(26) Sunday, August 14, 2011 Brew Day – BVBHA1.4

Today’s beer is different in a couple of ways. First I am using a different hop schedule. This one is based on a presentation from Daniel Morey in December 2000 called “Hop Schedule Guidelines: Award Winning Homebrew and Classic Beer Style Recipes.” The second thing is a different yeast. This one is Wyeast 1768-PC English Special Bitter Yeast. It is a seasonal yeast that is currently available and is similar to 1968 London ESB Ale but slightly less flocculent. The third thing is… I cannot remember the third thing, but I am sure there was one. I’ll think of it.

I remembered the third thing. I am going to go with a different chilling regimen. Last time, I believe that I had a noticeable amount of Dimethyl sulfide (DMS). I believe that this was from my 20-minute hot steep to extract hop aromatics. This time I am going to start my whirlpool cooling right at flame out which is why I wanted to use a different hop schedule in the first place.

Oh, and there’s a fourth thing. I am not going to do any dry hopping in the fermenter. The two ounces of dry hops are all getting added in the keg!

Last night I weighed out and crushed my grain and weighed out my hops. The rest of the hops went in the freezer. I set up the brewery and measured out my mash and sparge water.

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An observation about Hop Utilization Prediction

Any hop utilization formula has to satisfy two criteria.

  1. It has to evaluate to zero for zero time because hops you do not add will make no contribution to bitterness.

  2. It cannot evaluate to more than 100% for infinite time because you cannot extract more than all that the hops have to offer.

Tinseth appears to suggest that utilization peaks out at around 24% after about 2 hours.

A Man Walks Into a Bar

A man walks into a bar and orders a drink. Another man walks up to him and says to the first, “Hey. The special of the day lets you defy gravity! Watch!” He walks over to the window, steps out, does a couple of spins in the air and comes back in.
The first man says to the bartender, “I’ll have the special of the day!” The bartender gives him the drink and the man drinks it. He then walks over to the window, steps out and plummets to his death.
The bartender says, “Superman. You can be a real jerk when you are drunk!”