English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[JKaranka]

Your personal malt blend looks good!

 

[Hanglow]

Brewed another golden ale, same grist as the last one but I went for a single infusion @152F instead of a step mash and went with a longer brewlength so got an OG of 1.040. Also changed the yeast, did a co pitch of London ESB and an american pale ale yeast from a new company here


OG 1.040
30 to 40 IBU
88.4 % Pilsner malt
8.4 % carahell
3.2 % Torrified wheat

Atlas 30g FWH
Cascade US 100g Steep 15 mins
Atlas 20g Steep 15 mins

Crossmyloof Brewery US Pale Ale yeast 10g
London ESB yeast 11g

bottled this today.

FG 1.008, so co pitching the Crossmyloof pale ale yeast worked to ensure the ESB yeast didn't finish too high . However even after a full ten days chilling, it is still very hazy. Taste is nice and fruity, decent body to it too although its not carbed obviously. I think it's a bit low on the IBUs too, probably closer to 25

 

[JKaranka]

bottled this today.

FG 1.008, so co pitching the Crossmyloof pale ale yeast worked to ensure the ESB yeast didn't finish too high . However even after a full ten days chilling, it is still very hazy. Taste is nice and fruity, decent body to it too although its not carbed obviously. I think it's a bit low on the IBUs too, probably closer to 25

I'm of the firm belief that our homebrew setups undershoot IBUs by as much as a third relative to calculated. I go for high IBU and that has improved my beer.

Did you like Atlas?

 

[RustyHorn]

I'm of the firm belief that our homebrew setups undershoot IBUs by as much as a third relative to calculated. I go for high IBU and that has improved my beer.

Did you like Atlas?

I've got a theory that 15 minute additions only contribute half of the expected IBUs that Beersmith predicts. I could be wrong, but it's worked for me. You might have a point that overall, a third is lost.

 

[rhys333]

I stick with Brewers Friend for recipe formulation and I find the IBU calculations are reasonable, at least for my tastes.

 

[Hanglow]

I'm of the firm belief that our homebrew setups undershoot IBUs by as much as a third relative to calculated. I go for high IBU and that has improved my beer.

Did you like Atlas?

Atlas was pretty decent, I think I used it in a saison last year and it worked well. Although in this case I think it has been dominated by the cascade


It's also been my experience that to get the assertive bitterness that I like, I have to go well above the Tinseth derived IBUs in beersmith to match the sort of bitterness I'm looking for. However I often forget to do so . Also I imagine the actual AA of the hops we use vary quite a lot as we use comparatively so little.

I was actually looking at IBUs/ tinseth over on Jims Beer Kit forum the other day out of interest and found this from Graham Wheeler;

"I must say that I believe the whole thing to be a load of bunkum. In the several calculation that I have done using published data, never have I seen an example where the predicted Tinseth bitterness or utilisation comes anywhere close to the measured bitterness or utilisation. Errors are often, I would even say usually, considerably greater than 100%. The shorter the boil time, as in late hopping, the wilder the prediction becomes. Tinseth's utilisation figures range from 30.1 per cent down to 12.3 per cent. In reality both commercial and amateur brewers would rarely achieve even 15 per cent by the time that the beer ends up in cask or bottle and the real-world utilisations vary by nowhere near as much as his formula suggests.

If the formula represents anything at all, I would say that it best matches ex-copper wort utilisation rather than finished beer utilisation. Tinseth as good as admits this in an e-mail given as a response to question posed by another member of this board and reproduced elsewhere on here. Unfortunately I do not have a viable alternative. I wish that I had, because I believe that hop utilisation is probably the last significant unsolved frontier in home brewing by numbers. "

 

[JKaranka]

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/1837-reid-dbst.htm

Reid's double brown stout. It's pretty much the same recipe I use but with a more complicated mash, no high alpha hops and longer boil.

 

[rhys333]

I stick with Brewers Friend for recipe formulation and I find the IBU calculations are reasonable, at least for my tastes.

