Sharps Doom Bar Ale

[Bill365]

I have promised to teach my brewing group how to make Sharp's Doom Bar. I didn't realise it was a secret recipe. Having searched several brewing forums I have patched together a recipe and method. Please could anyone who has knowledge of brewing this beer make any helpful comments you can? I am particularly worried about the division of my hops (approx 40% at start of boil and 60% at end of boil). Does this seem right? The head brewer of Sharps said he only used 5% in the boil and 85% at the end. These figures don't add up to 100 so I'm really just guessing at 40:60

Sharp’s Doom Bar Clone

23L all-grain mash
OG =1045 FG=1013
Target ABV = 4.3%

Ingredients

3.4kg Maris Otter malt
255g Caramel/Crystal Malt
168g Roasted Barley

7g+10g Perle Hops (AA-8%) 7g (60min) 10g (0min)
7g+10g Fuggles Hops (AA-4.5%) 7g (60min) 10g (0min)
7g+10g Northern Brewer Hops (AA-8.5%) 7g (60min) 10g (0min)
7g+10g Chinook Hops (AA-13%) 7g (60min) 10g (0min)
1tsp Irish Moss (add with 15min left to boil)


Brewer’s Yeast – British Whitbread B #1099
1 pkt Youngs Finings (7 days)



Method:
Liquor: treat 15L water with AMS (20ml) & DWB (12g). Heat to strike 70 °C

Mash: grains at 66 °C in 15L treated liquor for 60 mins.

Sparge: with 77 °C water to a volume of approx. 20L.

Weigh: Hops & tie up in 2 muslin bags (Starting & Flavouring)

Boil: Add starting hops as above. Add Irish moss at 45mins. Stop boil at 60 min. Add flavour hops at flameout & steep for 60mins whilst in ice bath. Wort volume will be approx. 15L.

Ice Bath: Chill the wort rapidly using ice bath. Take OG reading. Add tap water (up to max 23L) to achieve required OG.

Ferment: Hydrate yeast with cooled kettle water & pitch at 20 °C. Cover for fermentation & take indoors! Maintain 25°C for 7 days. Skim every day.

7 days later: Rack & fine into new FV and transfer to garage. Maintain temperature 12°C for 7 days.

7 days later: After fermentation is finished, rack in new FV, & take FG reading.

Prime: each bottle with 1.5g white sugar and bottle. Mature for 8-12 weeks.

 

[madscientist451]

I read in a blog that Doom Bar was originally a blend of Sharp's Ale and Cornish Coaster.
Who knows if they still do it that way, but it might be a good place to start.
Here's the Blog:

http://baileysbeerblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-doom-of-doom-bar.html

 

[Bill365]

Thanks.

 

[Miraculix]

I would try not to introduce all the water at once, when mashing. What could happen would be that the beta amylase would chop of all the starch before the alpha would have a chance. And as for most English ales I tried, you want a lot of residual sweetness (although the doom bar is definitely not the sweetest of them).

So maybe dough in with enough water to Form a relatively thick mash at 66 c, or maybe even more in the direction of 70c.

Let it stand for 20 minutes and then introduce the rest of the water. That way a lot of the beta will be denatured before getting it's hands on the starch and the alpha will be left to Form longer chained sugars.

But take it with a grain of salt, everything said is from personal observation, don't know if this can be backed by articles or other sources.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I am particularly worried about the division of my hops (approx 40% at start of boil and 60% at end of boil). Does this seem right? The head brewer of Sharps said he only used 5% in the boil and 85% at the end. These figures don't add up to 100 so I'm really just guessing at 40:60..

Brewer’s Yeast – British Whitbread B #1099

Huh? How do you get 40:60 when the official range is either 5:95 or 15:85????

Whitbread B is 1098 or WLP007, not 1099. S-04 is also derived from it.

Just going off the first Google hit, this claims conversations with Sharp's in 2011 :

i have been in touch with Stuart at Sharps and have been given the following info.

So, here it comes.


The only thing i ask is that when one of you good folks manages to decipher the recipe, that you let me know.

Anyway here is the information i got.


Hi Dave
Doom is
Malt is pale ale malt, crystal, roast barley
Hops are Northdown, Northern Brewer and Perle
Yeast is a Whitbread B derivative
Water is 2:1 sulphate to chloride 220ppm Ca2+ zero carbonate or bicarbonate

As for the hops the schedule is as follows

5% Start of boil, rest at end, steep for 1 hour before transfer to FV

EBU 22
OG 1040
PG 1009
pH 4.1...

