English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[Erik the Anglophile]

It definitely is a notable fresh/wet hop flavour in it.
I like it.

 

[Colindo]

I just realised the Real Ale Almanac has it

 

[Colindo]

Just found Northern's post, where I think I got this:

I always find these histories exciting, because there are so many contradicting each other. For example there is this quote from the UK brewery map:

Timothy Taylor Brewery yeast, from the Knowle Spring Brewery in Keighley, is 1469 West Yorkshire Ale / Omega OYL-014 British Ale VII. This may have come originally from the Courage Brewery in London.

 

[user 246304]

I always find these histories exciting, because there are so many contradicting each other. For example there is this quote from the UK brewery map:

Thanks for the resource!

 

[Fr_Marc]

I just realised the Real Ale Almanac has it
View attachment 834781

The Brewery changed the recipe to all Fuggles (grown on their own farm) a number of years ago. The yeast they use is said to be the Hook Norton strain.

 

[Colindo]

@Fr_Marc Nice, what yeast would that be? I know Hook Norton has been around for a while and might have a unique strain...

 

[Fr_Marc]

@Fr_Marc Nice, what yeast would that be? I know Hook Norton has been around for a while and might have a unique strain...

I have no idea if the Hook Norton strain is available commercially (BrewLabs might have it), but the people at the Hook Norton brewery are very friendly and happy to give you a bagfull of their slurry, if you ask nicely. Unfortunately, I had two more weeks of holiday left and no plan how to keep the yeast safe and sound (not to mention how to smuggle it back into Germany). So I had to reject the kind offer unfortunately.

I will be better prepared next time…

 

[user 246304]

@Fr_Marc Nice, what yeast would that be? I know Hook Norton has been around for a while and might have a unique strain...

Reminiscence. Just a few:

One of the best times of our young married life - working for Goose Island Brewing Co. at the time, receive a call from none other than Michael Jackson himself telling me, while I was cip'ing the cellar, that we'd won the "world beer tour" web contest my wife had entered us in;

2+ weeks in England including opening multi-course beer dinner with MJ himself and Mark Dorber at the White Horse, London - meal prepared by Mark's gifted wife, beers selected by MJ;

An incredibly memorable evening with two old venerable gents in Blackfriar's - St. Paul's visible from the street, they'd retired from the paper across the street. Recounted the incredible horrors of the Blitz, and the grit showing in their eyes and faces, well - memorable.

A week in Hook Norton where I spent considerable time at the brewery and drooled over the Victorian tower setup - and dray team at the time, I believe Ted and Phil, though memory is dodgy;

Drinking with so many from parts close and far, including the beer writer for the Financial Times and local lorry men, at the Pear Tree in Hook Norton run by such a kind husband and wife team;

Having a pint or several with my wife in the back of the Reine Deer Inn, where portraits of Cromwell and Charles I hung glowering towards each other;

Warwick. My background (one of them) is in western European history and national political development and it goes without saying Warwick held a deep place for me, personally.

Ranging further up including some good times with a big bull of a brewer, Ian someone, name eludes me, at the Titanic Brewery in Stoke-on-Trent.

My son shares a similar passion for history, and love of the traditional pub, to the extent he's experienced one here. Badly miss England and really want to bring him back. He was, after all, conceived in London.

 

[user 246304]

I have no idea if the Hook Norton strain is available commercially (BrewLabs might have it), but the people at the Hook Norton brewery are very friendly and happy to give you a bagfull of their slurry, if you ask nicely. Unfortunately, I had two more weeks of holiday left and no plan how to keep the yeast safe and sound (not to mention how to smuggle it back into Germany). So I had to reject the kind offer unfortunately.

I will be better prepared next time…

I pulled some yeast from slurry at Fuller's and Young's, and dried them on business cards. Streaked, slanted and stored them for use back in the States. Miraculously, they did really well.

I haven't seen Hook Norton anywhere for years, which is such a shame. I'd sure love to see them back in our region here in the States again.

 

[user 246304]

The Brewery changed the recipe to all Fuggles (grown on their own farm) a number of years ago. The yeast they use is said to be the Hook Norton strain.

Looked them up and noted that. This image alone made me fall in love.

