English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

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95 is still a respectable gravity, will it be secondary'd and Brett'd?
My Stock Ale is chugging away, went down in the basement just this morning (around 8:00 here) and switched up the cut off temp for cooling in the FC, ~18hr post pitch. Gonna let it free rise from 18c to 20c.
 
DuncB said:
50 euros buys a few bottles of beer and then the fun of culturing it up.
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I like your reasoning.


..... but if you should feel a sudden slap on the back of your head, it might have been my girlfriend not wanting to see the erlenmeyer flasks standing in the kitchen for weeks. :D
 
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Erik the Anglophile said:
How is the flavour from Brett Brux? As I take it the C or English variety is a bit less aggressive, both in attenuation and flavour development.
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I believe that is the case. I'll have to let you know my opinion in a few months. Supposedly pie cherry.

Last year I used Bootleg's Old Ale. That one was likely Brett C. I got leather and sandalwood.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
If you add in some malt and hops or other stuff you might need 19 euro for international shipping is not all too bad IMO.
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Yes that is true, But I just went this route with the latest malt miller UK order, and now I have enough malt for the next ten batches or so and also the hop drawer in the fridge is pretty stuffed.
 
DBhomebrew said:
I believe that is the case. I'll have to let you know my opinion in a few months. Supposedly pie cherry.

Last year I used Bootleg's Old Ale. That one was likely Brett C. I got leather and sandalwood.
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Leather and sandalwood sounds more appealing in the kind of beer I envision as a stock or old ale tbh.
I think mine will probably come out as something between Fullers Vintage and Robinson's Old Tom.
 
I went by the drug store and got these. Have a project to build up a small frozen yeast bank...
 

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Erik the Anglophile said:
How is the flavour from Brett Brux? As I take it the C or English variety is a bit less aggressive, both in attenuation and flavour development.
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Brett B can be quite domineering, especially if left a long time. I have a bretted Belgian pale on tap right now and it's pretty aggressive farmyard funk and apple cider dryness. Think it fermented all the way down to 1.002.

That had 3 months in the secondary, though the brett I used also had brux-like trois in the brett blend (I used OYL-211 which iirc is a blend of brux-like trois and brux, simply because I couldn't get pure brux at short notice).

It's one of my favourite beers I ever brewed, but it's also a very simple and pale grain bill albeit one with a high proportion of clear Candi syrup in it. Hopped with Magnum in the boil and 50g of Mandarina Bavaria in the whirlpool. The only thing I'd think would improve it is a mid sized dry hop, Orval style.
 
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That bodes well for my current ferment.


1.095
75% Simpsons Best Pale
8% light/med crystal, 5% wheat, 12% invert

68IBU
30 IBU FWH Cluster
30 IBU 90m Cluster
8 IBU 30m EKG

EKG dry hop and oak in secondary

Although, I did wake up this morning to find the heating element in my ferment chamber was switched off. The beer was at 53°! It's warming up to 68° now. Poor little yeasties.
 
Sitting in ED with my wife reading this and thinking about my 100% Brett fermented Pohutukawa saison is very frustrating.
I'm thinking of using this same Brett for a Brett IPA in the new year.
 
I finally brewed up my intentionally simple bitter or pale ale or whatever you wanna call it. I'll be bottling it (yes, "booh!", I know) and I'm wondering if and how I could use some of the leftover homemade invert sugar syrup (see this post: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/english-ales-whats-your-favorite-recipe.472464/post-9262814; it's the lighter of the two) for conditioning.
I'm just not sure how much water my syrup contains and how fermentable it is. I guess the only way to really find out is to perform some sort of fast ferment test with the same yeast, but I don't want to muck around with trying to harvest yeast from the fermenting beer, trying to separate the yeast from the beer (so as to not interfere with the measurements) etc.
As I mentioned in the linked post, the syrup was made from a 1:1 mix of sugar and water boiled for three hours at 112-120°C. Can I assume it is over 90% sugar by weight? It is quite runny, though... And I suppose fermentability may have been compromised by partial caramelization... ? :|
 
monkeymath said:
I finally brewed up my intentionally simple bitter or pale ale or whatever you wanna call it. I'll be bottling it (yes, "booh!", I know) and I'm wondering if and how I could use some of the leftover homemade invert sugar syrup (see this post: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/english-ales-whats-your-favorite-recipe.472464/post-9262814; it's the lighter of the two) for conditioning.
I'm just not sure how much water my syrup contains and how fermentable it is. I guess the only way to really find out is to perform some sort of fast ferment test with the same yeast, but I don't want to muck around with trying to harvest yeast from the fermenting beer, trying to separate the yeast from the beer (so as to not interfere with the measurements) etc.
As I mentioned in the linked post, the syrup was made from a 1:1 mix of sugar and water boiled for three hours at 112-120°C. Can I assume it is over 90% sugar by weight? It is quite runny, though... And I suppose fermentability may have been compromised by partial caramelization... ? :|
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Reduction in fermentability is neglectable in this case.

