‘Common Pride’ brewed (UPDATED)
23 Feb
Finally got round to brewing my first beer of 2012, and I’ve decided to try and brew one that is close to ‘Fuller’s London Pride’. This brew will be the first one that I’ve added grains and hops to the wort so I’ve got high hopes for this one.
Most of the London Pride clones I found were based around using Maris Otter and Crystal malts, as well as four different hop varieties Challenger, Target, Goldings, and Northdown. My ‘Common Pride’ brew will use the recommended grains for the clone, but only two of the hop varieties in order to keep immediate costs down. I’ve picked Challenger and Goldings hops since these were the greatest used in the recipes, and also I picked two hops that would offer a hop profile that would work together, fulfilling both bitterness and flavour.
My recipe for Common Pride is as follows:
- 1 Geordie Yorkshire Bitter Kit (1.5KG)
- Geordie kit yeast.
- 300g Maris Otter grains (toasty, biscuity and nutty flavours)
- 200g Crystal Malt (caramel, colour, malty flavours)
- 20g Challenger (When used for bittering, Challenger can impart a pleasant and complex marmalade/toffee/citrus flavour, which enhances strong ales. )
- 30g Goldings (Tend to have a smooth, sweet flavour)
- 1KG Muntons Brew Enhancer (500g dry spray malt, 500g brew sugar)
- 250g dry spray malt (making total fermentables 750g DSM & 500g brew sugar)
- Add malts to 5 litres of 80 degree water and then maintain it around 70-75 degrees for 30 minutes. Discard the grains after straining.
- Add 10g of each hop to the wort and then boil for 30 minutes (for bitterness).
- Add 10g of each hop to the wort and steep for 15 minutes circa 65-70 degrees (for flavour).
- Add 5g of each hop to the wort and steep for 10 minutes circa 65-70 degrees (for flavour).
- Finally filter all of this into the FV, add the kit and 1kg BKE, 250g DSM, top it up to 23 litres, wait for the temp to be 18-23 degrees then pitch yeast.
- After three days, add 10g Goldings hops to a (pre-boiled) muslin bag with a sterilised shot glass & hang in the FV for 3-5 days.
Everything went as it should, boiling the grains was a lot less hassel than I thought it would be – I put them in a muslin bag which meant straining and discarding was easy as pie. I didn’t use muslin bags for the hops since I’ve read that you should allow the hops to freely boil and steep in order to get all the oils out of them – needless to say I found straining the wort through a muslin lined sieve was quite fiddly but this is only because of my rubbish plastic jug that pours like a drunk man pissing in the wind.
One tip I can give is to keep a load of ice cubes in your freezer in order to maintain a correct temperature. There were a few occasions where I had to drop the temperature of the wort, and ice cubes are great since they offer cooling without having to add much more liquor.
The starting OG of the brew was 1.046 (taken at three different intervals, the temperature of the brew taken simultaneously at each reading. I am aiming for a final OG of 1.010 – if the beer can achieve this I’m looking at around 5 ABV% which I’m very happy with. ABV calculations are based on the following calculator.
The name of the beer is a pun London Pride of course, and uses a reference to Minchinhampton Common which is local to me. I will bottle the beer in glass bottles in 7-10 days – the beer has cost approx 53p per pint.
UPDATE (25/02/11) – 5 days into primary fermentation:
I just dry hopped the beer with 20g of Goldings Hops. I boiled up a muslin bag, some string, and a shot glass to sterilise. I added the hops and the shot glass to the bag, and tied the string to the bag. I then placed the hops to the FV, keeping the bag in place by securing the string using the FV lid. The reason I added a shot glass is to weigh the bag down since hops are very light and you don’t want them floating.
All of my dry-hop tips I got from this link. I would have liked to placed the beer into a secondary fermenter, but I couldn’t be arsed.
Nice
You talk about adding ice cubes? Do you mean when steeping? i dont really follow?
Yeah, so for example when I added the first hops it was to boiling water. 15 minutes later I needed to bring the temperature down to around 70c from boiling, and adding ice cubs helped drastically. I could have just added more cold water, however my pot was pretty full so ice cubes really helped.
Also, my hob is not the most reactive, so if the steeping temperature was ever creeping up past my desired temperature, I added ice cubes to the wort in order to control the temperature.
Cool i see, when i was steeping i got the water to 70 degrees and then switched the heat off and put the lid on. After 20 mibutes or so i checked the temp and it was the same so i dont think you will need the ice cubes. Just flame out and lid on.
That’s a good point, I didn’t try that – much more efficient.
See update above, just dry-hopped.
I was a bit confused as to why you boiled your hops before adding them. Then I read it properly. It’s a good link.
Yep, boil for bitterness, late-addition for flavour, dry-hop for aroma.