English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

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I was gonna culture up a little yeast aswell for a new bitter and mild, and I have a sort of in the general direction of Riggwelter ale to be kegged today.
The brewing will have to wait a little as the basement is just too damn cold to ferment in atm...
We will likely get, well not warmer but a little less cold, weather in a week or so.
 

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Erik the Anglophile said:
I was gonna culture up a little yeast aswell for a new bitter and mild, and I have a sort of in the general direction of Riggwelter ale to be kegged today.
The brewing will have to wait a little as the basement is just too damn cold to ferment in atm...
We will likely get, well not warmer but a little less cold, weather in a week or so.
Click to expand...
Hope that's a dry cold.
Did I read correctly -37 C outside? Reminds me of a snowboarding trip to Jackson hole, had to cover all my skin on that day.
You don't have a ferment fridge in your basement I'm guessing.
 
Yup, likely a degree or two colder since the house walls omit a little warmth...
It's been dry since mid november as that's when the sea and all lakes froze, and we have barely had positive temps since then, except for a few days of just above freezing just after Christmas.
The air dries out fairly quick when all bodies of water freeze and it stays cold.

I have a ferment fridge, but I like to pitch cool and let the temp free-rise to 20c, and the basement is too cold for that atm...
 
Interesting.
I've got a brown stout in keg conditioning based on barclay perkins 1805.
Tasted pretty good before I locked it up.
My first mild in ferment since brew years day it's looking good whilst I sit here drinking a Manuka smoked porter I made in October 22. Smoothed out great.
Next time using a different smoked malt though.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
Yup, likely a degree or two colder since the house walls omit a little warmth...
It's been dry since mid november as that's when the sea and all lakes froze, and we have barely had positive temps since then, except for a few days of just above freezing just after Christmas.
The air dries out fairly quick when all bodies of water freeze and it stays cold.

I have a ferment fridge, but I like to pitch cool and let the temp free-rise to 20c, and the basement is too cold for that atm...
Click to expand...
I have the dual (heating-cooling) Inkbird, and have a seedling germination mat in the fridge so I can bring the temp up, if wanted. It's not the most robust heating element, but it works to raise past room temp a few degrees. I used to use a personal "My Heat" heater, which worked perfectly to keep fermentation temps in frigid ambient temps (brutal wisconsin winters, in the unheated garage), but that's not an option for me now that I open ferment and the heater depends on a fan to distribute the heat. Still, a thought.
 
Agent said:
Not this year at least!

It hasn't been cold enough to Eis my DIPA yet, and it's looking like I won't have an opportunity anytime soon.

I just want some snow to Cross Country ski and some cold for an Eisbeer. Is that so much to ask?
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Yeah, no kidding. First brown Christmas in memory, for us - moved here in 2009. My son and I hunted 22 hard miles in the northwoods this year as we do every year - first year since at least 2015, same thing. No tracking to be had anywhere.
 
Hi guys, I have a malt question.
Anybody have experience with Maris Otter Extra Pale Ale?
I'm looking at ordering some from Muntons but the only difference I see is that it around 4 ECB instead of 4-6 ECB for the normal Maris Otter.

I have seen in the BrewDog recipe book that they use it for about 20 recipes, mostly IPAs.
I guess they use it as it's more accessable for them than 2-Row that is used in the USA.
Probably a little less intense than the normal Maris Otter and lets the hops shine more.

I was just wondering if there is any advantage of using it in a simple English style ale like a bitter.
Sounds like it would be somewhere between normal MO and Lager malt.

Thanks!
 
Miraculix said:
It's a good base malt.
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I'm sure it's great. I have a bit of an issue with trusting a light touch - if malty is good, more malty is better. Funny because in many other ways, finesse and a subtle touch in cooking is my thing. Basically, a flaw in that I don't trust the lighter MO will be as rich, malty....therefore as good.
 
Gadjobrinus said:
I'm sure it's great. I have a bit of an issue with trusting a light touch - if malty is good, more malty is better. Funny because in many other ways, finesse and a subtle touch in cooking is my thing. Basically, a flaw in that I don't trust the lighter MO will be as rich, malty....therefore as good.
Click to expand...
It is just a bit paler. Think of it as MO pilsner.
 
