English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[Pennine]

Need a little help from the resident English yeast experts.

I brewed a bitter a couple of weeks ago, typical brew day. Used RO water the one different thing I did was a pack of Omega 006 yeast or the whitbread strain. It attenuated well down to 1.010.

Ok so here is the problem. It has a hint of sewer in the aroma and I can't stop smelling it. It's almost like eating a Belgian abbey cheese that has that hint of ass. Not quite the Limburger level but the same smell.

I have never had this in a beer before and can only think it's coming from the yeast. Anyone ever get something like this?

 

[DuncB]

@Pennine
Any water salts added?
Sulphur smell for sewage?

 

[An Ankoù]

Need a little help from the resident English yeast experts.

I brewed a bitter a couple of weeks ago, typical brew day. Used RO water the one different thing I did was a pack of Omega 006 yeast or the whitbread strain. It attenuated well down to 1.010.

Ok so here is the problem. It has a hint of sewer in the aroma and I can't stop smelling it. It's almost like eating a Belgian abbey cheese that has that hint of ass. Not quite the Limburger level but the same smell.

I have never had this in a beer before and can only think it's coming from the yeast. Anyone ever get something like this?

I've never used the 006, but I recognise the problem. Most times I used Nottingham type yeasts I'd get a ghastly pong of open sewers. Sometimes, after some months, the beer would clean itself up in the bottle, other times the smell never fully went away. I thought I had a persistent infection, but it didn't happen with other yeasts. I finally cured it by adding a bit of yeast nutrient to the wort, but even so, I've avoided that strain of yeast ever since.
I now add half a teaspoon of nutrient to the fermenter as a matter of course. Never had it again.

 

[Pennine]

@Pennine
Any water salts added?
Sulphur smell for sewage?

Just gypsum and CaCl as I normally do. Enough to get 50ppm calcium in the finished beer.
No sulphur either, definitely not a smelly egg thing.

 

[Pennine]

I've never used the 006, but I recognise the problem. Most times I used Nottingham type yeasts I'd get a ghastly pong of open sewers. Sometimes, after some months, the beer would clean itself up in the bottle, other times the smell never fully went away. I thought I had a persistent infection, but it didn't happen with other yeasts. I finally cured it by adding a bit of yeast nutrient to the wort, but even so, I've avoided that strain of yeast ever since.
I now add half a teaspoon of nutrient to the fermenter as a matter of course. Never had it again.

Ha or the covid sewer side effect.

That's interesting about Nottingham, I would say this yeast reminds me a lot of Nottingham. Mostly clean, well attenuated and not estery at all.

I poured a sample from the keg after transferring and the sewer was much lighter than the aroma from the hydrometer sample I took from the fermenting keg. I am hoping it's a yeast in suspension thing and maybe it will drop out. Excluding that it would be a spectacular bitter.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

And saying "a drier finish is essential for the English Ale style" is just wrong. You can find both dry and incredibly malty ales in England. The Windsor ale yeast I mentioned is an English ale yeast that cannot ferment maltiotriose and is a native strain from England.

You should be wary of applying norms from one culture to another, and of saying antagonistic things like "just wrong" to people with more direct experience and more data than you. Yes Windsor is "a native strain from England" - but it was never used as a single strain. The whole Hansen single-strain revolution around 1900 largely passed by British breweries, who continued to use multistrains as their house yeast for all their beers until the 1970s at least (and some of the family brewers still do). One reason is that they needed a combination of flavourful yeasts (which tended not to have great brewing performance) and higher attenuation and better-floccing yeasts. Historically they were particularly interested in eating up carbohydrates at the brewery that could feed contaminating bugs, as a way to minimise the risk of barrels exploding in transit to India and elsewhere in the Empire. Even long after the Empire had gone, the taste remained for high attenuation, particularly in areas influenced by Burton - qv 1971 Boddingtons at over 91% aa. It also makes good commercial sense as sugar triggers satiety, so drier beer means "go on then, one more pint" in the session and so more beer is sold.

