Fakr's Best Bitter clone

[fakr]

Posting this as the grain and hop bill are pretty much bang on.

Quantity:  6GAL

Grain:

5lbs Canadian 2-row
5lbs Maris Otter
2lbs Toasted Wheat
1lbs Crystal 240

Hops:

1oz Tetnang whole leaf - 30min in sparge tun pre lauter
1oz Willamette whole leaf - 30min in sparge tun pre lauter

1oz Mt Hood @ 60min
1oz Tetnang @ 20min

Yeast:

2 x Wyeast Ringwood
1 x Wyeast 1056
1 x Fermentis s04

Other:

5g Irish moss @ 5min
1/2tsp White labs yeast nutrient @5min

Mash Temp:  154F

Note:  Original recipe only called for 2xRingwood, but after pitching realized the yeast was no longer viable so I repitched with what I had.

Comments:
Complete fermentation took pretty much 9 days, with a noticeably continued fermentation in secondary for an additional 2 days.
Malt flavor and body very much like a picaroons best bitter.  Yeast profile is a bit off.  There is a noticeable fruity pear nose to the beer, but less distinct in the taste.  Either this is the Ringwood coming through, or the length of fermentation that is causing the pear smell.
Very drinkable.

[sdixon]

more of us (me included) need to foolow up on recipes and post comments / taste notes.

[mcgster]

How did this turn out fakr?

Looking to do a brew this weekend of a good picaroons clone (irish red or best bitter) i have all the grain for this except the 240 on hand.

[Chris Craig]

You'll have a hard time cloning a Picaroons beer.  They have a signature flavour from reusing the yeast for several generations in open fermentation.

[mcgster]

My Ringwood is fourth generation... maybe in a few hundred batches I'll be all set 

No doubt that is true though, but if your grain bill and hops are bang on then at the very least it's interesting to see the impact that a yeast strain can make. I was actually going to do a 10 gal batch and pitch with two different strains for just that reason.. and because its fun to test!

[fakr]

This recipe was close but not quite, looking back at it.  It is a good start though.

I would add the sparge hop additions to the boil kettle as i'm sparging...no need to dirty your hlt. 
Looking back i wouldn't let it ferment out as much as it did...it should have had a bit more malt character to it.

I'd like to redo this recipe this winter and pitch a good ringwood starter, or actually use a combination of ringwood and the yeast Brian_S used in his competition entry.  It had a slight buttery flavor to it that i taste in picaroons.

Man, I think i'm going to make this again next brew day.

[mcgster]

Do you think adjusting the mash temp would help obtain the extra malt character? In my mind the combination of the flavours from their yeast and the malt character make this a top notch brew that i'd love to replicate.

Any thoughts on changes to the grain bill, or do you think that was sufficient.

I'm going to ask a small favor... when you get to brew your award winning beer at picaroons would you mind accidentally dropping a sterile container into their fermenter and sending it to me  then we would have the missing piece here! 

[fakr]

I would think 154-156F is probably sufficient for a mash temp...but maybe up the crystal to 10% of the grain bill for a start...not sure i'd go much higher than 10% unless its still not up to snuff...too much crystal reminds me of a malty belgian....

I havent made this in a couple of years so my brewing techniques have changed quite a bit so i would like to try this again...with better fermentation temps...if i remember correctly, the room temp was somewhere around 18C....so well over 20C liquid temp during fermentation.   I'd now set the fermentation liquid temp to 16-18C.

[mcgster]

I'll aim for 156 because i do have about 2 degree's of drop in my MLT. I am starting to piece together a recirc system so i can keep my MASH temps stable but so far all i have is a pump and one element.