Just adding another point regarding the Brewers Friend recipe spreadsheet. I find it works best to add 2 minutes to the "no chill - extended hop boil time" box in the drop-down section. It takes me about that long to cover the pot, turn on water and get the wort chilled below 180F. For lower IBU beers it's not a big deal, but it really makes a difference for beers with heavier late hopping or high aa hops... 15 IBUs difference or more in perceived bitterness.

 

[Hanglow]

Fullers are doing a NEIPA with Cloudwater and one of their brewers posted the recipe

Here it is. Totally inappropriate for the thread I'm sure Seems to be a bit less hops than I was expecting considering the vast amounts cloudwater normally use

Crisp Pale ALe Malt 76.6%
Wheat Malt 11.7%
Golden Naked Oats 11.7%

also they used oat husks to help in the mash


Mash at 67C, sparge at 76C

They are adding a more chloride to the water than gypsum but without knowing the starting water, it's a little pointless knowing that they add

0.192g/l CaCl in mash
0.086g/l Gypsum in mash

0.088g/l Gypsum to boil


simcoe 4.62g per litre of batch size @ whirlpool - they whirlpool @ 96C and assume 10% utilisation, although that's for lower abv beers

Olicana 1.53g/l dry hop during fermentation
Simcoe 1.53g/l post fermentation during chilling - they chill to 6C
Chinook 2.31g/l in the maturation vessel

OG I'm not sure as I don't know their efficiency, assuming 90% it comes to about 1.069 or so which would probably give an abv of 7% or so?


Fullers yeast presumably


Drinking that golden ale I bottled 3 weeks ago at the moment with the London ESB yeast, it's cleared nicely and is a good pint. Can recommend using the london esb yeast co pitched with something more floculant. I had yet to refrigerate this bottle too

 

[JKaranka]

Nice. A pint of Fullers' without hops in the boil.

 

[RustyHorn]

Fullers are doing a beer with Thornbridge, too. No idea what they are making... They brewed their ESB with Moor Brewery but I never got to try it :-(

 

[RustyHorn]

^it's a red rye beer.

 

[Hanglow]

They also brewed Gales Old Prize Ale at Marble a while ago, that will still be maturing though. Can't wait to try that one

 

[RustyHorn]

They also brewed Gales Old Prize Ale at Marble a while ago, that will still be maturing though. Can't wait to try that one

Sounds good!
I've always lived near the Griffin Brewery (Fullers) and always been amused by the 'brewed beside the Thames" tag they put on their beers. About half a mile away Budweiser was brewed at the Stag Brewery (ex Watneys) which was actually beside the river!

 

[Hanglow]

finally brewing a Burton today, albeit with german grains


OG 1.074
38.7% weyerman Vienna
38.7% Best Heidelberg pils
12.9% Invert no3
9.7% corn

step mash for maximum fermentability

50g Pilgrim leaf fwh
75g challenger pellets 60mins
25g challenger 15mins

IBUs no idea as I used a hopsock for the pellets and I'm not convinced I got as many ibus out of it as I thought I would. Hoping for around 70.



London ESB yeast for flavour and US west coast yeast for atttenuation . I've also got a bunch of champagne bottles, I'm considering adding brett to those ones at bottling - I'll see what the FG is though, if it's too high I won't

Sugar is in the oven at the moment, corn has been cooked on the hob. Has anyone done a cereal mash before? all the guides suggest adding some malt to the corn, then adding the whole lot into the mash. But I'd have thought just cooking the corn to gelatanize it and adding it to the mash would do the same thing.

edit: found this "This precooking is done with about 5% ground barley malt for the purpose of at least thinning slightly the cooked starch as it gels. The enzymes of this malt are denatured in the heating but at least they start the break down of the starch and thin the cooker mash slightly."

 

[Hanglow]

Definately add some barley malt, I chucked in a couple of handfuls of pils malt when it cooled down to 68c and it liquified the gloop. By the time I got my strike water ready it had cooled to 62c, my first step

 

[z-bob]

[snip]
Sugar is in the oven at the moment, corn has been cooked on the hob. Has anyone done a cereal mash before? all the guides suggest adding some malt to the corn, then adding the whole lot into the mash. But I'd have thought just cooking the corn to gelatanize it and adding it to the mash would do the same thing.

edit: found this "This precooking is done with about 5% ground barley malt for the purpose of at least thinning slightly the cooked starch as it gels. The enzymes of this malt are denatured in the heating but at least they start the break down of the starch and thin the cooker mash slightly."

