So, my current tendencies are leaning towards lower ABV beverages. Again, this is to improve my technical brewing. Given that these generally have less ingredients, there is more of a challenge to make full flavored and robust beers. There are a number of techniques that can be utilized, either by kettle additions, mash temperatures or grain choices.
My Second beer of the year was an English style mild, utilizing the Ringwood strain from Wyeast. I had never utilized this strain before and thought it would be a good strain to utilize in my mild ale. It is a very characterful strain, sending lots of ester notes. One of the big concerns with this strain, however, is that it is incredibly flocculant. Basically, it’s a quitter. It doesn’t like to finish or clean up after itself. It works very fast to convert sugar to alcohol and esters, but it has a tendency to not reabsorb its diacetyl. One of the main remedies for this is to continually rouse the fermenter to ensure that the yeast is driven back into suspension and that it works to reabsorb its mess, in this case the diacetyl. One small problem is that this strain has a low tolerance for reabsorbing the diacetyl. As a result, my mild does have some butterscotch notes to it, but it is far from unpleasant. In tasting, I, as well as others, have found the slight buttery note to be a welcome addition, another layer of complexity to this beer. And the yeast character is, well, interesting. Like I said, tons of esterification. And, the beer is quite bright because of the highly flocculant nature of the yeast.
So, obviously the yeast is a big component of the beer, but here are the rest of the details:
For a 6 Gallon Batch
7lbs. Maris Otter
9oz. Crystal 80L
7oz. Crystal 60L
6oz. Pale Chocolate Malt
.75oz. US Fuggles (5.1%) – 60min.
1oz. US Fuggles (5.1%) – 15min
Mashed at 155F for an hour.
OG: 1.033
FG: 1.011
ABV: 2.86%
Color: 15.4SRM
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