English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

Williams 728
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I tend to use between 5 and 10%, mostly the darker inverts otherwise I'd just use normal plain sugar

and yeah I added the sugar later to allow the yeast to get going on the rest of it, I would also have been slightly underpitching had I added it to the boil for that beer as I only had one sachet of yeast. Which I didn't really want to do as it'll come in close to 8%abv I think
 
Damn, first time using the cubitainers and one of them sprung a little leak. I stayed at my girlfriend's place and came home to a collection of tiny splatters on the floor under where I was storing them. I'm kinda surprised, I carbed to 1.4 volumes and vented them both twice, but only until I just heard a very small escape, I didn't vent them all the way.

Anyhow, it still seems to be holding pressure alright honestly. I might just tap it tonight and chalk it up to learning experience. Hey, it was only like $3 or something :p
 
lowtones84 said:
Damn, first time using the cubitainers and one of them sprung a little leak. I stayed at my girlfriend's place and came home to a collection of tiny splatters on the floor under where I was storing them. I'm kinda surprised, I carbed to 1.4 volumes and vented them both twice, but only until I just heard a very small escape, I didn't vent them all the way.

Anyhow, it still seems to be holding pressure alright honestly. I might just tap it tonight and chalk it up to learning experience. Hey, it was only like $3 or something :p
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Can you share a pic of the cubitainers? Do you use the for primary, secondary or serving?
 
For serving, it's basically (or is) what people call a "polypin." I don't have a smartphone so sharing a picture of my personal ones would be kind of laborious, but here ya go:

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23286

I didn't get the cardboard box because it's like twice the cost of the functional part anyhow. I built my own box out of scrap plywood at work, which looks much better :)

After cleaning up the small mess I put a couple of paper towels under it and I really can't find the leak and don't see any more coming onto the paper towel...very odd. Doesn't look like it was leaking from the spigot or anything either.
 
Well, my mild in the cubitainer went over pretty well at the game. Only three of us were drinking beer at all, but between the three of us we took down the whole gallon from halftime to the end of the game. I think it could have used a bit more time to carb and condition, but no complaints other than that.

The beer itself was nice and malty and toasty :)
 
I often drink an imperial gallon of the stuff. On Saturday we went on a pub crawl and I had four pints of bitter, three of mild, some RIS and a couple of other beers. Mild is utterly brilliant as a session drink. Enough character to make you want more but not so much that you think twice about having another of the same.
 
Absolutely, I drank the majority of that gallon. We got more pints out of it than I thought we would, at least around 10 until it got to be pretty yeasty toward the end. I still have some learning to do with these, but what I'm planning now is to just keep brewing simple bitters and milds every two weeks or so, packaging two gallons in the cubitainers and having some friends over to help empty them. I don't think it will be hard to find volunteers.
 
JKaranka said:
I often drink an imperial gallon of the stuff. On Saturday we went on a pub crawl and I had four pints of bitter, three of mild, some RIS and a couple of other beers. Mild is utterly brilliant as a session drink. Enough character to make you want more but not so much that you think twice about having another of the same.
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Welcome to the wonderful world of Mild. How many gallons have I drunk of that stuff? Loads. But never more than one and a half in one sitting.
 
Mild on cask is a wonderful thing. I've gone through a whole gallon cubitainer of Bitter or Mild in an evening many times. About a gallon and a half is my record as well.

Glad it's working well for you. I just put 4 gallons of that Bluebird clone recipe I posted into em over the weekend. I'd say the switch to 150L crystal was not the right move. Was closer both in color and flavor with the Crisp 77L. Next round I'll go back to my previous recipe, try a different maltster for the Crystal in the same color range (may have to mail order) as well as get some leaf Challenger instead of pellet (definitely have to mail order), and a little higher sulfate water.
 
Yeah, I see a lot of promise in them. Do you have any other tips? I let it go for 7 days but it was only around 64-65F ambient temperature. I know it will never be particularly carbonated, but it was almost totally flat. Didn't really bother me, but I'd like to see where I could get it. Have you ever tossed some whole leaf hops in a hop sack in?

Glad to hear that the clone you're working on is coming along nicely! I'm in the process of formulating a recipe for a house bitter that I can reproduce on the cheap with only 2-3 malts and 1 or 2 hops.
 
lowtones84 said:
Yeah, I see a lot of promise in them. Do you have any other tips? I let it go for 7 days but it was only around 64-65F ambient temperature. I know it will never be particularly carbonated, but it was almost totally flat. Didn't really bother me, but I'd like to see where I could get it. Have you ever tossed some whole leaf hops in a hop sack in?

