Some time ago I made a clone of the Hobgoblin ale based on Orfy’s recipe. I did make some slight changes but unfortunately I had a hard disk crash and lost my altered recipe. That ale got named Viking Clawfinger and was a success among friends and family. I have produced a new version of it but this time stuck to Orfy’s recipe but with the addition of Torrified Wheat. Kept the VC name as I like it.
The brew went well but the fermentation has had some problems getting started, I am putting this down to a dodgy batch of Nottingham yeast.
Pale malt – 4800g
Crystal malt – 250g
Cara-pils – 200g
Chocolate malt – 150g
Torrified wheat – 85g
Fuggles – 50g 60 mins
Bobek – 40g 15 mins
Bobek – 25g -5 mins 90C
OG = 1.057, was expecting 1.052
I did a 60 minutes mash with 30-40 minutes of recirculation with the solar pump. 2nd batch sparge for 30 minutes with a 25 minutes recirculation, followed by a 60 minutes boil. Cooling with a new bit of kit, an ice bath with water butt pump into the IC. Unfortunately the ice melted faster than I had thought it would and I replaced water bath with hose pipe feed. So much for being more green…
The Nottingham yeast that I had problems with, 30 hours with no activity, batch number 1080961099V expiry 12/2011. This batch number tallies with a few other brewers’ failed ferments… I added a packet of S-04 and it has started to froth up. Fingers crossed.
Finally some yeast action, not sure if this is the Nottingham or S-04 or a combination…
Update:
The brew shed smells lovely, lots of beery yeasty smells. I was greeted by the following. I think that the Nottingham took a while to kick in and then went berserk!
Update 21/09/2010:
Gravity is at 1.014 so with a temperature of 21.7C the corrected gravity is 1.015. Expected is 1.014 so a few more days and this will be transferred into FV2.