Anyone done a "real" ale (English Bitter)

So, I'm reading this book right now.


It is really good. I have learned a lot about pale ales - especially about the differences (historical and otherwise) between English Bitters and Pale Ales. Reading this has got me very interested in trying to experience ales that are very authentic to the tradition of the English IPA and Bitter. For instance, the author claims that the earlier IPAs brewed in England (by Bass, etc) started around 1.070 OG and had about 125 IBUs :rockin: . That seems like a lot of hops! Anyone ever done a seriously authentic IPA to get that kind of bitterness?

I am even more interested, though, in the authors discussion of real ale and the manner in which the bottling and conditioning of English Bitter creates a product very different from the "real" ales that are rapidly dissappearing from the planet .

This means that even purchasing a commercial English Bitter in a can or bottle cannot qualify as real ale. Since there is no cask conditioned ale anywhere near where I live (and I've looked), I am finding myself very interested in making one at home.

How can a homebrewer, with homebrewing equipment do an authentic "real ale"? I don't have an oak barrel, but it seems that even early English Bitters were conditioned in pitch lined barrels to avoid oak flavors.

Is it possible, in any way, to make a "real ale" in a bottle? If not, (and I assume that this is the case), I would make the real ale and then have a party when it was ready to drink. I would love to have some way of serving this by gravity rather than carbonation in an half-way original manner. It would have to be consumed at once because of the lack of carbonation, right.

Anyone ever attempted or succeeded at doing an authentic English Bitter . . . served as it might be in an English Pub?

I love that book, and ive done some recipes out of it with success. Ive never made a so-called 'real ale' (using an oak barrel, and gravity pump) but i have had them in a bar. The problem with camra is exactly what i experienced: a relatively flat, warm, stale beer that cost 5 bucks a pint. Id rather have a fresh, nicely carbed, 3 dollar beer chilled, out of a keg that pushes the beer out with co2 thus keeping the beer fresh.

but if i were in England im sure it would be way better!

just my opinion if i pissed any real ale enthusiasts' off

Have you ever heard of CAMRA - the CAMpaign for Real Ales
CAMRA is a British advocacy group founded in the early 1970's. At that time, there were many small breweries throughout Britain producing "Real Ales", that were being taken over by larger breweries that were more interested in cost than tradition.
Their efforts were extremely successful. The larger breweries still took over the smaller ones, but instead of replacing the traditional brews, they continued to brew the "Real Ales"
During the 60's and 70's, you had to search for a pub that served real ales, but in the last ten years, I have never found a pub that doesn't.

From the CAMRAS web site:

What is Real Ale?

Real ale is a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

Brewers use ingredients which are fresh and natural, resulting in a drink which tastes natural and full of flavour. It is literally living as it continues to ferment in the cask in your local pub, developing its flavour as it matures ready to be poured into your glass.

Real ale is also known as ‘cask-conditioned beer’, ‘real cask ale’, real beer’ and ‘naturally conditioned beer.’

The term ‘real ale’ and the above definition were coined by CAMRA in the early 1970s.


How can I tell if it’s real ale?

Real ale has a natural taste full of flavour with a light natural carbonation (i.e fizziness) produced by the secondary fermentation that has occurred in the cask. A real ale should be served at 11 – 13C so that the flavour of the beer can be best appreciated. You can recognise real ale in a pub as it is usually served using a handpump.

In Britain, almost all real ales are cask conditioned, but there are a very few bottle conditioned beers.

In America, I have never found a cask conditioned ale, but there are numerous bottle conditioned ales available.

From the CAMRA definition, most naturally conditioned homebrew is "Real Ale", but please don't chill it to the point where you can't appreciate the subtle flavo(u)rs

Looks like a great book. I'm going to get it.

-a.

Bjorn Borg said:

IIve never made a so-called 'real ale' (using an oak barrel, and gravity pump) but i have had them in a bar. The problem with camra is exactly what i experienced: a relatively flat, warm, stale beer that cost 5 bucks a pint. Id rather have a fresh, nicely carbed, 3 dollar beer chilled, out of a keg that pushes the beer out with co2 thus keeping the beer fresh.

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That's funny. Every non-English person that I have met in England that has been there for more than a couple of months has loved the English beer, and has said they could never return home because they couldn't get the beer.
But I only ever met them in pubs

-a.