Just weigh some of it, then heat it up till all water is evaporated and weigh it again. Now you know the amount of sugar per previously weighted amount of syrup.
 
You could also dilute it and measure it in a refractometer. Dilute 1:10 in hot water should be sufficient to get within the scale of most refractometers.
 
For those of you blending dry yeasts, would you pitch two full packets in a five gallon/20 liter batch of a best bitter? Or two half packets? I’m going to try a yeast blend this weekend.
 
Witherby said:
For those of you blending dry yeasts, would you pitch two full packets in a five gallon/20 liter batch of a best bitter? Or two half packets? I’m going to try a yeast blend this weekend.
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I used @Miraculix recommendation of on packet verdant and one half packet Notty for his classic English ale. Worked a treat as they say. Making it again w a half packet each because that way I can make two batches w the yeast. Since I have done several batches w one packet dry yeast with no issues, that’s my thinking that it is ok.
 
balrog said:
I used @Miraculix recommendation of on packet verdant and one half packet Notty for his classic English ale. Worked a treat as they say. Making it again w a half packet each because that way I can make two batches w the yeast. Since I have done several batches w one packet dry yeast with no issues, that’s my thinking that it is ok.
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That's probably going to be fine, if you freeze the opened packs immediately. That way, the yeast doesn't wake up from its sleep.

I now prefer 1/1 notty/verdant anyway, so your chosen ratio would suit that well.
 
Witherby said:
For those of you blending dry yeasts, would you pitch two full packets in a five gallon/20 liter batch of a best bitter? Or two half packets? I’m going to try a yeast blend this weekend.
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I'd pitch two, because I can. Little money for less leg phase, quicker fermentation and maybe a slightly better outcome.
 
I try to target around 1m cells/ml/p for my normal strenght beers, wich is usually in the ~1.040-55 OG range. 65 and upwards around 1.3 or more.
My latest bitter was 1.041 so I chucked in 2 packs of Verdant/M36, but the one before was 1.056 and I utilised a small 1L starter on the same yeast mix to get the cell count up a bit, that one took of way faster and fermented a lot more vigorously. Seems dry yeast perform better if you let it go through a "wake up cycle" before the actual pitch.
Although I have started to find the Verdant, even in a mix, to be a bit overpowering.
Will likely go back to my original mix of Brewly English and m42, gonna make 2 starters of one pack of each yeast and freeze in the slurry some of the coming weekends.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
I try to target around 1m cells/ml/p for my normal strenght beers, wich is usually in the ~1.040-55 OG range. 65 and upwards around 1.3 or more.
My latest bitter was 1.041 so I chucked in 2 packs of Verdant/M36, but the one before was 1.056 and I utilised a small 1L starter on the same yeast mix to get the cell count up a bit, that one took of way faster and fermented a lot more vigorously. Seems dry yeast perform better if you let it go through a "wake up cycle" before the actual pitch.
Although I have started to find the Verdant, even in a mix, to be a bit overpowering.
Will likely go back to my original mix of Brewly English and m42, gonna make 2 starters of one pack of each yeast and freeze in the slurry some of the coming weekends.
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Sounds like you are going through the same process regarding your view on verdant that I also did.

If you are brewing APAs in the UK bitter abv range, try verdant for that. It is the absolute killer yeast for this type of beer. American hop forward beers is really it's thing.

For UK bitter, I'm still on the hunt for a good dry yeast. I'll try the brewly combination when I order from a shop that lists it.
 
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Miraculix said:
Sounds like you are doing through the same process regarding your view on verdant that I also did.

If you are brewing APAs in the UK bitter abv range, try verdant for that. It is the absolute killer yeast for this type of beer. American hop forward beers is really it's thing.

For UK bitter, I'm still in the hunt for a good dry yeast. I'll try the brewly combination when I order from a shop that lists it.
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I am after a general house strain/mix.
Can't be bothered to use different yeast for different styles, seems much easier to just do like a traditional brewery and just use a house yeast for anything English.
I found some notes of my first brews that I kegged, and they had some problems with under attenuation due to a faulty mash thermometer and bitterness issues due to not properly dialed in boil off rates.
But they used the m42/brewly mix and as I recall I enjoyed the yeast character, but will likely start at 19 and let free rise to 21c next normal strenght beer I brew.
Both yeasts can be made fairly neutral when fermented colder so they should be good for stuff like Scottish ales and Irish red etc aswell.
 

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