Recipe update
Recipes first posted here and here.
Had a busy day moving beer from primary to secondary, secondary to bottles and kegs and had a chance to sample the Kentish Best and the Abbots Special Bitter.
First up the Kentish. Am happy to report the beer is one of the brightest, clearist I have ever brewed, with the fining’s doing their job. The SRM and IBU where as expected. The taste and mouthfeel were that of a real ale best bitter, fresh and very drinkable. Had mine with some ‘bubble and squeak’, a Boxing Day favorite. The Fuggles hops came out in the flavour though I felt the beer had a metallic aroma I still cannot trace. Been doing some research on the aroma but have not found an explanation as of yet.
The one big issue I found was my own mistake, I failed to add enough priming sugar to the batch prior to bottling, the ale took longer than expected to carbonate, and when it did, it proved to be a little flat, though not overly so. This is easily remedied. Given the metallic aroma and the incorrect amount of priming sugar I will need to brew the recipe one more time before it can get promoted to the permanent recipe page here.
The Abbots Special Bitter was a real surprise. First up the ale was nothing like the original so back to the drawing board. That said the finished ale served really well, have it in a keg with a BeerGas mix. The IBU and SRM were perfect but the taste, flavour and aroma were not Greene King. The taste lacked the fruit and there was a little too much malt for a recipe that calls for a balanced flavour. Nonetheless it tastes great, sometime mistakes can lead to great discoveries.
So the Abbot clone recipe needs some work. For the caramel I will look to change the base malt to include some amber to replace the amber specialty malt reducing the caramel tones. I found some While Labs Burton Yeast with apple flavour characteristics I will look to try also. Look for more in the future.
So nothing gets promoted but we have definitely made progress and as always they are fun to make and drink.
