1939 Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer

Today's brew was 1939 Barklay Perkins Sparkling Beer, from Ron's blog, but in my case I took it from Let's Brew!, which is a fantastic book in my opinion.

Firstly, I plugged the recipe into Brewers Friend. I found that to get the correct colour as specified by Ron, I would need to use my dark crystal malt, then it was bang on. The hop additions were Saaz / Saaz / Saaz at 90, 60 and 30 mins. I'm afraid I didn't have enough in stock so for the 90 min addition I substituted challenger in a quantity to give the same bitterness. I'm hoping that after 90 mins, it will only be bitterness that this addition contributes. I aimed for 21L in the FV. This gave;

FERMENTABLES:
4.1 kg - United Kingdom - Lager (89.1%)
0.5 kg - United Kingdom - Dark Crystal 80L (10.9%)

HOPS:
15 g - Challenger, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.5, Use: Boil for 90 min, IBU: 18.89
25 g - Saaz, Type: Pellet, AA: 3.5, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 12.12
25 g - Saaz, Type: Pellet, AA: 3.5, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 9.31

The major departure from the original is that I don't have a lagering plant, unlike Barklay Perkins, so I decided to use the faux lager method, with Crossmyloof's California Common yeast, double pitched and fermented at 14°.

This was my first go at water treatment, so CRS was used to reduce alkalinity, and gypsum added, to give the 'bitter' water profile in Grahams Wheeler's calculator. That seemed about right for the malt bill.

All went well, but I ended up with 20.5L instead of 21, and the OG was 1049, which is slightly over. The wort was really clear ~ much clearer than I usually end up with, and if anything, I returned less of the first runnings back into the mash tun than usual. All I can think is that this is the first time I have used base malt from The Home Brew Company ~ hook head Irish lager malt. I wonder if their crush settings suit the bazooka filter on my mash tun better?

I am now drinking homebrew waiting for my brew fridge to cool the wort the last couple of degrees to pitching temp (20° ). The fridge will then be left on to rapidy get it down to the fermenting temp of 14° .