Battleship Bitter

[Lab Cat]

I picked up a bottle of Adnams Broadside, which this recipe is based on. My twisted logic says imported beer at Dan's costs less if I get a free 500ml bottle out of it...

it's a refined headsmacking strong ale. Anyways, the Coopers recipe calls for 1.5kg LDM. I'm thinking I might get a bit closer to this beer with a tin of amber and 300g or so of brown sugar. Even if I don't, that should make a good beer, and up there with the Adnams ABV.

Has anyone brewed the BB and compared with the Adnams ?

Edited June 12, 2020 by Lab Cat

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

On 6/12/2020 at 7:02 PM, Lab Cat said:

I picked up a bottle of Adnams Broadside, which this recipe is based on. My twisted logic says imported beer at Dan's costs less if I get a free 500ml bottle out of it...

it's a refined headsmacking strong ale. Anyways, the Coopers recipe calls for 1.5kg LDM. I'm thinking I might get a bit closer to this beer with a tin of amber and 300g or so of brown sugar. Even if I don't, that should make a good beer, and up there with the Adnams ABV.

Has anyone brewed the BB and compared with the Adnams ?

I did it early last year and did a comparison at 4 weeks and another at 6 weeks.

Close but definitely not a clone. Don’t get me wrong, the BB is a great beer and I think you’ll be well happy with the result. The 6 week aged brew was much better IMHO.

I polished off a 5l keg of Broadside at Christmas and Boxing Day a couple of years ago, hence my desire to give this recipe a run!

[DeviantLogic]

I put one of these down a couple of hours ago. I've brewed the English bitter tin before and was quite happy with the result, so I'm looking forward to this one. My spreadsheet is giving me different figures than the recipe: the recipe says the end result is 5.6% abv, my spreadsheet says 5%; the recipe says EBC is 35, spreadsheet says 24.7.  Oddly enough, this is the second recipe in a row I have done where the Coopers recipe stated different figures from the spreadsheet (the previous one being Hop Slam IPA (NZ - Riwaka)).

I pitched around 22C, which is slightly above what the recipe calls for, but I don't think it should make any difference. My OG was 1.044, less than the 1.047 predicted by the spreadsheet. The variation might be explained by the fact I had a bit of overspill when boiling the malt. 

[DeviantLogic]

This had an FG of 1.010, was finished by Sunday the 21st, but I gave it an extended cold crash and only bottled it yesterday. The sample I took while bottling tasted pretty good - certainly better than when I just made the bitter tin without any hop additions (and I really enjoyed that beer).

[DeviantLogic]

I'm having my first crack at this beer tonight. It's really quite good. To my surprise, relative to when I just did the straight bitter tin, the malt character has increased more than the hop character. I'm not sure if adding some LDM to the hop boil caramelises it a bit, but it certainly tastes like it might have.  That said, it is quite a hoppy/bitter beer as well, so there is a nice contrast going on between the sweetness of the malt at the front and the bite of the hops at the back. Definitely a tasty beer in my book, and one that I'm sure I will brew again.