Brett Backspin Belgian Pale Ale

By scot in Beer Recipes, Home Brewing on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Boiling Wort

I changed the recipe of the original Backspin Belgian Pale Ale and used Wyeast 5112 Brettanomyces bruxellensis for this brew day. I brewed the beer only because I had this planned and the yeast starter (more to come) started the week before as I had a bad cold. I am hoping that I didn’t contaminate the beer with my disease ridden breath.

For the first time since I started brewing all grain I had my grain crushed by a different grain mill. The crush was much finer than I am used to. The mash tun manifold had no problem with my original gravity benefiting to the tune of almost 80% efficiency. I will continue using the same grain mill for the next few batches to determine if this will be the typical efficiency to expect from the mill.

The yeast starter I made the Sunday before I brewed. The starter was ready by Thursday, three days ahead of time, so I sat on it. Surprisingly it took off quickly, percolating quite nicely the next morning, 12 hours after pitching the starter.

Fermenting Away

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Wyeast 5112
Yeast Starter: 2 Liter
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.50
Original Gravity: 1.051
Final Gravity: 1.011 (estimate)
IBU: 25.3
Color: 7.0 SRM
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Primary Fermentation: 30 – 60 days @70*F

Grain Bill:
9.50# Pilsner
1.00# Munich
0.25# Aromatic
0.25# Caramunich

Mash 154*F for 60 minutes.

Hop Bill:
1.50oz Fuggles (4.5%) @ 60 min
0.50oz Fuggles (4.5%) @ 20 min

Outside of being sick, as I mentioned above, the brew day went well. I was very satisfied with the efficiency gained from the new mill crush (I usually double milled the grain with the other mill I was using). Now the hard part will be the wait until I hit my final gravity. Enjoy!

2012-07-28: Time to taste – five months since brew day should round it out nicely(?)

2013-02-22: Last bottle turned out to be better than any other. Really nice beer.

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