Voyager 14. Best Bitter
After my Thames Valley Ale II yeast mutated into an aggressive beast of a culture I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make a proper session beer without it being dry, and that’s not my bag! Having heard nothing but good things about the Tim Taylor strain I decided it could be my next house yeast. Better try it out then. I decided a best bitter should be able to make this yeast shine and hopefully would be able to show me what it can bring to the table.
23 litre Batch. 4.1%ABV. 9.6SRM. 29IBU. OG1.045 FG1.014
MALT
3800g Maris Otter300g Special B (yes i know its not British, but its damn good and Britain traded with everyone)
200g Torrified Wheat
HOPS
17g Magnum 10aa @ 60 minutes 20.9 IBU
45g East Kent Goldings 5aa @ 5 minutes 5.5 IBU
25g Fuggles 5aa @ 5 minutes 2.7 IBU
YEAST
1 Litre starter of Wyeast 1469
BREWING AND TASTING
Very simple brewday. The only thing of note was the whopping 81% efficiency I achieved! much higher than usual. My system must like small beers!
Fermentation was normal although the final gravity stopped slightly higher than i would have liked, beer was freezer crashed, fined with isinglass and transferred to corny keg with the leftovers going into some swingtops with half as much priming sugar as i would normally to try and keep the fizz down.
Keg was crashed at 2’C (i had room in my laagering chest) until clear, about a week.
Beer was an excellent example of Best Bitter despite the addition of some unconventional ingredients. With the final gravity of the beer being higher than I expected I was nervous about the perceived sweetness, luckily the high IBU from the Magnum bittering charge cut straight through.
Flavour of the yeast esters were noticeable but not overpowering and really played well with the nutty, toasty and caramel flavours from the malts.
I really wussed out with my hop additions and while you could taste them, a big fresh slap on the face from some EKG would have made this great beer into an amazing beer.
The head retention on this was magnificent, i put that down to the addition of torrified wheat. Big white mr whippy heads on low carbonation pint makes me happy.
Voyager 15 (the next one) is going to be a bit smaller still, but with that EKG slap i wanted. Perhaps I’ll dial everything up to eleven in 16.