Windsor's ancestor was part of a multistrain with those of Nottingham and Lallemand London, so you got that combination of "flavour" and "performance" yeasts, it was never used on its own. And you can look at the data - on the assumption that by "English ale" you're talking cask bitter, we have Ron Pattinson to trawl through the Whitbread Gravity Book and other sources for the stats on cask bitter in 1978 in a series of posts in May 2023. I'll spare you all the tables, but the average for the Southwest as 79.72%, Southeast 79.25%, London 77.32% Midlands 80.69%, Northwest 80.65%, Northeast 79.92%, Scotland 79.14%. Yes there's the odd beer under 75% apparent attenuation, but you could equally say the same about beers over 84%, without claiming that they are somehow "representative". And don't make the common mistake of confusing "maltiness" or even apparent mouthfeel and sweetness, with low attenuation, when that can equally come from more malty malts than you may be used to, or more crystal. Notice how what is presumably the same McEwan yeast gave 85% aa in their 70/- and 75% aa in their 80/-, a lot of this is dependent on mash, grist etc. Equally I would be wary of older figures for attenuation from times when malt was less modified, or for brewery figures taken before final conditioning of the beer, figures from high-ABV beer (stressed yeast) or very low ABV (going for more mouthfeel), beers with a lot of speciality malts etc etc. But to all intents and purposes, "English ales" mean cask bitter, so these tables are pretty representative for "English ales" within living memory.

So dry finishes being "essential" to cask bitter is maybe a bit of a stretch, but high attenuation is certainly typical, and you could argue part of the "essence" of the style in modern times.

Northwestern Bitters in 1978							Scottish Bitters in 1978
Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation		Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation
Mitchells	Extra Special Draught Bitter	1045	1009.5	4.62	78.89%		Belhaven	80/- Export	1041.1	1012.2	3.74	70.32%
Robinson	Best Bitter	1042	1009	4.29	78.57%		Scottish & Newcastle	McEwan's Special (80/-)	1039.6	1010	3.84	74.75%
Greenall Whitley (Wem)	Festival	1040.2	1006.1	4.45	84.95%		Scottish & Newcastle	McEwans Scotch (70/-)	1035.3	1005.3	3.9	84.99%
Hartleys	Bitter	1039.1	1010.2	3.75	73.91%		Lorimer	Lorimers Scotch Ale	1034.9	1007.1	3.61	79.66%
Higsons	Bitter	1038.7	1005.7	4.3	85.27%		Drybrough	Heavy	1034.6	1005.7	3.76	83.53%
Oldham Brewery	O.B. Bitter	1037.7	1006.9	4.01	81.70%		Scottish & Newcastle	Youngers Tartan	1034.5	1006.4	3.66	81.59%
Wilsons	Great Northern Bitter	1037.6	1007.7	3.89	79.52%		Average		1037	1008	3.75	79.14%
Theakston (Carlisle)	Best Bitter	1037.5	1007.6	3.89	79.73%
Hydes	Best Bitter	1037.1	1008.2	3.75	77.90%		Southeastern Bitters in 1978
Greenall Whitley	Bitter	1036.8	1007.4	3.82	79.89%		Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenuation
Lees	Lees Bitter	1036.7	1003.2	4.38	91.42%		Greene King	Abbot Ale	1048.3	1014.1	4.43	70.81%
Boddington	Bitter	1035.7	1008.3	3.56	76.75%		Paine	EG	1045.7	1008.9	4.79	80.53%
Pollard	John Barleycorn	1035.6	1006.1	3.84	82.87%		Harvey	Best Bitter	1038.1	1006.9	4.06	81.89%
Matthew Brown	Best Bitter	1035.1	1006.7	3.69	80.91%		Shepherd Neame	Master Brew Bitter	1036.9	1006.3	3.98	82.93%
Jennings	Bitter	1035	1007.4	3.58	78.86%		Whitbread Fremlins	Trophy	1035.5	1007.4	3.65	79.15%
Yates & Kackson	Bitter	1034.7	1006.2	3.71	82.13%		Morland	Best Bitter	1035.4	1006.9	3.7	80.51%
Burtonwood	Bitter	1034.7	1005.2	3.84	85.01%		Adnams	Best Bitter	1035.4	1005.9	3.84	83.33%
Thwaites	Mature Bitter	1034.7	1007.1	3.58	79.54%		Hook Norton	Best Bitter	1035.3	1006.9	3.69	80.45%
Border	Best Bitter	1034.1	1008.7	3.29	74.49%		Brakspear	Pale Ale	1035.3	1010.5	3.21	70.25%
	Average	1037	1007	3.90	80.65%		King & Barnes	Best Bitter	1035.1	1006.1	3.77	82.62%
								Average	1038	1008	3.91	79.25%