This, and revisiting Big Lamp brewery and its tower setup, referred by @cire , have made for a full morning.

 

[user 246304]

-sorry, Sunday Times, Peter Millar. He gave me his contact info and was a truly interesting guy. Closed the Pear Tree with him, in conversation one night. Hotel, aforementioned. Mr. and Mrs. Sivyer of the Pear Tree were extraordinarily gracious and generous hosts. John drove my wife and myself up to the Banbury, passing by Blenheim Palace along the way. And I believe the brewer from Titanic's name is Ian Bradford, though I'm sad to say I can't find his business card.

 

[DuncB]

We've not seen @McMullan for a while, think he might have left the forum. But his posts on the use of Yorkshire yeast were informative. Amongst many other views.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/english-ales-whats-your-favorite-recipe.472464/post-9262103

 

[DBhomebrew]

I got a few tasty beers out of Yorkshire Square. Enjoyed the milds more than the bitters.

 

[user 246304]

We've not seen @McMullan for a while, think he might have left the forum. But his posts on the use of Yorkshire yeast were informative. Amongst many other views.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/english-ales-whats-your-favorite-recipe.472464/post-9262103

I don't think I recall him but I've been seeing his posts since I've come back. Lots to learn from him. Funny - from an old thread of mine on Yorkshire squares at home, re-read a member @McKnuckle who was very passionate about the area as well. I wonder if he's still around, always really liked his posts.

 

[DuncB]

Couple of good shakes of the tree there. Wonder if anything will fall out?

 

[Miraculix]

I don't think I recall him but I've been seeing his posts since I've come back. Lots to learn from him. Funny - from an old thread of mine on Yorkshire squares at home, re-read a member @McKnuckle who was very passionate about the area as well. I wonder if he's still around, always really liked his posts.

He's a fun guy, I hope he's all right and doing well!

 

[user 246304]

He's a fun guy, I hope he's all right and doing well!

Funny you mention this because I looked up his profile last night, and it seems he's not been active since '22. I hope he's doing OK too. Really great guy.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I always find these histories exciting, because there are so many contradicting each other. For example there is this quote from the UK brewery map:

In these cases, I'm always reminded of Darwin's version of the Dunning-Kruger effect - "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

Particularly when you see confident statements that show complete ignorance of how yeast work "*is* 1469 West Yorkshire Ale / Omega OYL-014 British Ale VII". At best the stuff you get from yeast labs is a many-generations descendant from one strain of what is often a multistrain. But it's never identical - a familiar example is how Verdant took London Ale III and after a few years of repitching they had what Lallemand sell as Verdant IPA - it's similar but not the same.

Whereas you'll notice that when I talk about yeast there's always lots of "seems" and "it is claimed", if I make a statement of fact then I usually bring receipts - in this case a professional brewer who went on a behind-the-scenes tour of Taylor's in 2018 with the Brewery History Society :
"The brewhouse came from the wrong side of the Pennines, originally being from Oldham brewery....The yeast also came from Oldham brewery and they've been continuously re-pitching for 36 years."

Or you could trust a comment on a random map with no attribution. It has some nuggets of truth but I would take a lot of it with a pinch of salt It's quite plausible that 1469 came from Courage originally, genetics suggests it may well have come from the south, but who knows what the link with Taylor's is. And this is what the actual Taylor yeast looks like :

A good test of these things is 1318 - just look at the map's confident take "Boddington's Brewery yeast strain, from the Strangeways Brewery in Manchester (which was demolished in 2004) is 1318 London Ale III / Omega OYL-011 British Ale V"

We know (if you trust Ron's transcription skills) that in its heyday in the 1970s Boddies was getting apparent attenuation over 90% from a yeast they got from Tadcaster in 1941 after they were bombed (but that seems to have been a direct-ish replacement of the yeast they had been using since at least the 1920s). Does that sound like the attenuation of 1318, or that of a saison-family yeast that was historically common in northern England? Meanwhile one thing we know about 1318 is that it's one of the closest known relatives to 1098 - the archetypal Whitbread yeast.