Was lucky enough to have a trip down to Sharps in the week, spent a good amount of time chatting to Stuart Howe about the brewing process. Clearly the email above sheds a lot of light, but there was some other key info he shared :

Water - very soft, proud of their use of Cornish water
Malt - A lot of Simpsons Pale Malt, Crystal 120'l and 1000'l black malt around the place
Mashing - Mash low! 64c tops was what i recall he said, he also commented that my 67c Pale ale mash temp was "too f*ing high!"
Hops - Hops mostly added late on, he said their three main hops were Aurora, Northdown and Hallertau which they balance depending on harvest etc, but there was lots of Perle around also.
Yeast - Its the old Morrells Brewery yeast, they are the sole users/holders of it now. I think he said it was a whitbread derivative, which makes sense as he said it was highly flocculent.
Fermentation - hot! 25c was what he told me, which makes sense why the beer tastes so dam fruity! 5 days then 7 conditioning, obviously thats done in huge volumes so not much help. But they do use square fermenters (like Black sheep) and condition under pressure.

This would have been fairly soon after the Coors takeover, so I think the discrepancy in hops can be explained by the Coors influence - Northern Brewer will have been the original recipe, Aurora is a Northern Brewer daughter from Slovenia. Perle is also a Northern Brewer seedling with Hallertau ancestry, intended as a more disease-resistant version of Hallertau.

There's been a lot of comment about variations in Doom Bar, they're obviously playing off the UK, German and Slovenian hop growers off against one another depending on how the harvest has gone in the different countries.

I think you've got to assume 15:85 split on hops - say they're getting that 22IBU with 9% alpha Northdown, that implies 22g in 5 gallons, and 125g of Aurora/Hallertau/Perle as late additions.

That seems plausible for a beer designed in the mid 90s.

As an aside, it's interesting that they ended up with the Morrells yeast, I didn't know that.

@Miraculix - with respect, I think you're over-complicating things a bit. British brewing is designed around the yeast, which (outside the export trade in Burton) generally flocc well because that's what you need for cask ale. But floccing comes at the expense of attenuation, so British brewers end up providing simple sugars (either as direct additions or through mashing low) to make up for the lack of attenuation in the yeast. If Stuart Howe says they mash at 64C "tops" then I believe him - you get the residual sweetness from the yeast, not the mash.

 

[Miraculix]

Huh? How do you get 40:60 when the official range is either 5:95 or 15:85????

Whitbread B is 1098 or WLP007, not 1099. S-04 is also derived from it.

Just going off the first Google hit, this claims conversations with Sharp's in 2011 :



This would have been fairly soon after the Coors takeover, so I think the discrepancy in hops can be explained by the Coors influence - Northern Brewer will have been the original recipe, Aurora is a Northern Brewer daughter from Slovenia. Perle is also a Northern Brewer seedling with Hallertau ancestry, intended as a more disease-resistant version of Hallertau.

There's been a lot of comment about variations in Doom Bar, they're obviously playing off the UK, German and Slovenian hop growers off against one another depending on how the harvest has gone in the different countries.

I think you've got to assume 15:85 split on hops - say they're getting that 22IBU with 9% alpha Northdown, that implies 22g in 5 gallons, and 125g of Aurora/Hallertau/Perle as late additions.

That seems plausible for a beer designed in the mid 90s.

As an aside, it's interesting that they ended up with the Morrells yeast, I didn't know that.

@Miraculix - with respect, I think you're over-complicating things a bit. British brewing is designed around the yeast, which (outside the export trade in Burton) generally flocc well because that's what you need for cask ale. But floccing comes at the expense of attenuation, so British brewers end up providing simple sugars (either as direct additions or through mashing low) to make up for the lack of attenuation in the yeast. If Stuart Howe says they mash at 64C "tops" then I believe him - you get the residual sweetness from the yeast, not the mash.

I agree, but if the beta did chop all carbs into highly fermentable sugar upfront, there won't be much medium or longer sized sugars left for the British yeast to "kindly ignore".

At least this is my theory why all my full volume biab mashes turned out pretty dry with safale 04, same perceived dryness with 70c and with 60c. I like that, personally, so I don't mind that myself, but I was just thinking about the why.

Then I read somewhere here that very thin mashes allow the beta to get into contact with the starch very quickly so most of the starch will be converted during the first ten minutes, sounds logical to me. And if the beta gets it, the outcome is highly fermentable, even for low attenuative yeast.

But again, just my theory, might be completely wrong!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I agree, but if the beta did chop all carbs into highly fermentable sugar upfront, there won't be much medium or longer sized sugars left for the British yeast to "kindly ignore".

At least this is my theory why all my full volume biab mashes turned out pretty dry with safale 04, same perceived dryness with 70c and with 60c.

