Brew Your Own British Real Ale - recipe reviews

Hi - I've recently got my hands on a copy of Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler - so many tempting recipes to have a crack at.

Anyway - point of the post is to ask others for their opinions on the recipes formed from personal experience of following them, providing us all with a guide on where to start and maybe where the results weren't so flash.

One thing he doesn't provide is guidance on 'appropriate' yeast strains, but that is available elsewhere for many of the recipes.

I brewed few beers inspired by recipes from this book. In most cases i replaced plain sucrose with light invert sugar, and sometimes adjusted hopping to what i had in my inventory (swap Fuggle with Challenger, Northdown with Challenger, and so on).

This book is good and valuable resource. Nice to have.

Thanks - any in particular stand out? JBK forum guys reckon Worthington White Shield, in particular, is good. I've got that yeast (WY1028) so I'll probably start there.

Brewed this one with German Northern Brewer hops instead of Northdown but i think it would be better to swap Northdown with Fuggle - now it's 3 wks in bottles, bitterness started to mellow but it's still too sharp.

Also brewed TT Landlord, Deuchars IPA (still conditioning), and Fullers Porter. All went fine.

Now it's time to brew for winter, i like the idea of brewing some Old Tom.

Cool and the gang - I've done the WWS and have got a slight cidery taste from the 10% sugar, but it's early and I was wanting to try the 80 / 10 / 10 thing anyway. Like you, I fancy the TT Landlord also. Thanks for the replies - shame so few from others.

btw - what yeasts have you been using? I've been impressed by 1028, 1469 and 1318 but have had repeated problems with the Fuller's strain 1968 - a known issue associated with bottling and the yeast kicking out bad cidery type flavours.

1028 has fine flavour but is overcarbing in bottles after 2 months, didn't expect such behaviour. 1318 was nice for milds and browns, but finish too sweet for bitters to my taste.

My current fav is 1335 - clean (some even say it's bland), dry, malty, not too estery, very stable and predictable. And of course Nottingham, you cann't really beat this one.