Did you mash long and low and did you add simple sugars to the recipe? How much crystal was in the recipe?
20% crystal is way too much for a British beer. Go with five percent next time. A rough guideline is to replace the same percentage of base malt with simple sugars like invert sirup, as you have used for crystal. Five to ten percent simple sugars is within the normal range. Combined with a long rest at lower mashing temperature, like 1h at 61c and you will get decent attenuation above 70%. British yeasts want to be treated a little different than the others, than they make great beer, this yeast here included.
Don't know where you got it from, but this recipe does neither sounds tried nor true nor authentic to me. It sounds a bit like a typical American stereotype of a British beer recipe to me (no offense), which will fail with a British yeast. I got a recipe in the ale recipe forum here which is quite nice. I cannot say that it is the most true to style recipe you can get, as it features a bit more wheat than common, but this only impacts the head, which I prefer to be plenty. The recipe was designed for low attenuation British yeasts and although the original yeast from the recipe would yield the best result, it certainly would also work well with lallemand ESB. in fact I'm planning to brew this beer with ESB, just to see how the result will be. It's called Miraculix Best. Let me know if you brew it and how it turns out!
It might be worth to read the entire discussion in the thread as there are some really interesting comments from knowledgeable guys who know more than me about British beers.
It's really hard to believe they had a tough time telling the two beers apart. The Lallemand beer finished SO much higher. I am willing to give this yeast another chance, but my experience mirrors many folks' in that my beer hit a wall at 1.020. ANNOYING.
It is a classic English ale yeast which has to be treated accordingly. You cannot use it like an American ale yeast and expect good results. Mash long and low, include at least ten percent simple sugars, don't go with high gravities. English beers are very rarely above 4.5%abv. better target something around 4tob4.3%. don't create hop bombs, 20-30 ibus, moderate late additions.
That's inspiring my next brew day. - Oooh Yeah!
...Forgot to talk about the crystal malt, ten percent is already a lot, better target something below, five percent seems to be a good amount. This will help attenuation as well. @Northern_Brewer always suggests to at least mirror the crystal percentage with the simple sugar percentage, ie. Ten % crystal and ten percent simple sugars, but if you like it a bit dryer you can obviously also lower the crystal and up the simple sugar.
Damn..... Now I'm craving a proper English ale.... But I just moved back to Germany.... And it's 8:30 in the morning and I'm in the office at work
This sounds exactly like my year in brewing. I'm striving to brew session beers. And by session, I mean everything under 4% abv. I'm excited to brew again and drink without getting effed up. Thanks for the tips.
So you should have a hefeweizen then! I don't know if they still have the 9am tradition of a hefeweizen there anymore. Any maybe that was only for the service/manufacturing industry?Forgot to talk about the crystal malt, ten percent is already a lot, better target something below, five percent seems to be a good amount. This will help attenuation as well. @Northern_Brewer always suggests to at least mirror the crystal percentage with the simple sugar percentage, ie. Ten % crystal and ten percent simple sugars, but if you like it a bit dryer you can obviously also lower the crystal and up the simple sugar.
Damn..... Now I'm craving a proper English ale.... But I just moved back to Germany.... And it's 8:30 in the morning and I'm in the office at work
That was Bavarian, I live in the north so that never was a topic here. In Bavaria it is still not uncommon to have one or two beers during the day at lunch, but certainly not for breakfast.
So we have the same goals, I also be almost only session beers, as low as 2%. It's hard to get them to taste like a proper beer, but it's worth it. It gets really hard at sub 3%, but still it is possible. Next thing I'll try is cold mashing. I found some articles in the sub 1.03 og beer thread and it sounds promising!
I think the strategic use of specialty grains might be the answer. From everything I'm reading about producing good low abv beers, that has been consistently sited as being a great way to produce depth of flavor and body. As well as mashing high and short, both of which I'm starting to incorporate. It's got me excited to brew again, that's for sure.
Yes, that works in a way, but what you are doing is just introducing that particular taste of the speciality malt at a higher rate. For example, a medium crystal would introduce a caramel-ish flavour and when you bump the amount, you also bump this flavour. But the missing flavours from the genarally lowered amount of base malt cannot be compensated by this very well. Sure, you can use Vienna and Munich, but then it's still not the same. This cold mashing looks like it can extract the flavour and body from the base make with literally only getting about 25% of the sugars. A bit of a waste, but on the other hand, exactly what I'm after.
Cold mashing is what I've been doing a couple of times lately with good results, I intend to keep doing it. I started to do it for two major reasons, to brew tasty low abv and to simplify the brew day.
Haven't done it myself but the consensus is to hold it over night at about 5 degrees, then remove the grains, raise the liquid temperature to normal mashing temp schedule and from there on treat it as if the grains would still be inside. After the liquid mash is done, boil as normal.
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