Brewday: After Action

Yesterday I brewed an ESB I had been planning. The plan was to reuse the yeast cake from the amber that was in one of my fermenters. As the ESB was boiling in the kettle, I took a gravity reading on the amber. I don't exactly know how to describe the flavor of the amber, but it definitely has some peculiarity to it. It definitely tastes like there was too much hoppiness in the boil, which is true considering the gravity of the beer was 2/3 of what I was hoping so the hops in the boil were over-utilized. I racked it to a secondary to sit for a few weeks to see if this flavor will condition out. It still tastes weird on top of the over-hoppiness, but I don't know how to describe it. I'm just trying to worry too much about it right now.

The problem with this is that I kinda got worried during the boil yesterday that the using the yeast cake from that amber might not be the best idea for the ESB. So, at the last second I dumped the yeast cake and cleaned and sanitized the fermenter and got the ESB wort transferred to it and capped. When I made the decision to dump the yeast cake I had to look through my fridge to see what yeast packs I had left. My yeast stock, according to my memory, was a Belgian saison yeast and an Irish Ale yeast. Turns out that I also had a Wyeast pack of British Ale yeast, which was perfect and seemed like a fucking miracle. I sat that next to the heater that was warming the fermenters in the kitchen, popped the nutrient pack when it was warm enough, then pitched the yeast a couple hours later when the package was bulging.

To avoid this type of trouble again, I will be checking the gravity on the American Pale Ale I have fermenting so I can know whether or not to get new yeast for the American IPA I'm brewing soon.

And for the record, the gory details of the yesterday's ESB:
-9.00lbs British pale malt
-1.00lbs mild malt
-0.50lbs toasted malt
-0.25lbs Crystal 120L
-0.25lbs wheat malt

-1.00oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 60 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 30 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 0 min

-Wyeast (#1098) British Ale Yeast

Mash was 3.5G of water with a mash temp of 155F for 75 minutes.
Sparged with 4G of water at 170F.
Two more gallons were added to the kettle for the boil. I probably would have had slightly better extraction by using those two gallons for the sparge, but I don't have a large enough pot to heat six gallons of sparge water. Oh well, I'm running at a solid 70% extraction efficiency, which is respectable.