Gadjobrinus said:
I have the dual (heating-cooling) Inkbird, and have a seedling germination mat in the fridge so I can bring the temp up, if wanted. It's not the most robust heating element, but it works to raise past room temp a few degrees. I used to use a personal "My Heat" heater, which worked perfectly to keep fermentation temps in frigid ambient temps (brutal wisconsin winters, in the unheated garage), but that's not an option for me now that I open ferment and the heater depends on a fan to distribute the heat. Still, a thought.
Click to expand...
Try a reptile lamp as a heater in the fridge.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.
Sounds like it would be good for one of those new style WC IPAs.
Are there any British style beers (with british hops and yeast) where a pilsner base malt is normally used?

I'm trying to choose between this and an Irish lager malt which has a novelty factor as it was grown and called after a place near where I grew up.
Think I'll just go ahead and get 10kg of each as the postage is the same for 0 to 31Kg from Ireland.
 
Shenanigans said:
Thanks for the feedback guys.
Sounds like it would be good for one of those new style WC IPAs.
Are there any British style beers (with british hops and yeast) where a pilsner base malt is normally used?

I'm trying to choose between this and an Irish lager malt which has a novelty factor as it was grown and called after a place near where I grew up.
Think I'll just go ahead and get 10kg of each as the postage is the same for 0 to 31Kg from Ireland.
Click to expand...
You can brew pretty much any bitter with pilsner as a base. Did that many times. Historically continental malt has been used when available and/or they were cheaper than the UK malts.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
Hmm, could have been Gällivare?
Click to expand...
I think you’re correct. We went all that way to look at computer screens. We were looking at control systems for the new Coca Cola factory in Wakefield Yorkshire. Previous trips were better as we went to Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen and Peroni in Rome. Happy days.
 
Shenanigans said:
Hi guys, I have a malt question.
Anybody have experience with Maris Otter Extra Pale Ale?
I'm looking at ordering some from Muntons but the only difference I see is that it around 4 ECB instead of 4-6 ECB for the normal Maris Otter.

I have seen in the BrewDog recipe book that they use it for about 20 recipes, mostly IPAs.
I guess they use it as it's more accessable for them than 2-Row that is used in the USA.
Probably a little less intense than the normal Maris Otter and lets the hops shine more.

I was just wondering if there is any advantage of using it in a simple English style ale like a bitter.
Sounds like it would be somewhere between normal MO and Lager malt.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I tend to buy the Simpsons extra pale MO as every little helps with keeping the EBC down in NEIPAs due to my using a lot of golden naked oats.

I can discern no real difference in flavour between extra pale and standard pale MO from the same maltster in my experience.


I've just used it alongside Czech Pilsen in a WCIPA at 44% of the grist each.
 
Shenanigans said:
I was just wondering if there is any advantage of using it in a simple English style ale like a bitter.
Sounds like it would be somewhere between normal MO and Lager malt.
Click to expand...
Personally I wouldn't - the whole point of trad English styles is that each component makes a contribution, it's all about balance between those different components and using extra pale rather than pale disrupts that balance. There's a reason why British maltsters tend to kiln darker than pale malts from other countries.

It's a bit different for hoppier styles, and it's quite common for "juicy bitters" to have some or even all pilsner/extra pale - Dark Star Hophead is an example. Personally I think that anything more than about 20-30% pilsner/XP doesn't work as well even for the hoppy stuff (as a cask beer and/or at "normal" cask ABVs) as it noticeably thins out the body to the detriment of the overall balance of the beer. And I'm all about balance.

I'd imagine it would be great for something like an Alt though.
 
McMullan said:
Yes, I open ferment all my English ales, usually in a Yorkshire square set-up, recirculating the fermenting wort to rouse the yeast into action.

View attachment 765483
View attachment 765484

Standard practice for a decent top-cropping Yorkshire yeast.
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From a discussion last night, had no idea a member actually did it - came up with a home-version of a true Yorkshire square. I'd love to learn more. Someone brought up the key point that it isn't just about recirc'ing the wort up and over the top of the barm - which is basically what I do, with a ladle or spoon - but because of the "manhole" in the upper chamber (here, the top pot), the yeast more or less stays in the upper vessel, making later skimming more effective, while the fermenting wort drains out to the bottom chamber.

I realized later last night that I'd never really thought about this - given that this isn't merely recirculating one vessel, but this setup - how does the wort actually ferment well, when you have a highly flocculant yeast that is more or less partitioned between the two vessels? Am I being clear in what I'm asking?
 
I think the gist of it is that the barm drops down in to the beer from the upper trough,
and is then pumped up from the bottom at set intervals to repeat the cycle.
Mixed with krausen forming this also serves to aereate the yeast as Yorkshire type yeasts require loads of oxygen.
 
