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Stand by main boiler!

I got another brew on yesterday and everything went fairly smoothly. I tried a little experiment this time and split off some of the sweet wort into a jam pan to turn into another brew. The grist was:

Pale malt 5.7kg
Cara malt 300g
Choclate malt 90g

The main batch was hopped with my current favourite Styrian goldings. The recipe is inspired by an old favourite of mine I hardly ever see nowadays: Ind Coope Burton Ale.  When I was a lad the pubs round my way were either Friary Meux (Allied Breweries) or Courage. Of the beers on offer Burton Ale was by far the best and it even won Champion Beer of Britain in 1990.  It is still produced, in Leeds for now, but I hardly ever see it and when I do it doesn't seem to be what it used to be. I had a previous go at making Burton a few brews back based on a recipe in an old edition of Graham Wheelers Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home. It was pretty close, right down to inducing the Burton bowel the following day, but the Lovely Lisa thought it a bit lacking in body so I've added some cara malt this time to beef it up a bit. 

The inspiration for the sub-brew came from the excellent Radical Brewing by the equally excellently named Randy Mosher. I really enjoyed this book cover to cover and I've got loads of ideas for things to try now. One idea that particularly caught my fancy was making a beer flavoured with Chai tea. The lovely Lisa's sisters got us into drinking Chai recently so the idea of combining beer and chai was very appealing. I couldn't bring myself to spend all day making five gallons of it in case it tastes rubbish so I upped the grains in the grist a bit and diverted five litres of wort to a jam pan. I added to this 80 grams of crystal malt and 30 grams of old goldings I had lying around with five chai tea bags being added at the end of boil. My efforts for the day ended up with 23l of the main brew at and O.g. of 1.045 and 5l of chai beer at 1.050. 

A packed of dried Safale 04 was used for the yeast, which as a former microbiologist i feel slightly ashamed about. Never mind, I'll culture my own next time, honest.