I brewed a beer recently with rice. I cooked 1.5 pounds of rice in a gallon of water, and it absorbed all the water and turned into something resembling liquid concrete. I added a big handful of ground pilsner malt when it had cooled a bit, and it liquefied almost instantly. I put the lid on the kettle and left it for 20 minutes, and when I checked it again it was a thin watery gruel.

I think you are *supposed* to add grain and the malt as you heat the cereal mash water, and hold it at about 65°C for 10 minutes or so for the malt to convert as much starch as it can. Then you continue heating until it boils, and simmer until the grain is fully cooked.

 

[Hanglow]

Yeah that would be the easier way to do it, I think both ways work

 

[z-bob]

There's no reason you can't do both

 

[patto1ro]

Did I mention I have a new recipe book out?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

They are adding a more chloride to the water than gypsum but without knowing the starting water, it's a little pointless knowing that they add

0.192g/l CaCl in mash
0.086g/l Gypsum in mash

0.088g/l Gypsum to boil

IF their water looks something like the public water supply in Chiswick then they're starting with pH 7.74, 48ppm Cl, 49ppm SO4, 260ppm total hardness as CaCO3

Original recipe is here

 

[JKaranka]

finally brewing a Burton today, albeit with german grains


OG 1.074
38.7% weyerman Vienna
38.7% Best Heidelberg pils
12.9% Invert no3
9.7% corn

step mash for maximum fermentability

50g Pilgrim leaf fwh
75g challenger pellets 60mins
25g challenger 15mins

IBUs no idea as I used a hopsock for the pellets and I'm not convinced I got as many ibus out of it as I thought I would. Hoping for around 70.



London ESB yeast for flavour and US west coast yeast for atttenuation . I've also got a bunch of champagne bottles, I'm considering adding brett to those ones at bottling - I'll see what the FG is though, if it's too high I won't

Sugar is in the oven at the moment, corn has been cooked on the hob. Has anyone done a cereal mash before? all the guides suggest adding some malt to the corn, then adding the whole lot into the mash. But I'd have thought just cooking the corn to gelatanize it and adding it to the mash would do the same thing.

edit: found this "This precooking is done with about 5% ground barley malt for the purpose of at least thinning slightly the cooked starch as it gels. The enzymes of this malt are denatured in the heating but at least they start the break down of the starch and thin the cooker mash slightly."

We should do a bottle swap! I got some double stout as well as basic K/KK ale to offer. In champagne bottles. With Brett C.

 

[dyqik]

IF their water looks something like the public water supply in Chiswick then they're starting with pH 7.74, 48ppm Cl, 49ppm SO4, 260ppm total hardness as CaCO3

Original recipe is here

The public water supply for London generally comes from quite a bit further up the Thames Valley, off the Chilterns (hence the high carbonate as those are chalk hills) and via the reservoirs near Heathrow. If Fullers are using well water, like most older breweries in the UK, their water could be fairly different.

OTOH, I'd expect a large commercial brewery to treat their water extensively, if only for consistency.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I don't think I could have emphasised the "IF" much more!

But all the London brewers gave up on their own wells decades ago, on a combination of pollution and seawater intrusion. Having said that, the aquifers are similar to the Chilterns - either greensand or chalk - whereas the river comes from a mix of geologies and obviously has some rainwater.

I've used water in Kent that is 90% groundwater from those chalk and greensand aquifers, so a reasonable approximation to London well water - and it wasn''t too far off that Thames Water analysis, hardness was over 300 but otherwise pretty similar. Great water for porter, not so good for anything else...

But you probably could have taken a good guess at what they were starting with, just based on those additions. It just looks like they're starting with water that's pretty balanced Cl:SO4 and not too high in either.

 

[patto1ro]

The public water supply for London generally comes from quite a bit further up the Thames Valley, off the Chilterns (hence the high carbonate as those are chalk hills) and via the reservoirs near Heathrow. If Fullers are using well water, like most older breweries in the UK, their water could be fairly different.

