Burton Union System

[Chris Brooks]

Now the Set has been running for a couple of days there are a couple of pictures of it in aaction.

The one thing that surprised me was the clarity of the wort in the feeder trough after the fob had collapsed.

BU 2.jpg (1.05 MiB) Viewed 2833 times

BU 1.jpg (1.13 MiB) Viewed 2833 times

[Chris Brooks]

So the first brew is completed. I was surprised tp see how quickly this brewed out. It was a wheat beer sg 1.048 fg 1.006 using WB-06 yeast, and was done in four days.
Not really the best type of beer to try on this system as I always find that there is a lot of lees on wheat beers from the grain. However the collapsed fob feeding back into the cask was very clean and I got enough of a harvest of clean yeast to use again. This has gone into cold storage. The beer has now been fined and bottled. The wife and I will try some in a week or two to see how well it has conditioned, but first tastings have been encouraging.

So now for the next brew. This will be a "Fuggles Imperial IPA". This used to be a particular favourite of mine way back but alas Whitbred closed the Castle Eden brewery and never brewed it again. A sad loss as it was one of their finest ales.

[Chris Brooks]

My Fuggles is currently conditioning after dry hopping for four days. I am very happy with the result so far. Again it brewed out much quicker that I thought it would and was also clearer at the end of fermentation than other methods I have used. As far as taste goes, I have got quite close to my memory of the original brew, but not quite. I think it is the balance of the hops in the ketteling stage that the solution lies, less for bittering and more for flavour next time. Dry hop stage seems to be about right.

Now I have another IPA on the go, but this time I have done things slightly differently. Firstly I learnt that the line from the feeder trough needs to be shut off except when returning the collasped fob to the cask to prevent fob using this route to exit the cask instead of the swan neck. Secondly I discovered that there should be virtually no ullage below the swan neck in the cask to concentrate the area that the fob amasses which means more fob will be removed.

[Chris Brooks]

Have done my second batch of my take on Whitbred's Fuggles Imperial IPA using my union system. The results are very good and a very clear beer going into conditioning. Best of all was the crop of yeast I harvested from the fob trough. That too was very clean. Made that into a couple of starter jars. One for my next Fuggles and the other for the next brew that needs a Nottingham yeast.

[Chris Brooks]

It is now eighteen months since my Burton Union system went into production during which time it has produced a monthly batch of my take on Fuggles Imperial IPA plus a few other types of brew.

Although I was fairly happy with my version of this ale, I could not get it just right - there was something lacking. Then a few months ago whilst trawling eBay I came across someone selling "Whitbred" yeast. Aparently it really is of Whitbred origin so I thought I would try some. There was a marked difference between this yeast and the Nottingham yeast I had been using before. Sediment packed down much harder - good for racking off, and the beer tasted cleaner than before and very close to the taste I remember.

All in all I'm one happy camper after discovering this yeast. Thanks to my union I have harvested the yeast to make a couple of starters. Used some of the harvested stuff for bread making too, that did add some character to the flavour.

[IPA]

BrewLab have a genuine Whitbread yeast. It came from a bottle of 1977 Silver Jubilee Ale.