English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[balrog]

need to figure out what to mount it to when you don't have a bar?

First you go grab yourself a random piece of figured walnut, about 20 feet long, maybe live edge, highly polished, and you build yourself a small room around it that will hold, say, you and 36 of your best friends...

 

[Miraculix]

First you go grab yourself a random piece of figured walnut, about 20 feet long, maybe live edge, highly polished, and you build yourself a small room around it that will hold, say, you and 36 of your best friends...

Decent advice!

 

[worlddivides]

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).

 

[DuncB]

I wouldn't think verdant would be to style.
I've not had good experience with Windsor, your FG with it will be high. If that suits your style then it's perfect.

 

[worlddivides]

I wouldn't think verdant would be to style.
I've not had good experience with Windsor, your FG with it will be high. If that suits your style then it's perfect.

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. And there are some proponents of using Verdant in traditional English ales, though I've personally only ever used it in the more common usage: hazy IPAs.

I've had good experience with Windsor, but it's only been in extremely malty styles or in co-pitches (such as where I fermented with Windsor before adding lactobacillus, pediococcus, Brettanomyces, and so on). I've heard a lot of people like to co-pitch Windsor and Nottingham. Never done it myself, but I'm guessing it's to get the esters from Windsor but the attenuation of Nottingham.

I do think Windsor could be a bit too high of an FG, even if I mash lower than I've been planning, considering the crystal and chocolate. If I don't use the Windsor here, I'll probably use it on a dark mild sometime in the future.

But the key question is what yeast I should use, not which one I shouldn't. Should I just use S-04 like I usually do?

 

[Miraculix]

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. And there are some proponents of using Verdant in traditional English ales, though I've personally only ever used it in the more common usage: hazy IPAs.

I've had good experience with Windsor, but it's only been in extremely malty styles or in co-pitches (such as where I fermented with Windsor before adding lactobacillus, pediococcus, Brettanomyces, and so on). I've heard a lot of people like to co-pitch Windsor and Nottingham. Never done it myself, but I'm guessing it's to get the esters from Windsor but the attenuation of Nottingham.

I do think Windsor could be a bit too high of an FG, even if I mash lower than I've been planning, considering the crystal and chocolate. If I don't use the Windsor here, I'll probably use it on a dark mild sometime in the future.

But the key question is what yeast I should use, not which one I shouldn't. Should I just use S-04 like I usually do?

If you are happy with it so far, use it. I would do so.

You could try Nottingham, the result will be fairly similar to s04 though. Maybe a tad bit more attenuation with the exact same recipe. I like both, so it's a coin flip for me if you want to try something new, use notti. It will be clean and relatively dry. It's a great yeast, but so is s04 as well.

 

[worlddivides]

If you are happy with it so far, use it. I would do so.

You could try Nottingham, the result will be fairly similar to s04 though. Maybe a tad bit more attenuation with the exact same recipe. I like both, so it's a coin flip for me if you want to try something new, use notti. It will be clean and relatively dry. It's a great yeast, but so is s04 as well.

Thanks. Notty would be new for me in a brown ale. I've used it in English IPAs and Russian Imperial Stouts before. And it does get pretty dry. That wouldn't be bad here, though.

I'm kind of leaning towards just using S-04 like usual and saving the Windsor for a dark mild and the Nottingham for a bitter (and the Verdant for a modern American IPA or pale ale).

 

[Miraculix]

Thanks. Notty would be new for me in a brown ale. I've used it in English IPAs and Russian Imperial Stouts before. And it does get pretty dry. That wouldn't be bad here, though.

I'm kind of leaning towards just using S-04 like usual and saving the Windsor for a dark mild and the Nottingham for a bitter (and the Verdant for a modern American IPA or pale ale).

Sounds like a decent plan to me!

 

[DuncB]

Could save the Windsor for a low alcohol beer!! Very popular for the 1% beers on the LA brewing website.

 

[worlddivides]

Could save the Windsor for a low alcohol beer!! Very popular for the 1% beers on the LA brewing website.

I'm thinking I won't go below 2.5%, but I do think I'll probably use it for a beer that's under 4%, maybe in the 2.5% to 3.7% range?

 

[tracer bullet]

1098

For me, this one was my favorite. I've got a brown ale recipe I've made about 10 times over the last few years and I've decided that after 1098 I'm done playing with the yeasts. My opinion is that it's let the grains do their thing, and not add a layer of flavor on top of them.

Obviously it's a personal opinion, and that could make 1098 sound boring, but for me it's exactly what I wanted.

Or, if it is adding a flavor, it's one I don't detect or my brain thinks inherently belongs in a brown ale.

 

[Zadkiel]

Are you actually trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style? if it's the former then you want the Nottingham, it will give you a drier finish which is essential for the English Ale style, and give a small amount of fruit and esters, compared to S-04 which gives no esters and more fruit & floral.