Miraculix said:
You can brew pretty much any bitter with pilsner as a base. Did that many times. Historically continental malt has been used when available and/or they were cheaper than the UK malts.
Click to expand...

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

I don't think that the methods used to make Watney Red Barrel are particularly helpful to modern brewers looking to make the best possible beer. I'd suggest this stat from a mere 7 years ago is perhaps more helpful, bearing in mind that Otter is barely 5% of UK malting barley :

https://beertoday.co.uk/2016/09/05/maris-otter-champion-beer-0916/
I've not seen a more recent update so I suspect the ratio isn't quite as favourable as it was then, there's only been 4 CBOBs since 2016 and two were dark beers where there's less benefit, the only "classic" bitter CBOB since then has been Shere Drop - which uses Otter.
 
Northern_Brewer said:
I'd suggest this stat from a mere 7 years ago is perhaps more helpful, bearing in mind that Otter is barely 5% of UK malting barley :

https://beertoday.co.uk/2016/09/05/maris-otter-champion-beer-0916/
I've not seen a more recent update so I suspect the ratio isn't quite as favourable as it was then, there's only been 4 CBOBs since 2016 and two were dark beers where there's less benefit, the only "classic" bitter CBOB since then has been Shere Drop - which uses Otter.
Click to expand...
I'm a bit loathe to use either Warminster or Fawcett MO in my stouts and porters, though one of them is a Taddy Porter clone and it calls for MO - and I suspect, Sam Smith does actually use MO here? At any rate, have several planned - the Taddy, the 1890 Truman RIS from Ron Pattinson, and, coming, an entire from Graham Wheeler's first book. Likely also the 1915 Courage and 1924 RIS's as well, also from Ron Pattinson's book. Guinness draft. An impression of Hook Norton's Twelve Days.

Have loved Golden Promise in some beers I've now made with it (it was wholly new to me prior to coming back recently).

All this said - looking for pale malt suggestions precisely for these darker ales. Hate to "waste" the Warminster or Fawcett under the dark and heavy cloak of the other ingredients. We do carry Munton MO at our store.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
I think the gist of it is that the barm drops down in to the beer from the upper trough,
and is then pumped up from the bottom at set intervals to repeat the cycle.
Mixed with krausen forming this also serves to aereate the yeast as Yorkshire type yeasts require loads of oxygen.
Click to expand...
Thanks Erik, I'm probably overthinking it because obviously, er, it works. I do know of the critical need for O2 which this helps provide, but was overthinking in terms of how much yeast is left suspended in the recirc'ed wort as it drains from the top chamber.

I just rouse the whole thing, dipping a ladle down just into the wort then pouring it from 6-10" above the fermenter; or using the ladle to sort of "drown" the barm, pushing it down forcefully and really mixing it up. All this for a few minutes. So far that's for about the first 72-80 hours and I'm guided by the thickness and quality of the barm (as well as gravity reading(s) ) to tell me when fermentation is starting to slow, which is when I both harvest and stop rousing.

But now I see how different this is from the real thing. Curious how the 2-chamber possibility like @McMullan built (I'd love to build that - didn't see a build thread?) results, vis-a-vis the simple rousing thing I and others do.
 
For an even simpler Yorkshire Square cheat, could you simply aerate the wort of a few minutes a set number of times per day for the first 48-72 hours? Would this give something like the Yorkshire Square yeast enough oxygen?

I'm not looking for perfection, but an easy way to get part way down the rabbit hole before deciding to go whole hog. My half dozen experiments with Yorkshire Square when it was release from the vault strain was all over the place, and ranged from not very good to POF positive that the brew club crew thought it was not great a saison yeast.
 
A Yorkshire square, even at home-brew scale, is the most effective way to rouse yeast back into the fermenting wort and knock out quite a lot of the dissolved CO2 potentially reducing stress on the yeast cells. I don’t recognise the logic of actually aerating fermenting wort once fermentation peaks. It makes no biological sense, to me. I think it was just a reasonable (but wrong) assumption some brewers made back in the day. A standard (single vessel) square fermenter is the next best open system for English ales, it fails to capture yeast automatically and isn’t designed for such vigorous rousing.
 
Gadjobrinus said:
I realized later last night that I'd never really thought about this - given that this isn't merely recirculating one vessel, but this setup - how does the wort actually ferment well, when you have a highly flocculant yeast that is more or less partitioned between the two vessels?
Click to expand...
It ferments better because recirculating rouses the yeast back into the fermenting wort in the FV. When they blow out into the yeast trough and flocculate in sufficient quantity, a few hours or so later, they get roused back in again. And so on. It gets them off the bottom of the FV too.
 