I also don't think Verdant would be to style, but I know there are a lot of people who have used London Ale III in brown ales, and Verdant is closely related to it.

You're closely related to both your mother and father, but you're very different to one of them. Same with Verdant - it may have derived from a LA3 type, but is rather different, it's got this big vanilla note which is just a bit weird in a lot of trad styles.

I said that I'm making a British brown ale. Why would you think I'm making a US beer in an English style? Even American brown ales are just an American take on a British style

Except it's a bit debatable whether "British brown" is even a real style. Yes the BJCP at one point created two separate style guidelines to accommodate Newky Brown and Mann's (in the same way they created a separate style for Orval), then Ron Pattinson pointed out these were like coelacanths, two living fossils that were individual survivors* from what had been a continuum - but many "traditional" brown ales in the UK were just bottled versions of bitter with added caramel for colour.

But in any case, you shouldn't fret about what is the "right" yeast for the style, as that's not how European brewers think. They have a house yeast and it gets used for almost every beer regardless of what straitjacket the BJCP try to impose. As we've discussed many times in the past, the generally available dry English yeasts are OK, but a pale shadow of their liquid cousins or what you can get from Brewlab, so the answer of which is best tends to be "meh". So S-04 will be fine, Windsor will be fine, just different depending on what your taste is. There's an argument that the best British dried yeast if you want attenuation, esters and flocculation is actually BE-256, maybe with a bit of T-58 for more interest....

_____________________________________________________
*In fact you can scratch Mann off the "survivors" list, as Carlsberg have stopped brewing it - it's still listed on the Morrison website and the Marston online storefronts, but I imagine only for a few more weeks. For a review, see Boak & Bailey :
https://boakandbailey.com/2008/03/manns-brown-ale-and-a-call-for-suggestions/
it looks nice in the glass — very dark brown, almost black, with an off-white head. The body is remarkable for such a weak beer, and there are some nice aromas of malt and roasted grains.
The taste… well, nice in some parts of the mouth, if that makes any sense. Too sweet at first, with a harsh burnt treacle flavour, but rather pleasant going down, when the slightly bitter chocolate flavours come through. Reminiscent of the sweeter variety of mild, we thought.
On balance, I suspect this would taste wonderful with chocolate cake, which tends to make most beers taste too dry, but it’s not something we’d drink too often.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Ok so here is the problem. It has a hint of sewer in the aroma and I can't stop smelling it. It's almost like eating a Belgian abbey cheese that has that hint of ass. Not quite the Limburger level but the same smell.

"Cheesy" is usually isovaleric acid and other fatty acids from oxidised hops. A good thing in small amounts as they are some of the building blocks of esters, but arse-cheese is not good. So I'd check your hops rather than your yeast, but stressed yeast is never good.

Just gypsum and CaCl as I normally do. Enough to get 50ppm calcium in the finished beer.

A very US-German approach to salts, but you want at least 100ppm calcium for British beers - helps protein precipitation, flocculation and general yeast happiness.