Nothing wrong with doing a conversion - my last brew was a UK-style version of a Cali Common, using substitutions for the malts and yeast, and I love it, but I'd have made different decisions if I was trying to accurately duplicate a US beer.

edit: I refer you to this post by the MUCH more knowledgeable Northern Brewer on the subject, he talks in detail about dryness & yeast characters in English Ales here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/tasty-beer-with-less-alcohol.737315/#post-10487411

 

[Colindo]

@Zadkiel Out of interest, why do you differentiate between esters and fruity or floral aroma components?

 

[Zadkiel]

Honestly, I just know it tastes different, an S-04 brewed beer doesn't taste quite like the ales I've drunk my whole life here in the UK. I just googled the flavour profiles of them to look up the difference and wrote down what the supposed differences are to try and put some reason as to why that might be, and to sound like I know what I'm talking about

 

[worlddivides]

Are you actually trying to make an accurate English Ale, or making a US beer in an English Ale style? if it's the former then you want the Nottingham, it will give you a drier finish which is essential for the English Ale style, and give a small amount of fruit and esters, compared to S-04 which gives no esters and more fruit & floral.

Nothing wrong with doing a conversion - my last brew was a UK-style version of a Cali Common, using substitutions for the malts and yeast, and I love it, but I'd have made different decisions if I was trying to accurately duplicate a US beer.

edit: I refer you to this post by the MUCH more knowledgeable Northern Brewer on the subject, he talks in detail about dryness & yeast characters in English Ales here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/tasty-beer-with-less-alcohol.737315/#post-10487411

I'm REALLY confused. 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, but all the ale strains I mentioned are English ale strains (and on top of that, all of the grains I'm using are from English maltsters: Muntons, Simpsons, and Crisp). S-04 is derived from the Whitbread strain, which was the biggest brewery in both England and in the world for a very long time. And while it is considered a somewhat clean strain, it has WAY more esters than Nottingham, which is arguably the cleanest English ale strain widely available.

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. I find in general English ales are way maltier and less dry than ales from most other regions. Even English IPAs, which are one of the driest English styles I can think of, are much maltier than American IPAs. So I'm pretty confused here.

 

[Zadkiel]

Didn't notice until after I posted that your location is Tokyo - I've just got in the mindset when posting here that I'm talking to US-ians, sorry about that.

As to the rest of your points - I disagree to all of it, especially regarding dryness - I refer you to the post I linked, as he says it a lot better than I could.

But hey, life would be very dull if everyone's opinions was the same. I gave my opinion, you're free to ignore it if you disagree, which you clearly do.

 

[Colindo]

@worlddivides You're mostly right except that it is actually true for British beers to have a comparably high attenuation around 80% for most classic British style. An exception is the sweet Brown Ale from London, but I understand you're making the Northern variety of the style. So a decent attenuation of at least 75% is called for. I would not use Windsor in that case. But S-04, which gives a bit more esters than Nottingham but is still pretty neutral, is a good choice.

 

[worlddivides]

@worlddivides You're mostly right except that it is actually true for British beers to have a comparably high attenuation around 80% for most classic British style. An exception is the sweet Brown Ale from London, but I understand you're making the Northern variety of the style. So a decent attenuation of at least 75% is called for. I would not use Windsor in that case. But S-04, which gives a bit more esters than Nottingham but is still pretty neutral, is a good choice.

For sure. And I agree that Windsor would be too low of attenuation to be in line with the Northern English variety of brown ale that my recipe pretty much entails, so S-04, which is the main yeast I've used for brown ales so far, seems like it might be the best choice here (at least, with me limiting my choices to dry yeast).

 

[worlddivides]

Didn't notice until after I posted that your location is Tokyo - I've just got in the mindset when posting here that I'm talking to US-ians, sorry about that.

As to the rest of your points - I disagree to all of it, especially regarding dryness - I refer you to the post I linked, as he says it a lot better than I could.

But hey, life would be very dull if everyone's opinions was the same. I gave my opinion, you're free to ignore it if you disagree, which you clearly do.

I'm not even sure where that whole "dryness" topic came from. I never even mentioned dryness or sweetness in my posts. I can only guess that maybe it came from one of the English strains I mentioned, Windsor, having low attenuation (though I mentioned co-pitching it with Nottingham to get Windsor's esters with Nottingham's attenuation). But even then, none of the other strains I mentioned had especially low attenuation: S-04 (77-82%), Nottingham (78-86%), Verdant (77-82%), London Ale III (70-75%), WLP002 (63-70%), 1098 (73-75%). Actually, WLP002 is a lot lower than I thought... though that wasn't one I was considering using in this beer...

 

[Zadkiel]

I'm not even sure where that whole "dryness" topic came from. I never even mentioned dryness or sweetness in my posts.

You were asking for opinions on the different yeasts for an English Ale, and you seemed to have narrowed it down to Nottingham or S-04, my opinion was that Nottingham was a better choice, because it would result in a drier beer and in my opinion, yeast flavour profile too.

But I've clearly pissed you off for some reason. You asked for opinion, and I thought as someone who's been drinking English Ale as my daily for nearly 40 years, that maybe you might want mine. If you disagree so vehemently, I'd prefer if you just ignored me and moved on, I didn't come here for a fight.

 

[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.