ASB II and Brown Bavarian

Brew Day 8/25/12

The ASB I brewed earlier this year has been a great go-to, easy drinking beer, and now that it is gone I felt the need to line up another riff on it. Plus, the bRYEn’RYE came and went in a hurry and wasn’t all that satisfying on the “backyard beer” front. So I got out the ASB recipe and re-worked it for the fall.

I wanted to keep it relatively the same size on gravity and hop-presence, but mix up the profile a bit to make a more cohesively toned beer. I felt that ASB’s Victory malt and Crystal 40 ratios lent a very nice and balanced biscuity sweetness that backed up the mellow but hop-forward flavor and character form the English yeast. A combo of Americanized hops with distant English lineage for a nice combo of earthy and fruity aromas to compliment the yeast and biscuity malt backbone sounded like just the ticket for a great fall go-to. A quick break down of the recipe is as follows--

ASB II- Awesome Special Brown:

-Clean and slightly sweet Golden Promise as the base to stay out of the way.

-A moderate dose of Victory and C40 to re-create the great biscuity flair of ASB. Think pie crust.

-Enough Pale Chocolate to turn it a deep brown and lend some more toasted and nutty flavors. Again, think pie crust.

-Timmoth Taylor yeast for clear flocculation and some nice stone-fruit esters.

-Amarillo, Palisade, and Willamette flavor and aroma additions for complimentary peachy/ apricot/ earthy/ grassy hop-profile with some Belgian Admiral in the dry hop for juicier but still English aromatics. I also moved some of the hops out of the 15min flavor spot and into later additions to try for less hop oils in the mouth and more in the nose. Probably would have been even cleaner if I had done FWH and DH only, but that’ll have to be next time I guess. With the pie crust malt and fruity aromatics I’m kind of hoping for an Apricot Turnover beer.

-Mash high to keep the finishing gravity up. The ASB finished at 1.008, and although it was a great outcome in that beer, I wanted this one to have a bit more weight in the finish to balance the hops.

Brown Bavarian:

As usual, I couldn’t just stop at one beer, so I picked up an extra pack of the Weihenstephan yeast strain for the other half of the wort. I’m hoping that the subtly clove and banana fermentation profile blends nicely with the slightly sweet and biscuity malt and hop profile, plus I’ve been drinking a lot of hefe lately and felt that I needed more.

The Recipe (for 7 gal split- 3.33 ASBII and 2.8 BB):

12 lbs 2-Golden Promise- 80%
1 lb Victory Malt- 7%
1 lb Crystal 40- 7%
1 lb Pale Chocolate Malt- 7%

*Both beers recieved the same Hopping*
1oz Centennial FWH (bittering only addition)
1oz Amarillo for 15min boil
1 oz each Amarillo, Palisade, and Willamette at F/O
1 oz each Palisade and Admiral Dry Hop for 7 days

 
1 3L Starter WY1469 "West Yorkshire" yeast

1 Pack WY3068 “Weihenstephan” yeast

1g each gypsum and baking soda per gal of water. All R/O.

Single infusion @ 156F for 1 hr

OG: 1.052 = 63% efficiency

FG: BOTH AT 1.014~ 5.0% ABV
SRM: 19
IBU: 40

8/25/12- Brewed with no hiccups. Lost a half gallon to hop trub.

9/8/12- Added dry hops. Gravity at 1.019 for both beers.

9/15/12- Bottled 3 gal ASBII with 1/3 cup table sugar for 2.4 vol CO2. FG1.014~ 5.0% ABV

9/15/12 Bottled Brown Bavarian with 1/4 cup table sugar for 2.4 vol CO2. FG1.014~ 5.0% ABV

10/18/12- ASBII is bitter, crisp, and good. I'll be making some more changes for next time in the vein of getting a little closer to the original. This one is too bitter, and the WY1469 made a better blonde (I bottled the starter) than it did a brown.