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Deschutes Bachelor ESB Clone Recipe – 9/8/2015

October 25, 2015 by Brewer 1 Comment

Clone Brew - Deschutes Bachelor ESB

Deschutes Bachelor ESB is a spectacular beer. Served almost exclusively in the brewery’s pubs and tasting room, this session Bitter is a local’s favorite (this local has logged more time with this beer than any other). I have tried several times to clone this beer but never hit the mark. I mostly attribute this to not enough time to get rid of each iteration’s beer, combined with a general tendency to get distracted on other things life throws my way. With smaller batch volumes, however, I can brew, bottle, drink, and make adjustments for each attempt producing the target profile I am after, so I have reset my sights on fine-tuning a version of this beer that I can add to my list of frequently brewed recipes.

Bachelor ESB is an american expression of a classic English Bitter, not far removed from its source of inspiration. This Bitter is medium bodied, 5% ABV, and is mildly bittered with american hops grown her in the pacific northwest. It is my ideal session ale.

What follows is the first round of brewing, plus take-aways. I will updating this post with a link to the post detailing the round of brewing once that is finished.

Brew day equipment
Grans and hops
Verifying measurements
Mash in 1 gallon cooler
Trying to hit mash temp target
Kettle on the boil
Ice bath cooling
Transferring the wort
Primary dry hop addition
Active fermentation
Light-free ferementation
Complete fermentation
Sanitizing equipment
Bottling equipment 2
A little too much left behind
Final product pre-bottling
Nice looking bitter

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
1 gal 60 min 38.9 IBUs 8.8 SRM 1.054 1.015 5.1 %
Actuals 1.046 1.01 4.7 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Pale Malt (NW) 1.7 lbs 82.42
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L 2.8 oz 8.48
Cara-Pils/Dextrine 1.4 oz 4.24
Munich Malt - 10L 0.8 oz 2.42
Munich Malt - 35L 0.8 oz 2.42
Light Dry Extract 0 oz 0

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Amarillo 0.1 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 10.4
Galena 0.05 oz 25 min Boil Pellet 15.2
Amarillo 0.05 oz 20 min Boil Pellet 10.4
East Kent Goldings (EKG) 0.1 oz 2 min Boil Pellet 4.5
East Kent Goldings (EKG) 0.2 oz 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 5

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
Ringwood Ale (1187) Wyeast Labs 70% 64°F - 74°F

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Mash In 152°F 60 min

Notes

Recipe:
At the LHBS, they didn't have EKG's, subbed domestic Goldings.
They didn't have 20L munich, so went for 1/2 Munich 8-10L, 1/2 Dark Munich 35L.

Mash:
Was looking at strike water temperature, and nailed plan of going over by 9 degrees or so (so that I could stir it until it reached optimal strike water temperature). After pouring in the strike water, I didn't stir it down to 163.8. I just began mashing in. This triggered the impromptu task of juggling cold / hot additions to reach the target 152 mash temp.

1st run: after 60 min, temp was 142 (shit ... lost a lot there). Brix of first runnings 18.1
2nd runnings: 4.6
Final brix: 10.6 (1.045 sg)

Added 3 oz of Light DME to bring up gravity to estimated target of 1.054 (0'd out that addition in the design to reflect intentions).

Day 2 (8/10): Fermenting away. Airlock bubbling.

Day 8 (8/16): 7.9 / 1.031. If same tomorrow, I'll bottle ASAP.

Day 15 (8/23): 7.9 / 1.031. Bottling day.
Observations: so my conversion rate was way too low. I think that first Mash mistake completely destroyed the enzymes and I ended up with a very small beer. According to NorthernBrewer ABV calc, 2.25%.

Download

Download this recipe's BeerXML file

Filed Under: Small Batch Tagged With: Bachelor Bitter, Deschutes, ESB, Extra Special Bitter, small batch

Comments

  1. Pete says

    December 3, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Thank you for providing all of the details and documentation. I have been wanting to brew small beer batches, at home, but I don’t find a lot of information specific to smaller batch brewing. Will be returning regularly to read. Thank you for the information.

    Reply

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