Beta amylase can't "chop all carbs into highly fermentable sugar upfront" as it's too big to get access to the main chains of the starch - it can chop off the "leaves" and "twigs" but leave the main "branches" and "trunks" untouched. Obviously it depends a bit on the shape of the "tree" as to what gets left behind for alpha to cut up.

S-04 is still pretty attenuating by British standards - Fermentis quote 75% and I've seen higher than that. Compare with 1968 at 67-71%.

Also I'd suggest that the use of 120L crystal will have some effect on the impression of sweetness...

 

[Bill365]

Thank you to 'Northern Brewer' and 'Miraculix' for trying to help me with Doom Bar. I don't understand how to calculate how much hop to add to 23L (sorry I don't use gallons because the US have a different size gallon to us in the UK). I can see that 22g Northdown compared to 125g (which other hops? Aurora+Hallertau+Perle 42g of each? or 125g of Perle?) makes a 15:85 split. This however is outside my comfort zone, adding so much of the hop at flameout! Does this late addition tend towards an increase or decrease the IBU's of my beer? Will the wort still be hot enough to sterilise the late addition flavouring hops? I have four hops listed on my recipe
Perle (AA-8%)
Fuggles (AA-4.5%)
Northern Brewer Hops (AA-8.5%)
Chinook Hops (AA-13%)
Would it be better to use Northdown(AA-8.5%), Northern Brewer(AA-8.6%) & Perle(AA-9%) as I think you are suggesting? If so how much of each in the brew (23L). Would one of you be so kind as to calculate how much of each hop I should add at the start of the boil and how much of each I should add at the end of the boil using the 15:85 slit?

One of you said adding 120g crushed crystal malt would help the sweetness of the finished brew but I already have 255g on my recipe. Do you think I have too much on my list and should reduce to 120g?
I note the information about using SafAle SO4 which I have used before. I also note that I should lower my mash temperature to 64°C
I always make sure my mash porridge is nice and think. I understand that this will leave more complex sugars unavailable to fermentation and therefore leave the beer with more residual sweetness. It really worries me to ferment at 25°C! I was taught that this was the way to produce esters, which may be fruity, but would be likely to cause people to get headaches.

Once again thank you both and I look forward to your replies. If you are on the west coast USA good morning!
Bill365

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I don't understand how to calculate how much hop to add to 23L (sorry I don't use gallons because the US have a different size gallon to us in the UK).

You might want to alert people to where you are - go to My Account (top right of the screen) and then My Profile.

As it happens, the above was working on 19l final volume, so you just need to multiply by 23/19. But it's well worth your while learning to get to grips with brewing software for working out IBUs and the like - BeerSmith, BrewTarget (free) or one of the websites.

I can see that 22g Northdown compared to 125g (which other hops? Aurora+Hallertau+Perle 42g of each? or 125g of Perle?) makes a 15:85 split. This however is outside my comfort zone, adding so much of the hop at flameout! Does this late addition tend towards an increase or decrease the IBU's of my beer? Will the wort still be hot enough to sterilise the late addition flavouring hops? I have four hops listed on my recipe
Perle (AA-8%)
Fuggles (AA-4.5%)
Northern Brewer Hops (AA-8.5%)
Chinook Hops (AA-13%)
Would it be better to use Northdown(AA-8.5%), Northern Brewer(AA-8.6%) & Perle(AA-9%) as I think you are suggesting? If so how much of each in the brew (23L). Would one of you be so kind as to calculate how much of each hop I should add at the start of the boil and how much of each I should add at the end of the boil using the 15:85 slit?

Unfortunately we don't know exactly how they're adding those late hops, those quotes I found certainly makes it sound like it's all whirlpool or something, although feel free to push some of them back to the late boil if it makes you feel more comfortable. But all-whirlpool would explain why Doom Bar felt so "different" to other beers at the time. Anything added below 80C won't be isomerising alpha acids so won't affect IBU (although other compounds may contribute some perceived bitterness), usual rule of thumb is that you get about 10% of potential alpha from flameout additions but it obviously depends on how quickly you chill to below 80C! I get the impression that the hops are being added at below 80C rather than at flameout but it's so vague it could be anything.

Don't worry about sterilising dry hops - they're naturally antiseptic, and have presumably been packed in a vacuum, they're fine.

I'd probably split the 125g between 2 of the hops mentioned. Depends a bit on what you can get hold of, Hallertau and Perle if you're feeling old-fashioned, Hallertau and Aurora if you feel a bit more adventurous.

One of you said adding 120g crushed crystal malt would help the sweetness of the finished brew but I already have 255g on my recipe. Do you think I have too much on my list and should reduce to 120g?