Glad to hear that the clone you're working on is coming along nicely! I'm in the process of formulating a recipe for a house bitter that I can reproduce on the cheap with only 2-3 malts and 1 or 2 hops.
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Yeah, they're very, very low carbonation compared to bottle and draft beer. I recommend purging headspace in them initially (so there's basically none) so they have room to swell before you need to vent them. As I mentioned previously, I put 0.9-1 gallons (exact volume dependent on loss to yeast cake) in, primed to 1.4 volumes, and I've learned at that rate I do not have to vent them. If you're not purging the headspace then that might change, and you may be letting out more pressure than you want. But at 1.4 volumes, if I kill it in one night the carbonation is gentle but noticeable. If I go over 2-3 nights, there's much less residual carb over the 2nd and and very very low the 3rd. And then I've noticed after about 2-3 weeks they start losing pressure, so I consume them all pretty quickly. That's something I haven't yet figured out how to prevent. Not sure if it's the spigot or even just gas permeability of the cubitainer itself.

My house bitter is a little bit more complicated than Bluebird (a couple specialty grains in there), but not too much. Where Bluebird is on the cleaner hop-forward side, mine is on the more malt-forward side.
 
Here's a Mild Pretty Things brewed a couple of years ago:

1945 Barclay Perkins X Ale
OG: 1030
FG: 1009
amber malt 8.12%
crystal malt 5.80%
MA malt 20.89%
SA malt 22.05%
PA malt 22.05%
no. 3 sugar 10.83%
caramel 0.97%
flaked barley 9.28%
1.5 oz Fuggles
strike heat of 154º F, mash temp 144.25º F
sparge at 165º F
Boiled for 1.5 hours
Pitched at 61º F

It was one of a pair with an older version of the same beer:

1838 Barclay Perkins X Ale
OG: 1072
FG: 1016
53% white malt
47% pale malt
3 oz EK hops
3 oz MK hops

strike heat of 172º F
Boiled for 5 hours
Pitched at 59º F

Two pretty dissimilar beers.
 
Your gravity (its shows 1.061) is way to high for style. I'd cut the specialty malts a little bit and cut the base malt almost in half. Target maybe 1.035 or so.
 
I want a "high gravity Southern Brown"
What percentages of specialty malts would you suggest in a normal OG batch?
 
I would probably bump the wheat and brown malt up to 10% or so (basically leave em the same at normal gravity, maybe increase a bit for yours), put the crystal at about 7%, and leave the pale chocolate percentage about where it is. In other words, if you insist on brewing a higher gravity version, I'd cut your 2 row and replace it with some additional wheat, brown malt, and crystal.
 
Well, I just packaged (1 gal in the cubitainer, the rest in bottles) my "Cabin Fever Bitter" from a couple of pages back. The Centennial is surprisingly present after being in the boil for 90 minutes, and the bitterness is higher than expected. Certainly not undrinkable though. Perhaps I shouldn't have assumed the AA% would drop, but I've had them for over 2 years, even if they have been in the freezer.

However, it's only 11 days old right now, so too early to pass judgement. If it smooths out in the next week or so I'll consider using Centennial in the future as a bittering hop as long as my supply holds out. Because I'm poor ;)
 
Well dang. I looked through my notes for my ESB & didn't jot down the priming sugar amount or Vco2 either. My new batch is ready to bottle & tasting really good for a flat ale. I'm thinking 2.0 Vco2 with 3.01ozs of dextrose by NB's calculator. I went over the 1.3-1.7 listed for the Burton & an ordinary bitter & it was virtually flat. So I'm thinking 2 Vco2 for a bottled version would be about right?
 
I would say carb it to your liking. English folks who grew up drinking cask ale will say that it's too carbonated, American friends will say that it's not carbonated enough. I actually have pretty good luck with about 1.4 volumes in the bottle, but I don't mind low carbonation. I've been learning that the temp of the beer at bottling time really makes more of a difference than expected, too.
 
The current internal temp (primary) is 19C, or 66.2F. NB calc says 3.01oz for 2 Vco2 & Tasty Brew says 3ozs even. That's less than half a cup, or .43C. I did like 1.8 Vco2 on the Burton & it was nearly flat. Or at least tasted like it. So I've been thinking over the past 3 years that 2 volumes might "seem" right by the time all's said & done? It also seems to me something I saw or read said their cask ales had less carbonation than bottled versions?
 
I tend to do 1.4 vols cask and 2 vols bottled. About jives with the level of carb i find in bottled English beer. Lower than that and comp judges start marking it down even if appropriate for style.
 
