It is the first day of summer and the longest day of the year, so I went for a three and a half hour bike ride.  After that, though, I casked the last batch brewed with this culture of the English Ale yeast, a clone of Harvey’s Sussex Best Bitter.  Since there is a shortage of space in the chest freezer holding the cask beer, I put the batch into a couple of corny kegs because the British casks take up a lot more space.

Sampled out of the primary, the beer is very close to the real thing, with that earthy, robust hoppiness that is the signature of Harvey’s Best.  I dry hopped each keg with three plugs (1.5 oz.) of First Gold.  The gravities on both fermenters were 1.012, which will work out to about 3.5% ABV, so slightly lower in alcohol than the target.  Once this batch is conditioned we’ll have five different real ales on tap, so we need a couple more handpumps to serve them all!