 

[corncob]

There's an argument that the best British dried yeast if you want attenuation, esters and flocculation is actually BE-256, maybe with a bit of T-58 for more interest....

I have seen references to BE-256 having an English origin, but I've never seen anybody taking about using it for English styles. I did a cursory search one time and found references to banana, so I've never tried it. I don't like those flavors at all and avoid Belgians and hefes. Have you ever tried it in an English? Has anybody?

I am always looking for a better dry English option. It's a long hot summer here and shipping liquid is off the table.

 

[Pennine]

"Cheesy" is usually isovaleric acid and other fatty acids from oxidised hops. A good thing in small amounts as they are some of the building blocks of esters, but arse-cheese is not good. So I'd check your hops rather than your yeast, but stressed yeast is never good.

A very US-German approach to salts, but you want at least 100ppm calcium for British beers - helps protein precipitation, flocculation and general yeast happiness.

Yeah it's not a cheesy smell its the certain smell you get from Limburger cheese that makes it inedible for most people. I guess it technically could be a infection but I am pretty neurotic about sanitizing. Could yeast actually pick up this characteristic?

 

[ba-brewer]

Ok so here is the problem. It has a hint of sewer in the aroma and I can't stop smelling it. It's almost like eating a Belgian abbey cheese that has that hint of ass. Not quite the Limburger level but the same smell.

Some saison yeasts can have a barnyard aroma which I would think should smell like crap.

I used to serve some beers from a picnic tap that I would leave inside the cooler. Something grew grow on the rubber plunger once, could not see anything on the plunger but could smell it for sure. Beer just passing over the plunger was enough to tainted the beer.

 

[Pennine]

Some saison yeasts can have a barnyard aroma which I would think should smell like crap.

I used to serve some beers from a picnic tap that I would leave inside the cooler. Something grew grow on the rubber plunger once, could not see anything on the plunger but could smell it for sure. Beer just passing over the plunger was enough to tainted the beer.

Barnyard, the euphemism for cow ****. Now that you say that I might be able to trick myself in liking it.

And I just poured a pint from the engine, it's fading a bit. It is definitely the yeast, now it's like a feint sewer/yeasty smell.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Yeah it's not a cheesy smell its the certain smell you get from Limburger cheese that makes it inedible for most people. I guess it technically could be a infection but I am pretty neurotic about sanitizing. Could yeast actually pick up this characteristic?

Well isovaleric acid is not "cheese" per se, it's more the sweaty locker-room smell you can get from Parmesan among others (can't remember ever having Limburger). Limburger gets its smell from being deliberately infected with Brevibacterium, and a lot of those kinds of nasty smells are more bacterial than fungal. The other obvious one is butyric acid/butyrate from Pediococcus and friends, which tastes of baby vomit. I've a friend who is a supertaster of it which is a nightmare as it can ruin beers for them that taste fine to everyone else. Would be handy for detecting when lines need cleaning though...

 

[bwible]

Some saison yeasts can have a barnyard aroma

And people say that with a straight face like its a good thing

 

[bwible]

tastes of baby vomit

Yum

 

[tracer bullet]

And people say that with a straight face like its a good thing

I think it's like peated whiskey. I'm fine with some people loving it, but I think it's vile. Same for Saison's. Maybe they aren't vile in my mind, but I'll never have one on purpose, and if I do so accidentally, I'll probably not get more than halfway through it before giving up.

 

[worlddivides]

You should be wary of applying norms from one culture to another, and of saying antagonistic things like "just wrong" to people with more direct experience and more data than you.

So dry finishes being "essential" to cask bitter is maybe a bit of a stretch, but high attenuation is certainly typical, and you could argue part of the "essence" of the style in modern times.

