So Sutton was an excellent afternoon! We went down to the Home Counties festival in Sutton on Saturday – and my two beers were judged accordingly. Pleased with the outcome! No prizes (and wasn’t expecting any anyhow!) but I got some feedback on the two beers. The ordinary bitter came out as full bodied with good full hop flavour and aroma, but with a slightly coarse finish – this is something I agree with and I think this is because of the exceptionally high alkalinity in our water (run-off from the chalk in the Cotswolds…). The Summer Lightning style beer got a decent review too – good hop nose, attractive malt and hop flavour, but needed a tad more bitterness, and had a slightly short finish (how do you change this?), but otherwise some good feedback 
So, as a result, I’m gonna try and work hard on water treatment as I feel this is a good way to improve my brewing. I’m also hoping that I’ll be able to influence the flavours a bit more and enhance the malt when needed (e.g. by increasing the chloride ratio). To test the alkalinity, I will be titrating tap water with 1/40 strength CRS – the alkalinity is given by 18 x volume of 1/40 CRS (in ml) needed to titrate to finish (answer in mg/l CaCO3). The theory is summed up excellently by Chris’ (DaaB) excellent instructions.
And here comes the tough bit – getting hold of the indicator (methyl orange) – though, MrC is a legend and I have a supply of it (probably more than enough!). Just looking forward to getting on with it (need to wait for more CRS to arrive as well as some CaCl and lactic acid (to acidify mash water if required – also useful for lagers in the future) and seeing what kind of a difference it makes!
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Well done, it’s often good to get impartial feedback on your beers. Regarding the “short finish” I’d perhaps either stop the yeast a little earlier to retain some sweetness or mash higher for more dextrins (or use a spalsh of melanoidin malt). Those extra sugars should keep the brew stuck to your tongue longer and hopefully make the finish a little longer. On the other hand I could be talking a load of old tosh!
Cheers John – I struggle sometimes to differentiate between sweetness and mouthfeel (I find it hard to separate flavour from the texture sometimes) – and does finish = mouthfeel? But maybe dextrins will help – I have carapils I could try or maybe mashing slightly higher than 64C next time – either way, I’m not sure I want it to have more sweetness as it should be quite a dry flavour really. I’ll have a go again next year before the summer season to improve on this one pre-BBQ season!
HAHAH you and your methyl orange! The government are watching you you know!
Are they wanting to brew better beer too?
Thought Gordon Brown was more of a whisky man..?
[...] weekend was the CBA National Homebrewing Festival in Sutton – I went last year and entered four beers this year. I took along a best bitter, an ordinary bitter, my BBX Porter and [...]