The best brewpub in new mexico, the il vicino tap room, creates a cask-conditioned ale every wednesday evening. Your above description is right on, these beers are delicious. This past week was a brown ale dry hopped with amarillo hop- excellent, i asked them to tap mine without the sparkler, plenty of CO2.

ajf said:

In Britain, almost all real ales are cask conditioned, but there are a very few bottle conditioned beers.

In America, I have never found a cask conditioned ale, but there are numerous bottle conditioned ales available.

From the CAMRA definition, most naturally conditioned homebrew is "Real Ale", but please don't chill it to the point where you can't appreciate the subtle flavo(u)rs

Looks like a great book. I'm going to get it.

-a.

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I know of one place in America that has them, and it's within a few hours of where you are. It's called McNeil's Pub, in Brattleboro VT, and they brew the best beer I have ever had anywhere. Generally, they have three real cask ales on tap, a bitter, an ESB, and an IPA. Worth a day trip at some point, if you really love your beer done right...

You can make real ale at home. I do it all the time. Some of it I bottle condition and some I put in party pigs to condition. No extraneous CO2 is added. The book by Graham Wheeler and Roger Protz called Brewing Your Own British Real ale is great with excellent recipes. Real ale is not warm and flat but is served at higher temps than most keg beers that are ice cold and somewhat tasteless.

Look up the Gotham Imbiber on the web and a gentleman named Alex Hall. He has a site that lists all the pubs and bars in every state of the US that serves cask conditioned real ale. NYC alone has about 15 places that serve it. Cheers

Johann

Primary: none
Secondary: Newcastle Brown
Lagering: Hatuey
Bottled: Dos Equis
Bottled: Youngs ordinary bitter

You can make real ale at home. I do it all the time. Some of it I bottle condition and some I put in party pigs to condition. No extraneous CO2 is added. The book by Graham Wheeler and Roger Protz called Brewing Your Own British Real ale is great with excellent recipes. Real ale is not warm and flat but is served at higher temps than most keg beers that are ice cold and somewhat tasteless.

Look up the Gotham Imbiber on the web and a gentleman named Alex Hall. He has a site that lists all the pubs and bars in every state of the US that serves cask conditioned real ale. NYC alone has about 15 places that serve it. Cheers

Johann

Primary: none
Secondary: Newcastle Brown
Lagering: Hatuey
Bottled: Dos Equis
Bottled: Youngs ordinary bitter

There are not that many in Illinois, and most of them are in Chicago - a city I try to stay away from at all costs! The closest to me is Champaign, Illinois - still too far to go for a few pints of real ale.

Do you simply put some of your beer in the party pig with no extra sugar or DME for conditioning? Then chill a bit and start drinking? How long do you condition it like this? At what temp?

After about a week of secondary I do add sucrose and DME to get conditioning in the pig and bottles. The pig takes half of the 5 gallon batch and I bottle the other half. Once in the pig I let it condition at 68 degrees or so(room temp) to get up some carbonation. I chill to around 55 degrees or so. It takes a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on the style. Higher gravities need more time. I hop this helps. The Youngs bitter I pigged Thursday was delicious. Just like being in London.

Most of my ales are "real". I keg from the primary and don't prime or force carbonate. I don't like oak in my brews and I do use low-pressure CO2 to dispense, rather than letting air get into the ale. There are many brewpubs in the PNW that have cask-conditioned ales on tap. They also tend to keep 1/2 psi of CO2 on the cask to avoid oxidation, but dispense with pumps.

Using a Party Pig with very little primer, would get you the same results. If you want oak, chips work fine.

I've done IPAs over 125 IBU. Once you hit 80 IBU, very few people can tell the difference.

Here is a link to a good article about homebrewing real ale that I just found - http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/realhome.html

It seems that this may not be so hard to do. Now, I just need to find enough friends who like real ale enough to put away five gallons of this stuff in a sitting. I am not sure that many of my buddies will "get" real ale - they will describe it as "warm and flat".

It doesn't have to flat or warm, just warmer and flatter than your and my buddies are used to. A little education helps. I tell them you get so much more flavor and subtlety this way. Also you don't have to drink it in one sitting. Especially with a pig that has the inflated bladder that fills up the internal space to keep air out. even in a cask you have 3-4 days of use. flavor does change by the day but it can even improve.

I have two beer engines and love my hand-pulled pints of real ale. I use a device called a cask breather, which is a valve that allows a blanket of CO2 to be kept on the head of a cask at atmopheric pressure. This prevents regular air from entering the cask and spoiling the beer. CAMRA doesn't like these breathers, but in their own blind tasting have not been able to distinquish the difference between casks with and without these devices. I say they are fantastic, especially for me. There is no way I am going to be able to tap 5 gallons of ale and drink it down before it goes off!