Thanks. Looks like my educated guess was right. Gotta weigh out the dextrose & get the primer going. The ESB's done just right today & I wanna catch it while it's so good! :mug:
 
Here bottled beer is definitively more carved than cask. I'd say 1.8-2.0 for bottles and 1.2-1.5 for cask.
 
1.8 Vco2 was definitely a bit light in the Burton. And that was higher than recommended. So those numbers do make some sense. I'll go with 2.0 Vco2 this time & see how it compares to the last batch. It might've been 2.3 Volumes last time, I don't remember from last May.
 
Btw, the carbonation level in cask. Most of the time you don't see any bubbles, but the beer is definitively carbonated (not flat like still cider). You can see that the head is sort of slowly 'regenerating' as it dissipates. It gets froth as you tip the glass when drinking.

Often the same beers when bought in bottle will actually have bubbles going up the glass when you drink them, but nowhere as much as an American beer or a lager.
 
Yeah, the carbonation is sorta light, but present. I've just needed to tweak it over the years to get it just right. And since I like this ESB recipe so much, I'll use it to tweak this aspect of it. I gotta finish the PM recipe version of my #3 Burton ale & by then should have the carbonation bit sorted.
 
I use 1.9 vco for my bitters when using the NB calculator. i always have great results. i also us table sugar instead if corn sugar.
 
Has anybody brewed a bitter or pale ale with Perle? They're meant to descend from Northern Brewer and be relatively similar to Challenger after all. Was considering something fairly earthy with Perle & Fuggles, and a blend of light Maris Otter and some of the darker Dingelmans pale ale malt.
 
JKaranka said:
Has anybody brewed a bitter or pale ale with Perle? They're meant to descend from Northern Brewer and be relatively similar to Challenger after all. Was considering something fairly earthy with Perle & Fuggles, and a blend of light Maris Otter and some of the darker Dingelmans pale ale malt.
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I understand Perle is fairly neutral, so I imagine you'll be okay with it, at least for bittering addition.
 
I was thinking something like a Golden ale... pale malt, around 5%abv, medium bitterness, some sulphur, nice clean yeast.
 
I need help!

I went to the British Beer Co last night for some flights of popular English beers to figure out what I liked and what I should do. I was sorely dissapointed. I had a fullers ESB, Monty Python Holy Grail, and a few other bitters before I switched to IPAs. I brewed a boddingtons clone on nitro that I really enjoyed, mostly because it wasn't as sweet and malty as these English beers that I was drinking.

Any recommendations for some drier beers that don't have so much malty sweetness?
 
PasbitinusBluinusRibbinus said:
I need help!

I went to the British Beer Co last night for some flights of popular English beers to figure out what I liked and what I should do. I was sorely dissapointed. I had a fullers ESB, Monty Python Holy Grail, and a few other bitters before I switched to IPAs. I brewed a boddingtons clone on nitro that I really enjoyed, mostly because it wasn't as sweet and malty as these English beers that I was drinking.

Any recommendations for some drier beers that don't have so much malty sweetness?
Click to expand...

If your frame of reference is American IPAs most all English beers will seem malty sweet to you.
 
Samuel Adams India Ale, Worthingtons White Shield to go for some old ones? Never seen a Monty Python beer. Lots of British beers are quite dry. I tend to find American beers sweeter and maltier. Like Hop Rod Rye which just tasted of cookies and molasses to me!
 
JKaranka said:
Samuel Adams India Ale, Worthingtons White Shield to go for some old ones? Never seen a Monty Python beer. Lots of British beers are quite dry. I tend to find American beers sweeter and maltier. Like Hop Rod Rye which just tasted of cookies and molasses to me!
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The Monty Python Holy Grail beer is brewed by Black Sheep. It's alright. Not the best.

But it's balance. Yeah, most English beers are quite dry, but they're also not over-the-top bittered like most American beers are. And the balance can seem maltier (although not necessarily sweeter, but they can be confused as such). Plus, once we get most English beers, they're already older and oxidized, and you get the oxidative sweetening notes. And the same will probably go for you getting American beers.
 
Yeah, I remember somebody writing in an British homebrew forum about all the complex malt profiles in, for example, IPAs from Stone. It went on for a while until somebody brought in all the storage & aging issues. To be fair, I found Stone beers disappointingly lacking hops or bitterness compared to many British craft-ish beers, so it must be quite a lot about storage. That said, if you get your hands on one of the Kernel's brown stouts, I bet it travels delightfully! :-D
 

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