With the average daily temperature probably unlikely to climb back to the heights we saw earlier this year, I decided it was time to get another homebrew going. I’ve decided to repeat the Burton Bridge XL Bitter recipe I used for last November’s Fawkes Bitter but with a couple of tweaks.

Firstly, I used the “progressive mash” idea for the Mild Bee batch which ended up being the last one I made in my previous brewing season. Instead of getting all the mash water to “strike temperature”, I started with a couple of litres, then added the grains in their bag and just kept adding further batches of water heated in my temperature controlled kettle. It shaves a bit more time off the overall process and seems just as effective at extracting fermentable sugars from the grain – I hit 1.041 against a target of 1.039, so I’m actually working a bit more efficiently than Graham Wheeler’s recipe suggests.

Secondly, I’m using a different yeast for this one. Most of my recent batches have used Midland or Four from the Crossmyloof online brew shop, which are Nottingham and S-04 types. For this one, I’m trying another of their offerings, The Firm. This is a low-attenuating strain based on Windsor yeast. That should stop converting malt sugars to alcohol more quickly, leading to a richer tasting but lower alcohol result. With the other yeasts, my brews have typically dropped to about 1.007 as a final gravity reading; I’m interested to see how this yeast affects both the ABV and the flavour.

It is the fermenter as of this afternoon so I’ll check in on how it has progressed next weekend.