"Cask bitter"? He didn't say "cask" or "bitter" (and neither did I). He said "it will give you a drier finish which is essential for the English Ale style," which is just wrong. If he had said "which is essential for English cask bitters," I would have just thought "okay, that may or may not be true, but why are you talking about cask bitters when I'm asking about yeast for a Northern English-style brown ale?" And, as I mentioned, all of the English yeasts I mentioned with the single exception of Windsor had attenuation ranges between 75% and 85% and I was planning on mashing low anyway, so the idea that Nottingham was the only true option and that S-04 didn't have any esters and that Nottingham did struck me as bizarre. Even the list of attenuations you listed were within the attenuation range of the yeasts I mentioned (both that I currently have on hand and that I have used in the past).

My response might have come across as a bit antagonistic, but that's because the assumption in the question was that I was making a US take on a British style, even though I had not mentioned any US ingredients or anything that could be construed as US. If I had said I wanted to brew an English brown ale that's 8% ABV with Columbus and Centennial, fermented with US-05 or BRY-97 or whatever, then Zadkiel's question of "Are you actually trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style?" wouldn't have rubbed me the wrong way. My brown ale was composed of malts from Crisp, Muntons, and Simpsons, and used Fuggle as the only hop. The OG, IBU, SRM, and so on are all extremely common for the style among commercial English brown ales. So then what would make the beer "a US beer"? It almost seems like the place where the person making the beer lives determines what beer it is according to that line or reasoning.

Right now I honestly don't think Zadkiel meant anything bad by his post, but that first question did rub me the wrong way. He did say that he wasn't looking for a fight, so I decided to not say anything more about it (though I am here in response to your post, which I kind of feel is responding to a strawman since I never said "English ales aren't dry" -- in fact, I said quite the opposite, though maybe just suggesting Windsor or even Windsor co-pitched with Nottingham was enough to give the impression that English ales aren't dry or something to that effect).

Except it's a bit debatable whether "British brown" is even a real style. Yes the BJCP at one point created two separate style guidelines to accommodate Newky Brown and Mann's (in the same way they created a separate style for Orval), then Ron Pattinson pointed out these were like coelacanths, two living fossils that were individual survivors* from what had been a continuum - but many "traditional" brown ales in the UK were just bottled versions of bitter with added caramel for colour.

But in any case, you shouldn't fret about what is the "right" yeast for the style, as that's not how European brewers think. They have a house yeast and it gets used for almost every beer regardless of what straitjacket the BJCP try to impose. As we've discussed many times in the past, the generally available dry English yeasts are OK, but a pale shadow of their liquid cousins or what you can get from Brewlab, so the answer of which is best tends to be "meh". So S-04 will be fine, Windsor will be fine, just different depending on what your taste is. There's an argument that the best British dried yeast if you want attenuation, esters and flocculation is actually BE-256, maybe with a bit of T-58 for more interest....

I personally think of British brown ales as being largely divided into Northern English and Southern English styles, but the thing is, even that simplifies it too much. I could expand it to include London brown ales, but as you point out, that's a mostly dead style too. And you could also debate whether a certain brown ale is actually a bitter or something else. Regardless, styles are helpful in beer just like in music for getting you into the general area of what a beer is like, even if it's stronger, weaker, more bitter, less bitter, darker, or lighter, sweeter, drier, less malty, yeastier, or whatever than someplace like the BJCP says.

I 100% agree that there's no "right" yeast. I've brewed British brown ales (and I put "British" there to clarify that it's distinctly different from "American brown ales") quite a few times, but I've mainly used S-04, and I've always enjoyed it, but I wanted to see if (you might debate whether it's even a real style, but just like music styles and so on, it's easy for the sake of simplicity in explaining what you're making, and yes, you could debate whether a certain beer is a brown ale or a bitter or something else, depending on how it's made).
In my case, I stopped using liquid yeast years ago, but even if I wanted to use liquid yeasts now, the really unfortunate thing is that I don't really have much access to them. I could get the really mainstream liquid yeasts like WLP005 for a very high price, but I couldn't get Ringwood or Burton Ale or Manchester or Thames Valley or Essex Ale or West Yorkshire or so on.

