Recent content by Billybob7

As a northern Brit I insist you use a sparkler. In southern England pubs don't use sparklers. This is why most people think all British beer is flat, they go to London and have a pint poured without a sparkler and assume all beer in Britain is the same. In the north, where we use sparklers, the...

Hey guys, any chance you could settle a debate between 2 friends and me? One of us thinks that beers get hoppier (aroma/flavour, not bitterness) the further down the glass one gets. The second guy gets strong hoppiness from the beginning. The third says it does change further down the glass...

Any word in the English language. As long as you're English and upper/upper-middle class.

Dry-hopping in the cask is very common among British breweries. It's one of the reasons cask ale is better than the same beer from a bottle (other reasons being freshness and the living yeast in there). It's also becoming more and more common to use American hops over here, but generally in...

If you let the ice melt back in, there shouldn't be any huge problems. You may have to pitch some more yeast if you want to carbonate naturally, I'm not sure how well they'll stand up to those temperatures, but it should taste fine. If you remove the ice (which will be almost pure water) you'll...

According to 300 Beers to Try Before You Die, it uses "pale two row, two types of crystal, chocolate and carapils" as well as williamette and chinook creating 19 units of bitterness.

Generally I try and start with weaker, paler beers, working up to the stronger and darker. But what happens when I have a dark mild at 3.5% and an IPA at 6%? Start with the paler one, or the weaker one?

BIAB. Brew in a bag. If you have the equipment for extract brewing (kettle, heat source) you have everything you need for all-grain.You just need the bag. Maybe a thermometer. No fancy mash tun? Wrap your kettle in towels and a sleeping bag. No fancy wort chiller? Water bath with ice, gets it...

My BIAB brewday takes around 5 hours, but as noted there's a lot of time I'm not actually doing anything. Dough in and then leave it for 60-90 minutes. Get it to the boil and then leave it except to add hops. Start it cooling and leave it for a bit. Pitch yeast. With any cooling equipment other...

When I was looking up the advantages of a longer primary over a short one the main thing that came up was that leaving the beer on the yeast for a while would "clean up any off flavours", but no real discussion of exactly what it improved. As an Englishman I quite like a good amount of...

Brewdog's latest beer is a 28% golden Belgian ale. Nothing too strange about that, they've made plenty stronger. But that was with freeze concentration. If I've understood this correctly they are claiming to have fermented all the way to 28% using just yeast, starting with their house strain...

You could try brewing an imperial version from just the stuff in the kit and adding much less water. You'll end up with a beer twice as strong without mucking about with the ingredients and adding stuff to it. I'm not really sure how much this will mess with the IBUs, but it might be worth a try

Looks like I'm the only one under 21 so far. Before anyone starts worrying about me being underage, I'm in the UK. We can brew and drink from 18, so I might have been the youngest person legally on the site when I joined at 19 to get advice on how to brew in my university halls of residence.

CAMRA's definition of real ale is, IIRC, ale which has not been pasteurised or filtered, is not artificially carbonated and which undergoes secondary fermentation in the vessel from which it is served. So basically secondary in the keg you're serving it from and use priming sugar in that keg...

Cricket. Cricket matches can last 5 days, so far more beer can be consumed in the course of one match. There's something so English about watching cricket while sipping a cool (not cold) pint of flat(ish) bitter that it makes me want to wear a top hat, eat crumpets and speak the Queen's in the...