I find it both gratifying and dangerous that as a homebrewer, any beer style that I am able to find some information on and find appropriate ingredients for is something I can brew for myself, including styles I may not be able to find commercial examples of.
Burton ale is one of those historic styles that I find very interesting, and isn’t one that lines store shelves anymore. Like many historic styles, there is a lot of differing opinions of what a classic Burton ale should be, thus I have taken some liberties to define what I want my own version of Burton ale to be: Made with 100% British pale malt, boiled for an extended period and heavily bittered with English hops.
Brewed: January 7th, 2018
Bottled: Feb 12th, 2018
OG: 1.091
FG: 1.027
ABV: 8.5%
IBU: 80
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Mash: 90 min @ 156F, 10 min @ 170F
Boil: 150 minutes
Water Additions:
20 g Gypsum
10 g CaCl
5g chalk
Grist:
100% No.19 Floor malted Maris Otter (17.5 lbs)
Hopping:
55 AAU Extract at start of boil (0.35 oz)
0.75 oz Nugget at 30 min
Fermentation:
Imperial A01 House – 2mo. old package
Created 1.75L starter w. 8 oz light DME
Pure O2 for 20 seconds
Fermented at 66F for 5 days, then ramped up to 72F
Brew Day Notes:
Brew started at 10:00am. Mashed 1.5 hrs to try to help efficiency, knowing it’ll be low with so much grain in the Grainfather. Pitched yeast at 62F and put in the cellar with 60F air temp. Fermentation underway within about 12h, sat around 67F at peak activity. Removed from cellar on day 4 as the airlock activity had slowed considerably.
[Jan 21 Primary pull] – Down to 1.027, bitterness is assertive but not overly powerful. Further attenuation may bump it up. Nice English yeast character thus far.
[Feb 12 2018] Bottling / transfer day. Primed the whole batch with 0.5 oz / gal dextrose. Moved about 0.4 gals into Woodstock to top it up to the neck. Transferred about 3 gals into glass & pitched Brett C (WLP). The rest was bottled – 12 x 375mL. FG was 1.026, taste is pretty sweet, not as bitter as expected, and quite nice.