English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

CornyKegs 728
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lightjt said:
3 weeks and kegged, added gelatin and aged for 2 more weeks, very nice beer. I may add 6-8oz of chocolate malt to my next batch, but this is a great nice drinkable beer. I used Best malz because I live in Germany, if not I would have used 2# crystal 60
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Pics?
 
93890475@N04


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So I brewed the coveted dark mild on Sunday. It's been 48 hours with notty, and I never saw a krauzen or anything. Is it common for fermentation to happen without krauzen since the OG is only 1.035? I'm thinking it might be like a starter, which never shows krauzen for me.
 
jlinz said:
So I brewed the coveted dark mild on Sunday. It's been 48 hours with notty, and I never saw a krauzen or anything. Is it common for fermentation to happen without krauzen since the OG is only 1.035? I'm thinking it might be like a starter, which never shows krauzen for me.
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I don't use Notty often, but with my Milds fermentation is often over very very quickly. I've had FG within 48 hours before, often within 72 though.
 
Give it a bit longer and see if it shows signs of life. With low OG beers fermentation can happen so quickly that you miss it easily. If you are away for the weekend you might come back to a fermented beer and miss the whole thing.
 
Leaving out porters and stouts (yes they are ales but I put them in a different category for some reason I can't explain) my favourite English ale recipe so far is KingBrianI's Common Room ESB. That may change in a couple of weeks (or not, who knows?) because I have a batch of Orfy's Hobgoblin Clone (ii) bottle conditioning as we speak.

I'll report back later.
 
Well I took a gravity reading of my mild after 72 hours. Sure enough, the notty let me down and didn't ferment. The sample was delicious though, so no infection. Decided to pitch s-05 over s-04 since I tasted some esters from s-04 that I don't dig a few.batches ago and am scared of that yeast now. Hope it will be good with s-05!
 
jlinz said:
Well I took a gravity reading of my mild after 72 hours. Sure enough, the notty let me down and didn't ferment. The sample was delicious though, so no infection. Decided to pitch s-05 over s-04 since I tasted some esters from s-04 that I don't dig a few.batches ago and am scared of that yeast now. Hope it will be good with s-05!
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Yup. Nottingham has been a poor performer for me in the past. A few things that will slant the odds in your favor:
  1. Re-hydrate the yeast according to instructions (I can dry pitch Fermentis yeasts, but never with Danstar).
  2. Make sure the temp stays steady, or naturally free rise, but never the other direction.

People say Nottingham is a beast, but that just hasn't been my experience. I still use it from time to time because I love the taste, but I always hold my breath.
 
lowtones84 said:
This is totally true. I typically package one gallon in a polypin and tap it at a gathering, and encourage everybody to drink until it's gone. Tapping a pin of my "copper ale" that I brewed about two weeks ago tonight with some friends! :mug:
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It's not a problem to take your time with polypins, as you don't need to let air in to serve. Beer in them, or in casks with cask breathers will last a month or so. It's letting oxygen into casks that limits the life of the beer.

I cask all my bitters (in a Speidel fermenter), and use an LPG regulator as a cask breather. The beer easily lasts a month at my basement temperatures.

Since I definitely count as somewhere with a low turnover, CAMRA will grudgingly approve my methods ;)
 
dyqik said:
It's not a problem to take your time with polypins, as you don't need to let air in to serve. Beer in them, or in casks with cask breathers will last a month or so. It's letting oxygen into casks that limits the life of the beer.

I cask all my bitters (in a Speidel fermenter), and use an LPG regulator as a cask breather. The beer easily lasts a month at my basement temperatures.

Since I definitely count as somewhere with a low turnover, CAMRA will grudgingly approve my methods ;)
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Polypins don't work in the same manner in my experience. The system inevitably lets some amount of oxygen in if you use a simple gravity dispense method and it loses considerable amounts of already low carbonation while the beer changes.
 
