At the weekend I ad the pleasure of brewing Durden Park‘s Windsor Ale (OG 1.063) from their latest publication, “Old British Beers and How To Brew Them”.
It’s a simple recipe with a long three hour mash & a reasonably long maturation period of six to eight weeks. This will hopefully be my Christmas ale.
Click the link for some photos and recipe info.
Windsor Ale 1.063
6.8kg Maris Otter Pale Malt
120g Fuggles (4.7% AA) @ 120 minutes
100g Honey (in the fermenter)
Mashed for three hours at 66 degrees, boiled for two hours. Pitched with 2 x Nottingham yeast for slightly higher attenuation.
I’ll be priming the bottles with honey to maintain the honey aroma which can be driven off during fermentation.
I had a few issues with the Nottingham yeast trying to climb out the fermenter – I’ve never seen so much yeast activity like this before!
Windsor Ale, Nottingham Yeast Explosion
The aroma that’s filled the house is lovely – a nice yeasty/honey smell.
The gravity’s come down to 1.010 already which is perfect. I’ll be priming the bottles with honey and leaving until Christmas (ok there might be a few quality control samples before then!).
Before the brew I insulated my HLT with camping mats to get a better efficiency when heating up strike/sparge water. It’s definitely made a big difference to how long it takes to get water up to temperature. It doesn’t look pretty and it’s not shiny but it does it’s job well! The addition of the calibrated sight glass has also helped ease calculating volumes correctly.
Insulated Hot Liquor Tank
I have a number of areas that I need to improve before I start looking at shiny items to replace the current plastic bits:
- The element power connectors on my boiler are unshrouded and are an electrical hazard.
- I’m not happy about having to move 25 litres of boiling wort when I need to use my immersion chiller. A pump would solve this.
- My IC isn’t connected up very well and I’ve often spilt cooler water into the brew.
- I need more cornelius kegs!
- I’d like to start using liquid yeasts and need to develop a good technique of splitting and storing them.
- My counter pressure bottle filler needs a bit of work.
[...] Park’s Windsor Ale I cracked open my Windsor Ale at the weekend. I seem to have solved the issues I was having with priming, bottling and then not [...]