Floody Hell! – Brew Day

Stocks after Xmas were pretty low so in early February I finally managed to get the first brew of the new year on. I got up nice and early thanks to my new alarm clock; a month old daughter, was all wrapped up and mashing by 8am.

I’d planned to do a simple Challenger/Goldings brew but discovered a serious lack of Goldings hops so had to adjust things, eventually settling on the following recipe.

Brew Name – Floody Hell!

Recipe Specs
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Batch Size (L): 20.0
Total Grain (kg): 3.451
Total Hops (g): 78.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.038 (°P): 9.5
Final Gravity (FG): 1.010 (°P): 2.6
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 3.73 %
Colour (SRM): 9.9 (EBC): 19.5
Bitterness (IBU): 38.3 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

Grain Bill
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3.160 kg Maris Otter Malt (91.57%)
0.208 kg Crystal 120 (6.03%)
0.083 kg Wheat Malt (2.41%)

Hop Bill
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15.0 g Challenger Leaf (6.1% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)
8.0 g Fuggles Leaf (5.7% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (0.4 g/L)
15.0 g Progress Leaf (7.3% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (Boil) (0.8 g/L)
20.0 g East Kent Golding Leaf (4.7% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes (Boil) (1 g/L)
20.0 g East Kent Golding Leaf (4.7% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Boil) (1 g/L)

Misc Bill
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Single step Infusion at 66°C for 90 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with NBS West Coast Style Ale Yeast

My new brew assistant helped me weigh the hops out

And it was pretty much plain sailing from there. I tucked it up in the brew fridge to ferment with plans to bottle it when I got back from a work trip. That was until waking up earl after the storms on the 7th February to find this

Now we live on a hill, so weren’t really expecting to get flooded but it seems we were on the path for some surface water. Luckily it was just our outhouse, though somewhere at the back there is my brew fridge with the new beer! Once the water subsided a bit I was able to rescue it and all was thankfully fine. And so it got it’s name of Floody Hell!

As it turned out this was probably one of the best beers I’ve made so far and it’s already been lined up to be brewed again.