Brü It Yourself | AvgBrü Ordinary Bitter

Author: Will Lovell

I’ve designed quite a few recipes in my day, employing a wide range of ingredients and brewing methods, though it wasn’t until recently I made a beer where the recipe was collectively decided upon by a group of brewers. Spearheaded by The Brü Club’s Alex Shanks-Abel and Haven Schultz, AvgBrü is a quarterly project where club members are given the opportunity to vote on a base style as well as various ingredient and process parameters; once the survey responses are tallied, The Brü Club leadership shares the recipe specifications for members to brew, leaving fairly small areas for personal expression.

For the 3^rd quarter of 2022, members of The Brü Club chose Ordinary Bitter as the style they wanted to tackle. In addition to enjoying the somewhat unpredictable nature of this project, I also participate in AvgBrü as a member of The Brü Club leadership team, and while I’ve had numerous commercial examples of this classic British ale, I’d never brewed one myself. As such, I was excited to not only broaden my horizons, but to do so with a recipe that was heavily influenced by the minds fellow club members.

| Making AvgBrü Ordinary Bitter |

With the parameters in hand, I began the process of designing my first Ordinary Bitter recipe with one small violation of the rules– I forgot I was out of East Kent Goldings and used Styrian Goldings instead.

AvgBrü Ordinary Bitter

After adjusting the brewing water to my desired profile and getting it heating up, I weighed out and milled the grains.

With the water appropriately heated, I incorporated the grains then checked to make sure it was at my target mash temperature.

While the mash was resting, I weighed out the kettle hop additions.

When the 60 minute mash step was complete, I sparged to collect the proper volume of sweet wort then boiled it for an hour, adding hops at the times listed in the recipe.

Once the boil was finished, I quickly chilled the wort then took a refractometer reading showing the wort was a touch higher than my target OG, but nothing I was worried about.

After racking the wort to my fermenter, I pitched a pouch of Imperial Yeast A09 Pub.

The filled fermenter was placed in my chamber and left to ferment at 66°F/19°C for 7 days, at which point I cold crashed the beer overnight before taking a hydrometer measurement confirming FG was reached.

I then pressure transferred the beer to a CO2 purged keg.

The filled keg was placed in my kegerator and burst carbonated overnight before I reduced the gas to serving pressure. After a couple weeks of conditioning, my first Ordinary Bitter was ready to drink.

| IMPRESSIONS |

Ordinary Bitter has to be one of the most misleading beer style names out there, as every example I’ve had has been neither notably bitter nor all that ordinary, at least when compared to modern American Pale Ale and IPA. To my palate, this beer was incredibly malt forward with bready and toasty flavors taking the starring role while hints of caramel brought it all together. While minimal, I perceived a slight earthy hop character, and the bitterness was just enough to balance the malt sweetness.

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with how my first Ordinary Bitter turned out and enjoyed how the low ABV did not translate to a beer free of flavor. In fact, it was just the opposite, I was surprised with how characterful this beer was, as well as how easy it was to quaff pint after pint. Compared to the commercial examples of Ordinary Bitter I’ve had over the years, I feel this one definitely measured up, which I suppose is a testament to the collective approach taken to designing the recipe parameters.

Of the many cool things The Brü Club offers its members, the AvgBrü series is one of my favorites, as it not only encourages interaction with a community of likeminded others, but it has thus far resulted in beers that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed drinking. This Ordinary Bitter was no exception– a full flavored session ale that was just as good crushing on the weekends as it was sipping after work. In the future, I might play around a bit with the hop schedule, though I could definitely see myself brewing this exact recipe again.

If you have thoughts about this recipe or experience making something similar, please feel free to share in the comments section below!

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