As for making a bottled real ale, some say that is what homebrew really is.

Brewpastor said:

As for making a bottled real ale, some say that is what homebrew really is.

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Interesting. . . so, perhaps, I am not really missing anything . . .

If I make a recipe for an English Bitter, bottle it with a relatively low amount of priming sugard, and drink it at around 55 degrees . . . I should be relatively close to authentic real ale, right? I will miss the aesthetic aspect of pulling it out of a cask, etc. But taste should be fairly close, right?

I would say it will be a lot closer then some widget injected barley pop ale you pay too much for!

I think you are on the right track with a naturally, lightly carbonated ale and a "cellar" temperature.

Real ale is still going strong in the UK. Most pubs where I live have a good selection of hand-pumped 'guest ales' and they're almost invariably terrific. I carbonate all of my beers naturally.

I prime my ales in pressure barrels with about 100 grams of DME. Room temperature for a few days then stored at 'cellar' temps to drop the yeast out.

It's been over 5 years now, but I have experienced the "real" ales in England and they are definitely "flatter and warmer" than what'd you'd find in the US. I was a little apprehensive at the time. I had just spent the past 8 years of my life drinking cheap beers in college and lawschool and that's about all I knew for beer aside from the occasional microbrew. However, my apprehensions were quickly erased after my first pint. Especially, the guiness. There is nothing that can compare to a freshly drawn guiness with a head so thick they draw shamrocks in it when serving. After the first pint, you don't even notice that it's a tad warmer than you're used to in the states. What the Brits lack in good food, they more than make up for in the Pub experience. You can't help but stop in every pub along whatever route you're traveling. After a couple days touring London and especially the outer "burbs" for lack of a better word, you get a true appreciation for the term "pub crawl".

I think Guinness is carbonated with nitrogen which gives it that distinctive head. I'm not sure if you'd call it a "real" ale.

Guinness no longer makes real ale or stout. They used to sell bottle conditioned stout with yesat sediment on the bottom that homebrewers could pinch and cultivate to brew their own. In London you can get different kinds of Guiness on tap all depending on how cold you want it.

mysterio said:

I think Guinness is carbonated with nitrogen which gives it that distinctive head. I'm not sure if you'd call it a "real" ale.

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Not quite.

IIRC, Guiness is force carbonated before being bottled, then bottled using a commercial counter-pressure filler. The Widget is introduced into the bottle, then a tiny drop of liquid nitrogen is added immediately before the already carbonated beverage in the bottle is capped.

The Nitrogen expands, forcing beer into the widget - and when you pop the cap, the pressure releases, the widget starts spinning as the beer forced into it releases, and you get the rich, creamy foam.

Oh, and you can't "carbonate" using nitrogen - in that case you would be "nitrogenating" the bottle.

sonvolt said:

Interesting. . . so, perhaps, I am not really missing anything . . .If I make a recipe for an English Bitter, bottle it with a relatively low amount of priming sugard, and drink it at around 55 degrees . . . I should be relatively close to authentic real ale, right? I will miss the aesthetic aspect of pulling it out of a cask, etc. But taste should be fairly close, right?

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Spot on really! No problem. Plus SWMBO won't give you a hard time for always being in the pub!

When I was in London over Christmas, I sampled several cask conditioned or "real" ales. I was hooked. to be honest, they don't taste too much different from what I brew at home, the presentation is a little different, and there isn't as much carbonation as there is in my bottle conditioned beer, but other than that, the rich flavors, (or flavours) are there. When the basement is done, I'm going to plan out my brewery's move to "phase 2." I'm thinking of making a hand pump structure like was shown in BYO magazine, mounting it to the bar, buying a few mini kegs, and cask conditioning half of each batch I make, (if its appropriate for the style.) The rest of my beer will be mini kegged and force carbonated, or bottled.

That's the plan right now. I'm just wondering what "phase 3" will be like.

andre the giant said:

When I was in London over Christmas, I sampled several cask conditioned or "real" ales. I was hooked. to be honest, they don't taste too much different from what I brew at home, the presentation is a little different, and there isn't as much carbonation as there is in my bottle conditioned beer, but other than that, the rich flavors, (or flavours) are there.

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Perfect answer! Plus no need to EVER go to London (sh*t hole - I lived there for 4 years! )

andre the giant said:

When the basement is done.....

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When can we party?