 

[mac_1103]

I love all sorts of cheeses that many people find thoroughly disgusting, including this stuff

which I understand is sadly no longer legal. But I don't want any of it in my beer.

 

[DuncB]

What cheese is that?
I'm just starting a stilton roundel 1 year post its' " best before date " it's superb and no one else wants. Result.
Slight ammonia odour to it, but powerful taste of old stilton. Not beery at all. But does go well with a pint of best.

 

[Halfakneecap]

What cheese is that?
I'm just starting a stilton roundel 1 year post its' " best before date " it's superb and no one else wants. Result.
Slight ammonia odour to it, but powerful taste of old stilton. Not beery at all. But does go well with a pint of best.

Dark ale and stilton, num num!

 

[lumpher]

So I'm going to be brewing a British brown ale pretty soon. The only thing that's up in the air is the yeast. I've probably brewed more than 10 British brown ales by now, but the yeasts I've used in the past have been: WLP002, S-04, and 1098. I've used a ton of other English ale yeasts on stouts, porters, bitters, English IPAs, and so on, but most of my brown ales have been S-04 with WLP002 on a few and 1098 on just one.

I was planning on just using S-04 since it's my go-to for stouts, porters and, by connection, brown ales, but I thought of using one of the other English dry yeasts I have: Windsor, Nottingham, Verdant, or just going with S-04 like usual. The grain bill, gravity, IBU, and so on is more of a Northern English style, but I'm kind of leaning towards using Windsor (which I last used in 2016, I think).

I use strictly dry yeast, and Windsor and S04 are my choices for Northern English Ales. Windsor makes for an ale with plenty of mouthfeel, and a pint on a cool day, rare here in Texas, is good stuff.

 

[An Ankoù]

Need a little help from the resident English yeast experts.

I brewed a bitter a couple of weeks ago, typical brew day. Used RO water the one different thing I did was a pack of Omega 006 yeast or the whitbread strain. It attenuated well down to 1.010.

Ok so here is the problem. It has a hint of sewer in the aroma and I can't stop smelling it. It's almost like eating a Belgian abbey cheese that has that hint of ass. Not quite the Limburger level but the same smell.

I have never had this in a beer before and can only think it's coming from the yeast. Anyone ever get something like this?

https://escarpmentlabs.com/blogs/resources/5-off-flavours-beer-yeast

Look at item 3. This, apart from the reference to burnt matches, describes my experience, exactly. Also, adding nutrient cured the problem. Not sure about the other mumbo jumbo about using copper tubes.
If I were a chemist, I'd be asking where the sulphur compounds are coming from and I would suspect the yeast is finding its nutrients in hop compounds and leaving some of the simpler mercaptans behind. This is pure speculation on my part, but I know the smell you're getting is neither sulphur dioxide (matches) nor hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs). Smells are notoriously difficult to describe.

Edit:
This makes for interesting reading:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=m...summary=1&conversation=781c19b798cd1aa0ef8725

We know that enzymes in yeast (beta-lyase) modify hop oil components to produce some of the more complex thiols (mercaptans) and we call this "biotransformation". I think it's likely that, in the absence of suffient nutrients, a certain group of yeasts might take a metabolic pathway which releases some of the lower ones, which stink and have an extremely low taste threshold.
How the yeast cleans this up again, I have no idea, except to say that I've had some beers which, after many months, we're not completely cleaned up.

 

[An Ankoù]

I love all sorts of cheeses that many people find thoroughly disgusting, including this stuff

View attachment 882316
which I understand is sadly no longer legal. But I don't want any of it in my beer.

That looks interesting.
Over here we have some real stinkers: https://search.brave.com/search?q=T...summary=1&conversation=eda75cdca5c5f2e78eccb1
although I've never tasted the limburger that @Pennine mentions.
I once attempted to bring a very fragrant cheese back to the UK without stinking out the car. I failed. The car ponged like a sumo wrestler's jockstrap. The cheese was Livarot. I wrapped it in its box with cling film, put the box inside a tupperware container and taped the seals, wrapped the whole thing in aluminium foil and again with cling film.
Not only did it not work, but the cheese tainted the tupperware box which was unusable until it had been through the dish washer.