McMullan said:
A Yorkshire square, even at home-brew scale, is the most effective way to rouse yeast back into the fermenting wort and knock out quite a lot of the dissolved CO2 potentially reducing stress on the yeast cells. I don’t recognise the logic of actually aerating fermenting wort once fermentation peaks. It makes no biological sense, to me. I think it was just a reasonable (but wrong) assumption some brewers made back in the day. A standard (single vessel) square fermenter is the next best open system for English ales, it fails to capture yeast automatically and isn’t designed for such vigorous rousing.
Click to expand...
But getting some aeration during that process is without doubt.
And isn't the point of a Yorkshire square or manually rousing such yeasts that you need to do it because those types of yeasts otherwise floccs before they're done wich results in under-attenuation and possibly some weird flavours?
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
But getting some aeration during that process is without doubt.
Click to expand...
Maybe a little, but not as much as assumed. The yeast don’t need it. The wort is recirculated occasionally and only for a minute or so during peak fermentation, when most CO2 is evolving at a high rate and being knocked out of the wort too - shielding the fermenting beer from air/O2.
Erik the Anglophile said:
And isn't the point of a Yorkshire square or manually rousing such yeasts that you need to do it because those types of yeasts otherwise floccs before they're done wich results in under-attenuation and possibly some weird flavours?
Click to expand...
Yes, they flocculate so readily one strain can behave like two, sitting either underneath the wort or floating on top of it (which provides another barrier against air). Without rousing, things can get quite sluggish and under attenuate with a less balanced beer. The biggest ‘off flavour’ for me is a yeast profile accentuated out of balance due to under pitching. Under pitching English yeast is a weird home brew thing that makes ‘home brew’ stand out like a sore thumb, imo. Nothing like commercial traditional English ales at all. They pitch at a much, much higher rate. With more delicate, lower gravity ales, a sluggish fermentation delaying things risks partial infections introducing potential off flavours knocking things out of balance too. But that goes for any sluggish fermentation, including those due to under-pitching practices. Regardless, we want to get the fermentation started and done as soon as. And a Yorkshire square is how it’s done with traditional Yorkshire yeast.
 
McMullan said:
A Yorkshire square, even at home-brew scale, is the most effective way to rouse yeast back into the fermenting wort and knock out quite a lot of the dissolved CO2 potentially reducing stress on the yeast cells. I don’t recognise the logic of actually aerating fermenting wort once fermentation peaks. It makes no biological sense, to me. I think it was just a reasonable (but wrong) assumption some brewers made back in the day. A standard (single vessel) square fermenter is the next best open system for English ales, it fails to capture yeast automatically and isn’t designed for such vigorous rousing.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all this and I'm truly impressed with your build (and coming to know more of your experience and knowledge - here and mentioned on British site(s)). Do you have a build thread somewhere?

A Yorkshire square, even at home-brew scale, is the most effective way to rouse yeast back into the fermenting wort and knock out quite a lot of the dissolved CO2 potentially reducing stress on the yeast cells.
Click to expand...

You mean, as you've done, right - literally, a true Yorkshire square, but on the home-scale?

I don’t recognise the logic of actually aerating fermenting wort once fermentation peaks. It makes no biological sense, to me. I think it was just a reasonable (but wrong) assumption some brewers made back in the day.
Click to expand...

So far, I rouse 3X daily for a few minutes each time, watching the barm; and stopping once it shows sign of ebbing. In other words, I don't stop at peak fermentation, but after, very soon after, when the first sign of slowing down takes place. So far, that has been at about 72-80 hours post-pitching. I should also mention I'm kind of amazed how quickly these beers have fermented out, and equally pleased how they're tasting - esters and fruitiness, but balanced and pleasurable. But always up for learning and improving - and also, this isn't inconsequential - tapping as best as possible time-honored traditional practice. That's really important to me.

A standard (single vessel) square fermenter is the next best open system for English ales, it fails to capture yeast automatically and isn’t designed for such vigorous rousing.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that an open square, by it's geometry, sort of helps constrain a "too-radical" hand-rousing, that can happen with a typical round, open fermenter? And can you please explain a bit what you mean by "fails to capture yeast automatically...."?

Someone somewhere, can't recall if it was on here or another site, built himself a nice little square fermenter, wood-insulated, if I recall correctly. Be nice to find the thread again, if anyone remembers.

Many thanks.
 

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