Your favorite recipes from brewing classic styles?

I've only brewed a couple recipes from Jamil's and John's book, Belgian Wit and English Mild, which both were good, but I'd like to know what else you guys though were good from their book.

J

ESB, Octoberfest.

The pale ale without crystal malts is very nice.

Has anyone tried his Irish or Scottish beers?

Ordinary Bitter and Dunkelweizen were both awesome. I could chug the Bitter at will, it was so drinkable. The dunkelweizen took a few extra weeks to mature, but was great.

I enjoyed the weizenbock, even at a year after brewing. I'd say it became better at several months and real smooth at 9-12 months. I'd definitely brew it in the winter or early spring for fall consumption. The hefeweizen was excellent, but that is your basic standard hefe.

The brown porter was a very close approximation to Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter, despite some yeast problems with my version in a side by side comparison. The dark mild was an extract beer and I felt I may have missed some depth of flavor/body over an all-grain version.

I thought the American amber ale was bland or better, not what I expected, but I have to think that was an ingredient quality issue. If I was to make it again, I'd brew this version which is different from the one in the book.

HalfPint said:

Has anyone tried his Irish or Scottish beers?

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I brewed the irish red. they called it something like ruebier. Don't have the book in front of me so I can't speak to the page number.

Couple changes, I basically consolidated the two different types of crystal, and used a similar amount of crystal 60L. I believe I even calculated to get the same amount of gravity points. I also converted it to partial mash, as I had some leftover 2row, but again, used beersmith and accommodated for gravity points.

I just bottled the first batch. I ran into a few issues, like most recipes from books and kits, My efficiency was a bit off, and I do partial boils, so I diluted up to the target SG. I Came in a bit lower then the FG in the book. I think they say 1.014 and I had 1.013. I actually ended up re-brewing the same thing, to use up leftovers and pitching onto the same yeast when I moved to secondary. I used Irish moss in the boil, and gelatin in the secondary.

Bottled about a week ago. Hydro sample tasted fine. It was a bit darker, i wouldn't call it red, but maybe brownish red. Will know more when I crack a couple around thanksgiving next week.

KFBass said:

I Came in a bit lower then the FG in the book. I think they say 1.014 and I had 1.013.

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A difference of 0.001? I'd call that pretty much "right on the money"...

I've been working my way through that book over the past year or so - Including the blonde ale, robust porter, west coast red, scottish 80~, weizens, both Am. pales, Am. Amber plus a few more I am forgetting. They all came out pretty well. Naturally, they are all "straight forward" examples of the various styles. Don't expect to get some crazy cutting edge micro that pushes stylistic boundaries.

Anybody try the Northern English Brown ale from BCS? I am making beer for a wedding and thought it might be well received as an intro to craft beer by the standard BMC crowd.

I have the very simple Weissbier on tap right now. It is wonderful and very easy.
I really want to give the WestCoast Red a try.

The Northern English brown was very tasty, I used Crisp MO for the base "british pale" malt. The ESB was absolutely stellar, I had to beat people away from the keg with a stick.

Thanks for the reply, rockfish. For the N.English Brown, I was gonna go with MO for the base malt as well. I have really been digging it lately in everything.

SevenFields - the West Coast Red is a really nice recipe - definitely recommended.

sleepystevenson said:

I've been working my way through that book over the past year or so - Including the blonde ale, robust porter, west coast red, scottish 80~, weizens, both Am. pales, Am. Amber plus a few more I am forgetting. They all came out pretty well. Naturally, they are all "straight forward" examples of the various styles. Don't expect to get some crazy cutting edge micro that pushes stylistic boundaries.

Anybody try the Northern English Brown ale from BCS? I am making beer for a wedding and thought it might be well received as an intro to craft beer by the standard BMC crowd.

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I did the Northern English Brown. I think that was the "Nutcastle" brew. Came out fairly well. Entered it in a comp this past weekend and got a score of around 30. I think that was mostly because it was about 3-4 months old.

I've done their American Wheat with Rye mixed in. I wasn't terribly impressed. It came out a little big IMO. Cloudier than I expected, but that may have been my brewing.

I just brewed the sweet stout from BCS. It's in the keg now, carbing up.

Black Forrest Stout. Brewed it once with Cherry Extract and have to do it again with the puree.