OTOH, I'd expect a large commercial brewery to treat their water extensively, if only for consistency.

Fullers use city water. Their well was contaminated.

 

[Hanglow]

We should do a bottle swap! I got some double stout as well as basic K/KK ale to offer. In champagne bottles. With Brett C.

hmm tempting

did you dose the bottles at bottling or did you ferment it with the brett? I was thinking of just using a syringe and taking an ml or two from the vial for each bottle just prior to corking them

 

[JKaranka]

hmm tempting

did you dose the bottles at bottling or did you ferment it with the brett? I was thinking of just using a syringe and taking an ml or two from the vial for each bottle just prior to corking them

I give a couple of days to the yeast and then pitch Brett into the fv. Leave for a couple of months and then prime lightly when bottling.

 

[Hanglow]

Speaking of bretty goodness, Gales Prize Old ale is being packaged next week. Cannot wait to get my hands on some

 

[Hanglow]

finally brewing a Burton today, albeit with german grains


OG 1.074
38.7% weyerman Vienna
38.7% Best Heidelberg pils
12.9% Invert no3
9.7% corn

step mash for maximum fermentability

50g Pilgrim leaf fwh
75g challenger pellets 60mins
25g challenger 15mins

IBUs no idea as I used a hopsock for the pellets and I'm not convinced I got as many ibus out of it as I thought I would. Hoping for around 70.



London ESB yeast for flavour and US west coast yeast for atttenuation . I've also got a bunch of champagne bottles, I'm considering adding brett to those ones at bottling - I'll see what the FG is though, if it's too high I won't

A month on from brewing this I tried an unbretted bottle of this last night, lovely fruityness from the yeast and also from the sugar, gives a dundee cake quality to the beer. It's dropped bright too which is nice. Into my cellar the rest go, will test occasionally to see how the brett works its magic

 

[Hanglow]

Continuing my recent German/Anglo recipes, I brewed a brown bitter with homegrown hallertau mittelfruh wet hops, kolsch yeast, german pils base but most character will come from the english malts and homemade invert


19l batch
OG 1.044
Pils - 82.3%
Crystal dark - 5.5%
invert no2/3 - 4.1%
Crystal medium - 3.8%
torrified wheat - 3.4%
roasted barley - 0.8%

Hops
Magnum 20g 60mins
wet hallertau mittelfruh 250g 15mins
wet hm 250g 5 mins

ibus about 35 I reckon


crossmyloof kolsch yeast 20g

step mash, 62C 45mins 71C 45 mins


Also I need to order more grain this weekend, no sure what to go for.

 

[JKaranka]

Got a bottle of this on the shelf

http://www.wildbeerco.com/beers/beyond-modus/

 

[Hanglow]

Looks nice that!

Any brewers in the UK want some old school hops, A Bushel of Hops have opened their shop for the new seasons harvest. along with a few standard ones, they have

Keyworth Early
Nonsuch
Sussex
Pride of Kent
early Prolific
College Cluster
Malling Mid Season
Tolhurst
Early Bird
Alliance

 

[RustyHorn]

Looks nice that!

Any brewers in the UK want some old school hops, A Bushel of Hops have opened their shop for the new seasons harvest. along with a few standard ones, they have

Keyworth Early
Nonsuch
Sussex
Pride of Kent
early Prolific
College Cluster
Malling Mid Season
Tolhurst
Early Bird
Alliance

I'll have a peek! I like the sound of Nonsuch as I work near the place (I wonder if it has relevance? I live not far from Epsom and only recently realised the connection with the salts!)

 

[Northern_Brewer]

You're a bad man Hanglow, making me spend money like that! And you've pooched my brew schedule since I can't resist a landrace but Tolhurst has very poor stability.

It's an interesting selection, a lot of early Wye varieties that didn't make it past the great wilt crisis of the mid-20th century. I consider myself a bit of a hop geek but even I was rummaging in the reference books for things like College Cluster, I've only knowingly had commercial beers from three of these. Here's some details though - in the "main" Wye lineage I've got the date of the cross, in others I've just got a release date which is typically 15-20 years after the cross was made.