It feels just a bit too much of a coincidence that Whitbread bought Boddies in 1989, and that in the run-up to Strangeways being closed they had problems recreating Boddies at the Whitbread factory in South Wales. Cask Boddies was contracted out to Hyde's, who had such problems with the Strangeways yeast that they produced 42% less than target in FY06 (per p2 of their annual report of 7 Feb 2007). That doesn't sound like the easy-going Whitbread yeast, which is popular precisely because it works under most conditions, it sounds like an "old" yeast that's evolved to work with one particular setup.

So despite the rumours that they changed the yeast, my suspicion is that they kept the old Tadcaster yeast, at least for cask, for as long as Strangeways was open. Given that a lot of the US yeast bank strains seem to originate among homebrewers in the 1990s, I wonder if Whitbread used their own yeast for some of the short-lived Boddies brand extensions at the height of its popularity in the 1990s - things like Boddies Export (which is the only survivor, labelled as Pub Ale in the US) which would explain how some people are convinced 1318 originated with Boddies, but genetically it's clearly a bog-standard Whitbread yeast.

Same goes for the "Fuller's" yeasts. Even the map acknowledges that its confidence may be misplaced "Fuller's Brewery yeast strain, from the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, London, is Wyeast 1968 London ESB / WLP002 English Ale / Omega OYL-016 British Ale VIII. But none of these, especially the Wyeast, really capture the flavour of Fuller's - some strong fruity notes missing."

Or to put it another way - it's impossible that Fuller's "is" "1968/WLP002" as it tastes nothing like them. Anyone who has actually drunk a decent pint of Fuller's will know about the distinctive orangey character of their yeast. And no, I'm not just making that up - both the brewery and a former head brewer acknowledge it :
"Fuller’s yeast gives orange citrus, and toffee flavours to the beer (marmalade notes at discernible at higher A.B.V.)"
"One constant of all the ales is the secret ‘house yeast’. ‘It has a very orange-y, marmalade-y flavour,’ says George. ‘It’s easy to pick up in ESB...’"

So any yeast that lacks that character cannot be the Fuller's yeast. Now it's possible that 1968 and 002 originated in Chiswick but have evolved to be blander in the course of being passed around before they ended up at a yeast company, it's also possible that a tube got mislabelled along the way. But what is certain is that they are not the Fuller's yeast, and one should be sceptical of any source that claims they are.

Anyway, rant over, now to go and see if I can pick up some of this year's Vintage....

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I believe the brewer from Titanic's name is Ian Bradford, though I'm sad to say I can't find his business card.

Ian was at Titanic for a long time, but set up Lymestone in 2008:
https://www.lymestonebrewery.net/about

 

[Colindo]

@Northern_Brewer Many thanks for the source regarding TT yeast. Sorry if I was overly stupid with my comparison, but at that point for me it was just statement vs statement and that UK map had been recommended by Ron previously.

Also I found that 1469 really gives me the same flavour as Landlord from cask has, so I always believed it to be quite an authentic yeast for that purpose. Where did you get the hint that Oldham brewery used John Smith? I would not judge TT as using a phenolic yeast at all, but then I also needed more than one pint from Harvey's to really notice the peppery aroma.

The yeast map features lots of stories that I could not find elsewhere, which also means I could not confirm anything, so there's that. But with the date of 2019 it seemed like the most recent collection of yeast origins. I now stand corrected and would very much like to ask you if you collected these anywhere? Or do you just remember the things you read throughout the years? Google generally does not seem to work when searching for these things.

 

[Colindo]

By the way I just now used Verdant for the first time and the way it ferments is exactly the same as 1469. Long lasting barm head that stays on even if the beer beneath is already clear and a tendency to climb out of the fermenter.
1318, which I used only twice before, was nowhere like this.

 

[HM-2]

By the way I just now used Verdant for the first time and the way it ferments is exactly the same as 1469. Long lasting barm head that stays on even if the beer beneath is already clear and a tendency to climb out of the fermenter.
1318, which I used only twice before, was nowhere like this.

Isn't Verdant a London Ale III mutation?

 

[Colindo]

Isn't Verdant a London Ale III mutation?

It is supposed to be, yes. The physical properties seem to be remarkably different. But I understand this does not need to indicate a different lineage.

 

[HM-2]

A shameless self promotion but this:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/hogwash-prize-ale-strong-bitter-english-pale-ale.729961/
Was great fun and I absolutely devoured the keg in record time.

