Guess What! I Made Another Session Beer!

Sunday was the third Brew Day in the past week. And for the third time in as many brew sessions, the beer of choice was a session beer. After experimenting with The Ultimate Table Beer last week, I opted for a more traditional style this time. Enter Hwart's Bitter (MB0029).

I have been trying my hand at Bitters for a while, with such attempts as the Eagle and Child Mild (MB0015) and the Ode to the Halper Bitter (MB0026). The recipe for the latter had been used, with some modifications, in Nate's brewing course in May and, most recently, by Eric for his second extract batch this past Wednesday. So, with my new found interest in session beers (more to come), I decided to revisit the Halper and make some adjustments to it.

The inaugural version of OttH got some good reviews, but the biggest criticism was that it was a bit too sweet. Since that version, every subsequent batch has used less caramel malt. Nate's class's version cut the caramel malt in half, which lead to it being a bit to bitter. For Eric's version, we lowered the lovibond rating and reduced the caramel malt by only a quarter.

For Hwart's Bitter, the caramel malt and the bittering hops were both reduced by at least 40%, hopefully evening out the malt/hop ratio while cutting the sweetness. We'll have to see. As for now, it's bubblin' away.

Coming up this week - A look at the Parti-gyle barley wine, some thoughts on all grain, and what's next for MB.

A big thanks to Nate and Joe for helping out, and to the former for continued use of this AG rig.

Cheers,
Dave