs of cask ale (provided nothing else runs out before the Spitfire and Harvey’s are tapped).