 

[user 246304]

Ian was at Titanic for a long time, but set up Lymestone in 2008:
https://www.lymestonebrewery.net/about

Ah, thanks Northern. I'm really happy to hear this. What a big bull of a brewer. It was so eye-opening coming from Goose Island with 1000 HAACP points along a closed system and QC assays dotted all along the way, to his bringing a bucket of yeast across the yard, pitching it in the open fermenters, and letting them rock.

I'm saddened to see he lost his wife.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Also I found that 1469 really gives me the same flavour as Landlord from cask has, so I always believed it to be quite an authentic yeast for that purpose. Where did you get the hint that Oldham brewery used John Smith?

I must have a source for it, although the "supposedly" hints that I was underwhelmed by its reliability. Don't quote me, but I have a feeling it came from a Yorkshire Post article 10-20 years ago, which then disappeared behind a paywall - I guess they were keen to prove its tyke origins and that it had only been on loan to Lancashire! I remember doing a bit of digging after finding this mangled version from Michael Jackson in 1992, interviewing the legendary Allan Hey, which was clearly nonsense if interpreted literally :
Timothy Taylor's has been using the same yeast for at least 30 years. It is a hybrid of the John Smith's and former Oldham Brewery yeasts

The yeast map features lots of stories that I could not find elsewhere, which also means I could not confirm anything, so there's that. But with the date of 2019 it seemed like the most recent collection of yeast origins. I now stand corrected and would very much like to ask you if you collected these anywhere? Or do you just remember the things you read throughout the years? Google generally does not seem to work when searching for these things.

Yeah, there's some good stuff there but there's a lot of (wrong) conventional wisdom, and that thing of equating complex brewery yeasts to a particular homebrew strain just really puts me off.
My stuff is a mix of talking to people first hand and reading - I've spent rather too much time than is healthy, looking at eg old CAMRA newsletters! A lot of it is hearsay at best, it would be nice to have a more comprehensive genome analysis to trace ancestry.

By the way I just now used Verdant for the first time and the way it ferments is exactly the same as 1469. Long lasting barm head that stays on even if the beer beneath is already clear and a tendency to climb out of the fermenter.
1318, which I used only twice before, was nowhere like this.

Classic example of how easy it is to manipulate floccing and top-cropping, you have two yeasts that have been top-cropped and poor old 1318 has spent too long being harvested from the bottom of conicals.

Anyway, rant over, now to go and see if I can pick up some of this year's Vintage....

Done, this year it's got DRC and a Faram selection - Opus, Archer, and CF185. Recently Fuller's have been selling off series of Vintage, they had one going back to 2002 which unfortunately I missed.

 

[elproducto]

I really wish we could get a dry version of 1469, I love that yeast so much but am trying to move to dry when possible for simplicity sake.

 

[user 246304]

@Northern_Brewer , it seems even if we obtain the brewery's own multi-strain yeast, then, unless we duplicate exactly the environmental conditions and processes, I suspect eventually like all things strains will adapt to our own environment - and taken to a model final result, we'll end up with a single strain anyway, is that correct (again, as only a model of adaptation and competitive advantage)?

I'm intrigued by the notion of establishing and maintaining a multi-strain "house" culture that moreover remains more or less stable in its population ecology over time. Not sure if it's doable on the home level, nor do I have the slightest clue how to begin.

 

[tracer bullet]

the distinctive orangey character of their yeast

Not calling out NB here but related to this side topic, having been unable to hit it via the normal ingredients, I have started putting about 4 grams of sweet orange peel (for a 5 gallon batch) into the wort towards the end of the boil. I *think* I can taste it, but it's very subtle, which is perfect. Might be my imagination but I'm enjoying it.

I suppose it means I gave up somewhat, and cheated, but since we're in the English Ale recipe thread I thought I'd mention it.

 

[HM-2]

this year it's got DRC and a Faram selection - Opus, Archer, and CF185. Recently Fuller's have been selling off series of Vintage, they had one going back to 2002 which unfortunately I missed.

I've picked up three- one for now, one for keeping, and one for my brother in law. CF185 is one of my favourite new British hops too.