 

[HM-2]

What cheese is that?

Looks like casu martzu or one of the closely related cheeses from Corsica. Basically a goat or sheep milk cheese "ripened" through inoculation with cheese fly larvae.

And, yes, illegal throughout most of the world as the larvae can cause pseudomyiasis.

 

[Miraculix]

I've just finished brewing a mango madness based bitter yesterday, which is bubbling away happily in the 30°C kitche right now. It is about 1.04 OG and a bit of a British/German mix. Mainly MO pale, about 25% Munich 2 and 10% Carafoam. about 38 Ibus from northdown @60min and @10min. Nothing dry.

I've never tried Northdown before but it smells truely amazing. Although it is a 2023 Harvest pack. Really really herbally, no fruit, but all the denser flavours that I like in a British bitter. If this is going to come through in the beer, it will be really good.

I've seen you guys @An Ankoù and @Northern_Brewer at the Mango Madness thread in the Bri'ish forum. You didn't seem overly impressed by this yeast but the thread was a bit older. Any news on WHC Mango Madness from your side?

@Bassman2003 I've reduced the SMB down to a third, compared to the last times amount, which should be about 75 ppm now. The mash was smelling like the previous one with the 200 ppm SMB, it did not smell much at all. But the boil was a bit different this time. Flocculation was not as extreme as last time and it also was smelling stronger. I think I might have undershot the SMB this time. Let's see.

The previous 200 ppm SMB bitter has now finally cleared and all weired flavours are gone with the haze (except of the sulfur of course, although even that one is a bit subdued by now). It took ages to clear and what's left is remerkably clean. Even a bit too clean if you ask me. What's a real bummer is that this particular beer has exactly zero head retention. It behaves almost like a cider in the glass. I have no idea why this could be, Ibus are around 40, only thing that comes to my mind is that I only used one mash step at 65°C and did not include a higher step. Infection should also not paly a role here as carbonation did not change since it was finished. Maybe some of the lipids from the sludge seeped back into solution? I transfered everything from the boil into the fermenter, did not seperate solids from liquids. I've also read that transfered trub can kind of "clog up" yeasts outer cell walls. They then extcrete some protein degrading enzymes which also can effect head retention heavily. Multiple sources of zero head in here....

My current beer was mashed around 70°C and I brought the temperature up on the stove to 75 as a "mash out" step with the bag already being removed to promote glycoprotein production. Maybe this actually works. I do not want to do infusion mashes with my BIAB because I would introdue so much Oxygen this way. Maybe it is enough to mash at the given temperature, remove the bag and then do the higher temperature step without the mash. Let's see. What I also did here was, I did not transfer the main portion of the trub into the fermenter, it went down the drain.

Maybe I should dedicate a thread to this topic, BIAB and SMB.

 

[Pennine]

https://escarpmentlabs.com/blogs/resources/5-off-flavours-beer-yeast

Look at item 3. This, apart from the reference to burnt matches, describes my experience, exactly. Also, adding nutrient cured the problem. Not sure about the other mumbo jumbo about using copper tubes.
If I were a chemist, I'd be asking where the sulphur compounds are coming from and I would suspect the yeast is finding its nutrients in hop compounds and leaving some of the simpler mercaptans behind. This is pure speculation on my part, but I know the smell you're getting is neither sulphur dioxide (matches) nor hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs). Smells are notoriously difficult to describe.

Edit:
This makes for interesting reading:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=m...summary=1&conversation=781c19b798cd1aa0ef8725

We know that enzymes in yeast (beta-lyase) modify hop oil components to produce some of the more complex thiols (mercaptans) and we call this "biotransformation". I think it's likely that, in the absence of suffient nutrients, a certain group of yeasts might take a metabolic pathway which releases some of the lower ones, which stink and have an extremely low taste threshold.
How the yeast cleans this up again, I have no idea, except to say that I've had some beers which, after many months, we're not completely cleaned up.