It wasn't 120g but 120L - Lovibond, a measure of grain colour. 120L crystal is dark crystal, and it's pretty potent stuff so I wouldn't go mad with it for a first brew. Also note the mention of roasted barley - I might go 100g of dark crystal and 50g of roasted barley in the first instance, and see how it goes.

It really worries me to ferment at 25°C! I was taught that this was the way to produce esters, which may be fruity, but would be likely to cause people to get headaches.

Esters don't cause headaches, fusel alcohols do, but they're also created at high temperatures. I understand your nervousness, I don't know S-04 well enough to say what it will be like at 25C although it is in the top of its official range. Feel free to knock it down a couple of degrees if you like, bearing in mind yeast always behave differently in big systems and S-04 is not the exact same yeast that they are using. But a yeast will produce fewer nasties at a constant 24C than at a variable 18-23C, so it does depend a bit on how good your temperature control is.

 

[Miraculix]

Thanks northern, very nice read.

I only want to share my experience with saf ale 04, which I also used last summer on various batches during heat periods (there was really such a thing in Britain for a few days this year ).
Be prepared for some fruitiness but don't be scared of Fusel alcohols, everything went always well for me. It's a real easy going yeast and the fruitiness is quite a pleasant one.

In fact, I recently brewed a stout at lower temperatures with it and I miss the fruit in there.

 

[Bill365]

I can't thank you both enough for your considered comments and suggestions. So often I only get replies from people who don't understand any more that I do. I have (I believe) taken into account all your comments and modified my recipe as follows:-
Sharp’s Doom Bar

23L all-grain mash
OG =1045 FG=1013
Target ABV = 4.3%

Ingredients

3.7kg Maris Otter malt
100g Caramel/Crystal Malt
50g Roasted Barley

22g Northdown Hops (AA-8.6%) (60min)
62.5g Hallertau Hops (AA-4%) (Cool wort to 80°C & steep for 1hr, FV in ice bath)
62.5g Perle/Aurora Hops (9%/6%) (Cool wort to 80°C & steep for 1hr, FV in ice bath)
1tsp Irish Moss (15min)



Brewer’s Yeast – SafAle SO4
1 pkt Youngs Finings (7 days)


Method:
Liquor: treat 15L water with AMS (20ml) & DWB (12g). Heat to strike 68 °C

Mash: grains at 64 °C in 15L treated liquor for 60 mins.

Sparge: with 75 °C water to a volume of approx. 20L.

Weigh: Hops & tie up in 2 muslin bags (Starting 22g & Flavouring 125g. 15:85% split)

Boil: Add starting hops as above. Add Irish moss at 45mins. Stop boil at 60 min. Cool to 80°C before adding flavour hops & steep for 60mins whilst in ice bath. Wort volume will be approx. 15L.

Ice Bath: Chill the wort rapidly using ice bath. Take OG reading. Add tap water (up to max 23L) to achieve required OG.

Ferment: Hydrate yeast with cooled kettle water & pitch at 20 °C. Cover for fermentation & take indoors! Maintain 20-23°C for 7 days. Skim every day.

7 days later: Rack & fine into new FV and transfer to garage. Maintain temperature 12-15°C.

7 days later: After fermentation is finished, rack in new FV, & take FG reading.

Prime: each bottle with 1.5g white sugar and bottle. Mature for 8-12 weeks.

Do you think this will make a reasonable clone of Doom Bar?

Sincerely Bill365 (UK)

 

[Miraculix]

A quick ibu calculation gives me around 18 ibus. Do you want it that low?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Looks fine, except all my numbers were for 19l, so you will want to bump them up by 23/19 for 23l

Personally I wouldn't rack after 7 days, I'd just move the primary to the garage. Ditto with skimming - I know it's closer to what happens commercially but a) it's work and b)I'm not a fan of unnecessary processing from the oxygen point of view. Brewing in buckets is so different to what happens on a commercial scale, I tend to go for minimal intervention.

 

[Miraculix]

Looks fine, except all my numbers were for 19l, so you will want to bump them up by 23/19 for 23l

Personally I wouldn't rack after 7 days, I'd just move the primary to the garage. Ditto with skimming - I know it's closer to what happens commercially but a) it's work and b)I'm not a fan of unnecessary processing from the oxygen point of view. Brewing in buckets is so different to what happens on a commercial scale, I tend to go for minimal intervention.

I'll second that. I never used a secondary.

Edit: regarding priming, I would probably use double the amount of sugar if it is half a Liter bottles you are meaning, but that is my personal taste and might be faaaaar away from the original. I even give my Stouts usually 3.5g dextrose per half a Liter bottle