Blair's Best

Ref 2025-01 Blair's Best III Brewer Pain & Patience
Style Best Bitter Type Beer, all-grain
Started Mon 10th Feb 25 OG 1.046 Status Conditioning, 4.6% ABV
Packaged Sun 23rd Feb 25 FG 1.011 Fermenter SS 25 litre bucket
Handle 2025-01 Blair's Best III
Brewer Pain & Patience
Style Best Bitter
Type Beer, all-grain
Fermenter SS 25 litre bucket
Status Conditioning, 4.6% ABV ABV
Started Mon 10th Feb 25 OG 1.046
Packaged Sun 23rd Feb 25 FG 1.011

Third go at Best Bitter, this time sticking to original recipe without jiggling around time constraints. No cold-crash and planning to condition for at least 8 weeks.

Tracking via Brewfather.

Milestones & Tasks

Feb 23 -26dKegged 21 litres
Feb 17 -32dDry-hopped
Feb 10 -39dStarted Primary
Feb 202523Sun

Just put away one full (sanitised but not purged) Cornelius keg and 2 x 1 litre poly bottles using standard gravity transfer. Only during transfer did I realise that I hadn’t cold-crashed this one – whoops!

At least I plan to condition Blair III for two months before tapping, and the clear poly bottles should give a good indication of clarity as that date nears.

6 days
Feb 202517Mon

Usual mix of Challenger and EKG, carefully sprinkled into the top of the FV. The high-tide mark of crud from fermentation is barely half an inch above the now clear brew, indicating a very well-mannered ferment despite the quick uptake. Absolutely no worries about headspace.

6 days
Feb 202511Tue

The first regular pops from the airlock were heard just 2 hours after pitching yeast into wort that was 1.4℃ below optimum temperature, and here we are just 20 hours after pitching. I love WLP-002, so far this outperforms any Kveik in terms of start time and cleanliness.

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1 day
Feb 202510Mon

Hard to believe this is my first brew day in over four months! I was afraid of making some big mistake or forgetting something, but the whole day ran like clockwork and I hit most of my numbers apart from boil-off rate, but that’s a recurring issue and likely fixed with further tweaks to the equipment profile.

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