Homebrew Recipe
Bitter Sweet Symphony Clone - Tiny Rebel Brewing
- Method:
- All Grain
- Style:
- Strong Bitter
- Boil Time:
- 60 min.
- Batch Size:
- 5 gal.
- Boil Size:
- 6.5 gal.
- Efficiency:
- 0
- Rating:
- Source:
- How To Brew
- Source Notes:
- July-August 2019, Vol. 25, No. 4 edition page 17. Bitter Sweet Symphony isn't your typical ESB. Although it's fermented with a traditional top-cropping English yeast, the rest of the ingredients are global in nature. The added Munich malt adds the bit of base malt complexity without additional specialty malts. As for the crystal 300, feel free to substitute this out for another dark crystal with rich toffee or dark fruit character or use a darker Munich malt to compensate.
- Notes:
- Mill the grains, then mix with 3.6 gal of 166 F strike water to achieve a single infusion rest temp of 151 F. Hold at this temp for 60 min. Vorlauf until your runnings are clear before directing them to your boil kettle. Batch or fly sparge the mash to obtain 6.5 gal of wort in the kettle. If fly sparging, stop once your runnings SG hits 1.012 and top off to the desired pre-boil volume with water. Boil for 60 min, adding hops at the times indicated above left in the boil. At 15 min left in the boil add either Irish Moss, Whirfloc, or other kettle fining agent of your choice. After the boil, add flame-out hops and whirlpool for 15 min before rapidly chilling the wort to slightly below fermentation temp, which is 70 F for this beer. Pitch yeast and aerate well. Maintain fermentation temp to avoid producing too many esters, which can easily occur with this strain. Once primary fermentation is done, drop the temp to 61 F. Add the dry hops and let them extract for 5 days. Bottle or keg the beer and carbonate to approximately 2.0 vol CO2. If you put the amount of hops into your favorite brewing software program, you'll likely find that the IBUs calculated are far from the value of 30 given. Fear not, the ratio of hops comes straight from Tiny Rebel's brewers and there will be plenty of hop character. Hop chemistry is a complex beast and elements such as flavor, isomerization, etc., remains cloaked in mystery. Shoot for 200 ppm total hardness with chlorides around 150 ppm. In addition, the pH of your wort prior to pitching should be around 5.1, which means that your mash pH should be at the upper end of the ideal mash pH range, 5.4-5.5. Finally, there's nowhere for inferior ingredients to hide in this style. Use the freshest ingredients possible otherwise it'll show faster than a year-old IPA.
Brew Numbers
| OG | FG | ABV | SRM | IBU |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.056 | 1.012 | 5.7 | 12 | 30 |
Fermentables
| Name | Amount | % Grain Bill |
|---|---|---|
| Pale Ale Malt | 8.5 lbs. | 73.91 |
| Munich Dark | 1.25 lbs. | 10.87 |
| Notes: Does not specify color, so can choose based on crystal being used. | ||
| Torrified Wheat | 1.25 lbs. | 10.87 |
| Crystal Malt 300 | 0.5 lbs. | 4.35 |
| Total: | 11.50 lbs. | |
Hops
| Name | Amount | Boil Time | Use | AA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cascade | 0.35 oz. | 60 | Boil | 8 |
| Notes: 2.8 AAU | ||||
| Cascade | 2 oz. | 0 | Steep | 8 |
| Notes: 16 AAU | ||||
| Bramling Cross | 1 oz. | 0 | Dry Hop | 0 |
| El Dorado | 2 oz. | 0 | Dry Hop | 0 |
| Name | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bramling Cross | 1 oz. |
| Cascade | 2.35 oz. |
| El Dorado | 2 oz. |
Yeast
| Name | Lab | Product |
|---|---|---|
| Burton Ale | White Labs | WLP023 |
| SafAle | Fermentis | S-04 |
| Thames Valley | Wyeast | 1275 |
Mash Steps
| Step | Name | Temp | Time | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Single Infusion Mash | 151 | 60 | All Grain |