Yes good reminder about taking care of the yeast. I should also say the pack was shipped in warmer weather and was ballooned up. Typical for things when they ship to me due to the elevation. Usually I skip the starter because I only brew smaller 10-13l batches. I do put a drop of zinc in the fermenter but likely I should have done a starter or nutrients for that one.

 

[DuncB]

Will send picture of the Mild, sourdough and Stilton with a pickled onion.
Mild is conditioning.

 

[Zadkiel]

My response might have come across as a bit antagonistic, but that's because the assumption in the question was that I was making a US take on a British style, even though I had not mentioned any US ingredients or anything that could be construed as US. If I had said I wanted to brew an English brown ale that's 8% ABV with Columbus and Centennial, fermented with US-05 or BRY-97 or whatever, then Zadkiel's question of "Are you actually trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style?" wouldn't have rubbed me the wrong way. My brown ale was composed of malts from Crisp, Muntons, and Simpsons, and used Fuggle as the only hop. The OG, IBU, SRM, and so on are all extremely common for the style among commercial English brown ales. So then what would make the beer "a US beer"? It almost seems like the place where the person making the beer lives determines what beer it is according to that line or reasoning.

I gave my answer to that in my first reply, and apologised for my incorrect assumption. Maybe you missed it? As to your ingredients, none of that was in your original post that I responded to (and no particular reason why you would, as your question was about yeast only) so that information wasn't available to me. If you consider that this forum is dominated by US brewers, and it's easy for me to miss the location field in your profile, then perhaps then you can see the question "Are you trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style?" wasn't meant in an antagonising way, or to 'rub you the wrong way' but instead just because of an easy to make mistake, and the fact that UK/EU Malts generally aren't available in the US, and vice-versa.

Hope this helps to make peace

 

[mac_1103]

What cheese is that?

That looks interesting.

Looks like casu martzu or one of the closely related cheeses from Corsica. Basically a goat or sheep milk cheese "ripened" through inoculation with cheese fly larvae.

Correct. Although my dad always called it formaggio coi vermi.

And, yes, illegal throughout most of the world as the larvae can cause pseudomyiasis.

Theoretically, but I don't believe there has ever been a documented case linked to eating the cheese. The little suckers can carry all sorts of nasty bacteria though.

 

[HM-2]

I've just finished brewing a mango madness based bitter yesterday

I was really impressed with the blonde ale I did with Mango Madness, as were the various folk who also tried it. Think the keg only lasted 2 weeks.

 

[worlddivides]

I gave my answer to that in my first reply, and apologised for my incorrect assumption. Maybe you missed it? As to your ingredients, none of that was in your original post that I responded to (and no particular reason why you would, as your question was about yeast only) so that information wasn't available to me. If you consider that this forum is dominated by US brewers, and it's easy for me to miss the location field in your profile, then perhaps then you can see the question "Are you trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style?" wasn't meant in an antagonising way, or to 'rub you the wrong way' but instead just because of an easy to make mistake, and the fact that UK/EU Malts generally aren't available in the US, and vice-versa.

Hope this helps to make peace

I don't hold it against you. And I think it shows why making assumptions is never a good idea. I'll also say that if you had said "I think you should use Nottingham because I really like the flavor profile and how it gives the beer the nice dry character I enjoy in English ales," I would have agreed with you 100% since I personally use Nottingham a lot in English bitters and English IPAs, which I tend to aim for a pretty dry character, since hey, that's what makes them so sessionable. It's a very clean yeast that I've used in hoppy English ales and in high ABV English styles (such as RISs and so on. I haven't used it in a barleywine before, but that's just because I've never brewed a barleywine before, but I definitely would love to).