Voyager 16. Best Bitter
British bitter is often described as a boring beer, indeed delicious, but boring. While browsing reddit I found people would comment on bitter tastings that there wasn’t allot going on in the beer and that that is expected. This was bouncing around my head while I was brewing voyager 16 and while I was trying to turn this recipe up to eleven this gave me no room to back down. Using an addition of double roasted crystal as well as the Special B in the grist will hopefully give me a more complex malt profile, failing that it will very much boost the flavour. Voyager 14s largest failing was the lack of fresh hop, Increasing the malt flavour will only make this worse so I’m doubling the amount. Done.
23 litre Batch. 3.6%ABV. 10 SRM. 33.24 IBU. OG1.039 FG1.012
MALT
3400g Maris Otter175g Special B
175g Double Roasted Crystal
100g Torrified Wheat
HOPS
17g Magnum 10aa @ 60 minutes 20.1 IBU
110g East Kent Goldings 4aa @ 5 minutes 9.6 IBU
40g Fuggles aa @ 5 minutes 3.5 IBU
YEAST
Yeast cake of voyager 15
BREWING AND TASTING
While i like to bitch about peoples perception of the taste of a bitter being boring, it is definitely on the money on the brewing side. nothing out of the ordinary.
This Bitter had character. it was 100% a bitter but if i was to take it any further you would be getting into brown ale territory. Lots of big biscuit and nutty flavours like you would expect but with a freshness from the hops. Really liked the use of double crystal and Special B, will be using that again. I never make the same beer twice as to settle on a recipe is to stop improving, however i can see myself using this as a jumping off point in the future for lots of new recipes.
TLDR. Pretty good would drink again.