Am most of the way through drinking my first pale mild which went like this:
-Enough Weyermann light Munich (can't get English malts in Korea atm).
-I pound American carabrown (a light brown malt that doesn't provide much color or bitterness but tastes like a more intense and toasty biscuit malt).

Then lots of late EKG hop additions, a little dry hop and US-04 yeast. Malty, but low enough OG to not be sweet and goes down so easy. Nice floral smell from the EKG as well. Great session beer.
 
Thinking of making a dark mild (3.6%, 20IBU, 27SRM). For 5.5 US gallons: 6lb MO, 1/2lb Crystal malt, 3oz Chocolate malt, 3oz flaked maize. 10g of brewer's caramel for colour. 2/3oz Challenger @ 60m for bittering. Could cut the boil down to 45m.
 
JKaranka said:
Thinking of making a dark mild (3.6%, 20IBU, 27SRM). For 5.5 US gallons: 6lb MO, 1/2lb Crystal malt, 3oz Chocolate malt, 3oz flaked maize. 10g of brewer's caramel for colour. 2/3oz Challenger @ 60m for bittering. Could cut the boil down to 45m.
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I'd say if you're mixing some medium and very dark crystal, then cool. Otherwise I'd think that's gonna lack some complexity. Otherwise cut the corn and replace with some darker invert.
 
JKaranka said:
Homed in what type of EIPA I'm making tomorrow (just under 6% abv, around 50IBU). Aiming at floral and drinkable. Just about nudging into trans-Atlantic.

For 6 US gallons

11lb Maris Otter
1lb Flaked Maize

60m - 1oz Challenger
15m - 2oz EKG, 1oz Cascade
Hopstand - 1oz EKG, 1oz Cascade
Dry hop - 2oz EKG, 1oz Cascade

Current yeast choice is the MJ West Coast (could say it's second generation migrant British yeast).
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Just kegged this one. Solid recipe from the sample (slightly carbonated actually). Ended up with OG 1.055 and FG 1.008. Good attenuation just over 80% with the nice fermentable wort and simple sugars. Moderate floral hop aroma. The beer is dry and balanced, with a long lasting bitterness (doubled my gypsum for this one) and plenty of spice and orange rind flavours. Sort of christmasy hop profile within a light and drinkable beer. Good hint of alcohol too :rockin:
 
Didn't know whether to brew a Weiss or a mild for a party (for less avid beer drinkers). Ended up half way house. Dunkel-wheat ale, I guess. Aiming at 4.8% and numbers that sort of match a dunkel Weiss.

5.5 gallons
4lb Maris Otter
4lb Wheat Malt
1lb Brown Malt
5oz Cara Malt
3oz Chocolate Malt

30 minute boil with 2/3oz of Challenger. Got some German wheat beer yeast hanging around.
 
Hah, the wort tastes between breakfast cereals and a light brown porter. Hit 1.042 which is fine for novices anyway.
 
Hey folks, I want to do a Northern English Brown Ale. Here is the recipe I came up with, so please give me some suggestions. I love a good malty yet balanced ale.

5 gallon batch
PM/BIAB
60 min mash @153
60 min boil

3 lb pale 2 Row
1 lb MO
8 oz caramel /crystal 60L
8 oz torrified wheat
8 oz amber Malt
2 oz aromatic Malt
8 oz biscuit Malt
8 oz Caraamber malt
4 0z hocolate malt

1/4 tsp CaCl ( R/O water)

