the may brewclub comp is for SMSH beers (single malt, single hop). yesterday I made an english-style bitter using gambrinus esb malt, glacier hops, and wy1028 london ale yeast. I've used the esb malt a couple times to brew my oldboy esb recipe, it's similar to maris otter in the the chewy/malty/toasty/nutty way. I'm also a big fan of glacier hops which I think gives a nice spicy orange marmalade kind of flavor with some smooth bitterness. The wy1028 was actually picked up by mistake- I meant to get london esb, not london ale- but oh well, I've never used the 1028 before and I'm interested to see what they mean by "rich, mineral profile."


 I also did a single decoction for this batch which is a little unusual. after my hour mash at 152f, I pulled about 6-7qts of the thick mash out of the mash tun and boiled it on the stove for 30min. this is a single malt beer, so I was hoping to caramelize the pale malt for color and a little more flavor complexity. after boiling the thick mash, I added it back to the mash tun, bringing the whole thing up to mashout temp. then, I recirculated and sparged as usual.
 this is the first runnings without the decoction
 this is the liquid from the decocted mash. it definitely picked up some color. the grains really softened up and gelatinized through this process. it also increased my efficiency too, my og ended up at 1.058 instead of 1.050.
 you can see the color I picked up through the decoction. I would say my srm is closer to 10 than the 5-6 that was calculated. so, that worked. we'll have to give it a few weeks to check the flavor contributions.
still working out some of the kinks in the brew stand, but it's been doing a little work.

-kris