First State Brewers' Blog

Man... how often does that happen. This past sunday I got up at 4:30am to brew an ESB (Phoenix), and it was near flawless from beginning to end. I was dead-on with my strike water temp, the mash-in came out a little high (154) so I adjusted it down 3 degrees with a quart or so of cold water, and from there on out - perfect. Sparged 45 minutes, final gravity of 1.012 in the sparge. Boiled 75 minutes, cooled in 25 minutes, and managed to leave 99% of the break and hop material in the kettle - The wort was near crystal-clear in the fermenter. It was fermenting like a mofo within 4 hours, well within the recommended temp range for the yeast strain, and stayed there rock solid for the past 36 hours. Fermentation is starting to slowly wind down, and I've got an enormous fluffy cream-colored kraeusen on top.

This is going to be the perfect starter batch for repitching the yeast into 10 gallons of Nut Brown this coming weekend.

The yeast itself (WLP023 Burton Ale) was 2 weeks past the "best use by" date, so I actually stepped it up twice in starters - 1000mL, then decanted 500mL once the yeast was done & flocced out, then stepped up to a 1/2 gallon. It appears to be performing admirably.

Love these kind of brews.