2 lbs amber LME

.5 oz fuggles @ 15
1 oz EKG @ 60

1 Pkgs British ale II

Estate OG 1.050
IBU 29.2
SRM 16
ABV 4.9
 
I would probably cut the biscuit down to 4 oz. and possibly cut back on the crystal malts just a bit. Given the torrefied wheat, amber, and aromatic malts I think 8 oz. of biscuit might be a little overboard, and I love malty/bready myself. Even at 4 oz. in a recipe of similar OG I find it to be a strong flavor. If possible perhaps try to simplify the grain bill a bit, take out 2 or more of those. You probably also aren't going to need the amber lme for color with all of the color malts you have going on in there, so if you have light that may be a better option. Good luck no matter what you do! :mug:
 
lowtones84 said:
I would probably cut the biscuit down to 4 oz. and possibly cut back on the crystal malts just a bit. Given the torrefied wheat, amber, and aromatic malts I think 8 oz. of biscuit might be a little overboard, and I love malty/bready myself. Even at 4 oz. in a recipe of similar OG I find it to be a strong flavor. If possible perhaps try to simplify the grain bill a bit, take out 2 or more of those. You probably also aren't going to need the amber lme for color with all of the color malts you have going on in there, so if you have light that may be a better option. Good luck no matter what you do! :mug:
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Agree about simplifying the grain bill, unless you're just trying to use up bits and bobs (which there's nothing wrong with that, but seldom does it a great classic beer make)
 
This thread is loaded with them. I have two in my dropdown that I love, one that's my house Mild, very small and not horrendously traditional but I love it (and quite a few folks have brewed it and loved it too), and an Oat Mild (where the oats aren't particularly noticeable as such) that is a little more traditional and I love just as much.

There's also this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=556527

I know that Reaper's Mild is very popular (easy to find in the recipe section), but I haven't brewed it personally.
 
zchwlsn said:
I have been wanting to do a English mild. Anyone have some awesome recipes?
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Welcome! There are lots of recipes in the thread. If you want to go authentic you can pretty much ditch the dark malts and use just pale malt, dark invert sugar syrup (up to 10%) and maybe a dash of crystal malt (up to 5%). Most milds used to be darkened with brewer's caramel, but if you can't get that you could try Sinamar. You are trying to get something that has complex, dark, fruity flavours that are not toasty or roasty. A bit like a Belgian Dubbel. A hint of almost roast chocolate is ok but lots of milds don't go that roasty.

Many modern milds, however, use roast malts and are closer to a weak porter (you'll find plenty of these in HBT where US brewers like to go 'all malt' :) ). If you use this looser style you can chuck in things like patent malt, brown malt, chocolate malt, etc. These would feature in near negligible amounts in some traditional milds but make a bigger proportion of the modern milds.

My 2p on this one: a) use some form of simple sugar (invert syrup or flaked maize preferably), even if it's just 5% of the fermentables, b) really restrain the use of dark malts (e.g., 4oz Chocolate Malt), c) once you get to a dark amber / mid brown SRM, use caramel to darken it to near black, d) don't worry about your choice of hops - you are looking at 15-20 IBU anyway.
 
5 gallon batch
PM/BIAB
60 min mash @153
60 min boil

3 lb pale 2 Row
1 lb MO
4 oz caramel /crystal 60L
8 oz torrified wheat
8 oz flaked maize
4 oz biscuit Malt
8 oz brewers Caramel

1/4 tsp CaCl ( R/O water)

1 lb amber LME

Use brewers caramel to darken to prefererence...

.5 oz fuggles @ 15
1 oz EKG @ 60

1 Pkgs British ale II

Something closer to this?
 
8 oz brewers caramel is a lot. It's a coloring agent, not a malt. Unless you live in the UK you'll have a very hard time getting it. Use Weyermann Sinamar instead.
 
Has anyone done bitters/strong bitters with all german malts? I've got some weyerman munich and was thinking of using standard english ale yeast+hops with 95% munich and 5% cara red. ESB sort of strength. Just to change it up a bit

I guess it would be pretty much an alt but with a bit more english yeast flavour
 
Hanglow said:
Has anyone done bitters/strong bitters with all german malts? I've got some weyerman munich and was thinking of using standard english ale yeast+hops with 95% munich and 5% cara red. ESB sort of strength. Just to change it up a bit

I guess it would be pretty much an alt but with a bit more english yeast flavour
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I might think of that is a Belgian Pale Ale with a slightly different yeast character
 

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