Early Prolific (1852 selection of Golding family) "Pleasant continental-style aroma"
(Amos') Early Bird (1887) - one of the main Golding varieties, found in a Bramling garden
Tolhurst (1882 - selection by James Tolhurst of landrace?) 2.2% alpha (!)
Nonsuch OB53 (1925) great-niece of Brewers Gold, greatgrandmother of Yeoman. o/s
Keyworths Early OJ47 (1930) grandmother of Yeoman, now making a bit of a commercial comeback. Lemon and grapefruit notes.
Pride of Kent 170a (1931) daughter of Brewers Gold, mother of Pride of Ringwood (not much of a recommendation!) o/s
College Cluster (1943 release)
Malling Midseason (1943 release)
Alliance (1950s, 1967 release) WGV seedling intended as a wilt-resistant Fuggle replacement, mother of Epic
Sussex (found in 2005) Used in both Old Dairy's and Harveys Wild Hop beers, YCH describes it as "earthy, grass, mint, citrus and vanilla", some people get a bit of tropical from it.

It's also worth looking at some of their other varieties - there's not many sources of UK Cascade for instance, if you wanted to do a terroir comparison then you can get NZ Cascade from eg Brew UK, and I imagine that if you hunted around you could probably find some Cascade from continental Europe.

PS "Nonsuch" in this case is an adjective, meaning "without equal" - it was a common boast for Victorian plant breeders (eg Peasgood Nonsuch apples) and for Tudor kings when describing their palaces....

PPS Also waiting to see what Stocks Farm have to offer this year, they're usually a good source of new and experimental varieties but they've not released the 2017's yet other than the green hops.

 

[Hanglow]

Cheers for that, I had a google of a couple of them but didn't come up with much

I've used UK cascade from them last year, it's certainly more "british", more floral less grapefruit and not as strongly flavoured as the others. I've also used NZ cascade previously, I got more lime from that than the standard US version, it was pretty pungent. I've also used Styrian cascade as well, it's rather good as well but different again. Of course they will all change a bit depending on weather etc for each year. It would be nice to do a side - by side tasting of the same years crop from different countries for sure. I'm a big fan of cascade, it can be used with a deft touch in many a balanced beer or be chucked in in quantity for loads of flavour


Always interesting how different identical hops can taste based on climate and general growing conditions


I grew some centennial this year up here in glasgow and I've not brewed with it yet - only got 60g dried as it's a first year plant - but the hop tea I made with some of it had a lovely lime aroma and it was very peppery for taste.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This presentation (PPT) from Ali Capper goes into detail on how the British climate affects things like terpene levels - we typically see about 2/3 of eg myrcene compared to the same varieties grown elsewhere. Tasting green hop beers it's really noticeable how the dull August has really emphasised the earthiness of this year's crop, whereas you need blue skies for the citrus flavours.

So what did you get this year? Aside from the Tolhurst I picked up some Keyworths Early which I've had in a commercial beer and liked, and some College Cluster just for the randomness of it, even if it probably tastes like just another Goldings derivative....

 

[Hanglow]

I bought Keyworths early, Alliance and took a punt on pride of kent .

 

[RustyHorn]

PS "Nonsuch" in this case is an adjective, meaning "without equal" - it was a common boast for Victorian plant breeders (eg Peasgood Nonsuch apples) and for Tudor kings when describing their palaces....

Ah, makes sense. Something new learned!

 

[JKaranka]

Thinking of making a big stock / barley wine. A bit of brown or black malt for colour, a few pounds of invert sugar, og upwards of 1.100, mainly Goldings varieties of hops and Brett for aging. Bottle up and drink for years to come. Any thoughts?

 

[deere322]

Thinking of making a big stock / barley wine. A bit of brown or black malt for colour, a few pounds of invert sugar, og upwards of 1.100, mainly Goldings varieties of hops and Brett for aging. Bottle up and drink for years to come. Any thoughts?

1954 Tennants Gold Label
Although it has a bunch of flaked maize, I bet it’d be excellent aged on Brett.