Picked up materials for the White House Honey Ale

Have a couple questions, since this recipe released is a little vague (and has typos! Recipe lists 1.5oz fuggles as ingredients but instructions only add .5oz). I'm mostly an AG brewer these days but I'm looking to take a brew 'vacation' and do an extract brew, give my mash tun a break.

My LHBS couldnt quite figure out which Crystal amber the recipe calls for, as it asks for both biscuit malt grain. My LHBS lists both biscuit and amber malt as the same grain, so they suggested a sub of crystal 90 instead of the amber, and kept the biscuit. They also didnt have Windsor/Nottingham yeast (another vagueness) so they subbed in a WLP002..Also suggested an S04, which as a yeast i really like safale but it seemed too pedantic for this brew. They also don't sell LME by the can, it's in bulk, so 6.6 lbs was moved to 7.0lbs.

I should come rather close with these two substitutions and a little extra extract, no? I'm a horrible tinkerer and i mess with EVERY recipe just a little, and i REALLY wanted to follow this recipe.

thanks d00dz

We'll be watching to see how this comes out.

sloose said:

My LHBS couldnt quite figure out which Crystal amber the recipe calls for, as it asks for both biscuit malt grain. My LHBS lists both biscuit and amber malt as the same grain, so they suggested a sub of crystal 90 instead of the amber, and kept the biscuit. They also didnt have Windsor/Nottingham yeast (another vagueness) so they subbed in a WLP002..Also suggested an S04, which as a yeast i really like safale but it seemed too pedantic for this brew. They also don't sell LME by the can, it's in bulk, so 6.6 lbs was moved to 7.0lbs.

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the recipe is very english
Amber crystal is an english name and about 40-60L
biscuit malt and amber malt are 2 different things
amber malt is a low power brittish base malt, biscuit has no enzymes of its own.

If they sell bulk LME they should have been able to measure any weight you wanted.

S-04 would be very appropriate.
Seems like the shop employee just haphazardly subbed for stuff they had in stock and gave a BS line.

amandabab said:

the recipe is very english
Amber crystal is an english name and about 40-60L
biscuit malt and amber malt are 2 different things
amber malt is a low power brittish base malt, biscuit has no enzymes of its own.

If they sell bulk LME they should have been able to measure any weight you wanted.

S-04 would be very appropriate.
Seems like the shop employee just haphazardly subbed for stuff they had in stock and gave a BS line.

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Any substitutions were discussed with me first really....they made a suggestion of 90L and I went with it. It was also my decision to go with the white labs vial instead of the s04. The LME could have been handled slightly better I suppose but in the end it's 6oz of extra syrup I had to buy.

The hard part will be jumping the fence and getting that "White House" honey. I understand they have a Security system there.

The Honey Porter recipe looked more interesting to me and was a bit less vague. Let us know how this one turns out!

Yours won't be like the Prez's version, but it'll be fine. The 90 is beyond what the recipe called for, but the 002, I think, is a better choice than (I recall that one called for?) Windsor.

For future reference if you want to order a kit for it...
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/northern-brewer-s-white-house-honey-ale-beer-kit.html
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=13467

use cherry blossom honey if you want to duplicate it.

So basically you're brewing a different beer and not what you set out to do?

IrregularPulse said:

So basically you're brewing a different beer and not what you set out to do?

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I'm going to try and get it as close as possible given the constraints of my lhbs. I suppose I can drop .4 lb of LME and save for starters, the honey will be close, my only real departure is the steeping grain being crystal90 ... Austin lists wlp002 as a yeast option so I assume it's style appropriate. My lhbs is so price competitive that i hate paying shipping from austin/northern/Midwest.

iaefebs said:

The hard part will be jumping the fence and getting that "White House" honey. I understand they have a Security system there.

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Just knock on the front door and ask for some, just like in the old days when you ran out of eggs.

Ran into the same issue, went with Crystal 80- I'm pretty new at this, won't really know if it's 'good' or 'bad', but I'll drink it all any which way! Have never used gypsum either- not sure if it's really required with my local water supply (Seattle), but I used it.

west1727 said:

Ran into the same issue, went with Crystal 80- I'm pretty new at this, won't really know if it's 'good' or 'bad', but I'll drink it all any which way! Have never used gypsum either- not sure if it's really required with my local water supply (Seattle), but I used it.

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I can't imagine it'll be 'bad', it's still beer!

Racked to secondary today... Im down to 1.010. The beer had hints of honey, very tasty. I hope I wasn't too under pitched but we shall see. I can't wait to try it, I'm going to secondary it just long enough to clear it up a bit, then bottles.

I liked how the wlp002 attenuated, so I'm going to harvest the cake and use it again.

Gear101 said:

Just knock on the front door and ask for some, just like in the old days when you ran out of eggs.

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Who knows, try the White House email/web site. Maybe the chef will respond. It is an election year after all and this has garnered a lot of press.

Have a batch of the Honey Ale in the carboy right now. Day 5 of fermentation. I subbed out amber instead of light (clerk at the store screwed up & and it was too far to take it back) and english ale yeast. Seems fine so far though it had a very small kreuzen (1"), I'm used to bigger, but at least it was active.