Burton Bomber -- Brew Day

December 17, 2015 -- The next batch of beer following the IPA is a throw back to the old brown ale we made before. I've modified the recipe slightly to see how affecting a few ingredients affects the flavor.

Is this the end for my stove?

The day before starting, I needed to make a starter with my liquid yeast. I decided on using White Labs Burton Ale yeast (WLP023) for the flavor it gave last time and it's ability to make delicious beer of similar style. So in addition to starting my Burton brew, I needed to make some more to harvest for future batches in planning (more on that later).

I'm disappointed I don't get a preform to save yeast in.

I've had yet to use these PurePitch packets until today. They are very easy to open using a scissors but I feel as if the scissors could cause contamination when the pouch is cut open.

Unlike the first time doing this brew, where we used our 3-tier lautering setup, this batch was done using brew-in-a-bag. (Ironic seeing as how the 3-tier system was created to avoid having to do BIAB).

Compared to the previous batch, I added some more 2 row to compensate for my lower efficiency with BIAB, along with some Rye Malt to see if it would add a little zing to the final flavor.

I'm pretty sure this would not work on a rainy day.

So into the water the grain went, and the mash was underway (at 65°C). This sat for an hour while I set everything else up for brewday.

This grain would not have made delicious scones

After one hour of bathing, the wort was ready to be extracted into my kettles for boiling. At this point I became worried that I may have extracted too much wort....

Brisk brewing on a bright winter morning.

There was an awfully high amount of wort in both of my kettles; I was afraid I would cause a boil over. But I remembered a very important adage applies to brewing: A watched pot never boils(over).

Ready to go!

After pulling a sample for color, it was all burners to full!

Browner than a certain team from Cleveland

Video below shows you how close I was to losing control of this boil.

It was at this time I started the timer and added in my hops.

I've been told that a certain stain on this stove was caused by a previous tenant causing a boilover

After 1 hour of boiling, it was time for the cooldown. I did 1 kettle in the sink at a time, while covering the other with the lid to cool outside. As soon as the first kettle was done cooling, the other went into the bath. It went ridiculously quick with the amount of ice I used.

Lots of hot break

Chill out

After seeing how much wort I got from my first kettle, I began to accept the fact that my fermenter was going to blow off once I topped it up with the other wort and the starter. WLP023 is infamous for blowing off/blowing up fermenters, so I was expecting the worst.

Amount of wort from 1 kettle

The starter was quite active from my preparation the night before. It was time to start fermenting. I added about half of the starter to my wort to get things started.

Time for the yeast to take over

The OG of this batch was 1.045. I'm expecting the FG to give me 4.0-4.7% ABV at the end. With OG this low, fermentation should take only 4-5 days.

Postboil/postpitch volume

It's gonna blow!

Since I'm lacking beer bottles, the plan is to siphon off 1/2 gallon into a growler while I'm away on holiday. I'll be bottling this when I get back from vacation.

Burton Bomber

8 lbs 2 Row
0.75 lbs Brown Malt
0.5 lbs Roasted Barley
0.25 lbs Munich Malt
0.25 lbs Rye Malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 40

1 oz Fuggles (60 minutes)
0.5 oz Willamette (30 minutes)
0.25 oz Willamette (15 minutes)
0.25 oz Willamette (5 minutes)

WLP023 Burton Ale Yeast


Yeast harvesting

I plan to use WLP023 for some future batches. The easiest way to harvest it was to pull some of the wort from the starter. I boiled up a few mason jars of water the night before to do this.

After pitching most of my starter, I added in the water to my starter vessel to extract the diluted yeast mixture to each of the jars. Each was appropriately labeled and stached away in the fridge.

Bottling Update

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