English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[Erik the Anglophile]

Darker invert sugars thin out a beer a little, but not as much as one would think, also leaves a nice toffee/butterscotch-ish flavour that you can't really get any other way. Can replace crystal completely if used at around 10% in a bitter.
Amber or brown malt ( the real deal sourced from UK) can definitely be used in a bitter in small amounts for a little depth.
Yeast wise any English strain would work, Verdant, lallemand esb, Windsor etc if you prefer dry. Don't ferment cold to try to subdue all the ester character as some USians tend to do, kinda defeats the purpose of using an English strain.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Before my time, unfortunately I have never had it. Probably why @Northern_Brewer was never really interesting to me as a hop. But maybe I should try it out in an ordinary bitter or in the Wicked Ale clone

Northern Brewer is the required/signature hop in a California Common? Like Anchor Steam. I believe.

 

[ba-brewer]

(sniffs)

Well I do use this stuff sometimes, that could be it?

https://www.originalsource.co.uk/products/originals/mint-shower-gel/

Don't use that stuff, but would that be something you use late boil or does it require a dry hop type approach?

Yep. I did some darker beers last year with NB FWH and bittering.. A little mint came through. Was really nice in a dry stout. Not a menthol hit, but very refreshing.

I’ve seen Northern Brewer (the hop) described as having mint notes.

I did know northern brewer does have mint as a descriptor, but don't think I have actually noticed it personally.

I would say the flavor is like what @DBhomebrew says he get from NB, the herbal grassy portion of mint with a slight touch of the menthol component.

When I first noticed the flavor and did some looking I only found like three hops, Northern Brewer, Perle and another I dont recall. I did another look and found a place that listed 19 hops that had mint as a descriptor, but bramling cross was not on the list.
Mint Flavored Hops - Beer Maverick

As a side note I fermented the main batch with WLP013 London Ale and a small portion of the same wort with wyeast 3655 schelde ale yeast. The portion fermented with 3655 does/did not have any mint flavor or aroma.

I have some hops left and will try them in a simple beer to see if the flavor comes through again.

 

[Franktalk]

-also i used a balanced water profile on a recent Bronze medal ESB that was described as a little too malty for a strong bitter, should i lean towards a little bitter on the water? Water was adjusted on Brewers Friend. I used S04 and i'm not sure i loved it.

I find that S04 does accentuate the malt, which is a good thing IMHO. ESBs should be malty and finish dry. Seeing you got a bronze, maybe a slight shift toward "bitter" or dry would put you in silver or gold territory. Small changes to improve what is already good!

 

[WesBrew]

Darker invert sugars thin out a beer a little, but not as much as one would think, also leaves a nice toffee/butterscotch-ish flavour that you can't really get any other way. Can replace crystal completely if used at around 10% in a bitter.
Amber or brown malt ( the real deal sourced from UK) can definitely be used in a bitter in small amounts for a little depth.
Yeast wise any English strain would work, Verdant, lallemand esb, Windsor etc if you prefer dry. Don't ferment cold to try to subdue all the ester character as some USians tend to do, kinda defeats the purpose of using an English strain.

Ok thanks. Yes that is a flavor I wasn’t sure how to get. . Is that boiled 60 minutes?
I pretty much only use WL liquid yeast. 005,002. Might try that pub yeast from imperial.

 

[WesBrew]

I find that S04 does accentuate the malt, which is a good thing IMHO. ESBs should be malty and finish dry. Seeing you got a bronze, maybe a slight shift toward "bitter" or dry would put you in silver or gold territory. Small changes to improve what is already good!

It stalled out on me a bit at .015 with .054OG. Funny I brewed an export stout just before it , which also just got a bronze in a Christmas themed comp, It finished high at .022. I poured the esb on the S04 yeast from the stout

 

[Knox]

Northern Brewer is the required/signature hop in a California Common? Like Anchor Steam. I believe.

Oh I did not know that! I had a few of those while in SF. Delisious beer! I haven't been looking to recreate the beer so I didn't look at what goes into it. :')

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Northern Brewer is the required/signature hop in a California Common? Like Anchor Steam. I believe.

Although it's a bit of a contrived link, NB was bred in 1934, long after the historical steam beers had been and gone. But her grandfather OY1 was a wild hop that allegedly came from Russian River in the 1920s. She's not contributing huge amounts of flavour to Anchor Steam though, beyond bittering.

Don't use that stuff, but would that be something you use late boil or does it require a dry hop type approach?

I don't recommend using it with boiling water, or indeed much above 40°C/104°F!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

-i've never used sugars, are they drying out the beer? adding any flavor?

They help balance it, and particularly for darker beers like mild can be an important part of the flavour.

was also kicking around Admiral as a late hop in some of them but haven't seen it mentioned here.

It's primarily a bittering hop, it's the British equivalent of Magnum or something. It gives a pleasant but fairly subtle oranginess as a late hop - if that's what you're going for then you're better off with something like First Gold, but it's fine to use up any Admiral you have around like that.

would some victory be out of place in a bitter or mild?

It's not something that's ever really used in the UK, but mixing some victory with 2-row is a US hack to approximate British pale malts.

-also i used a balanced water profile on a recent Bronze medal ESB that was described as a little too malty for a strong bitter, should i lean towards a little bitter on the water? Water was adjusted on Brewers Friend. I used S04 and i'm not sure i loved it.

It's simplistic to think of water in terms of "bitter" vs "malty". These profiles from Murphys, one of the main British brewing labs, can be considered representative of water for traditional styles in modern commercial brewing, but it gets more complicated once you get onto the fusion you're seeing with trad styles meeting New World hops. And then there's also a certain amount of regional variation just to further complicate things...

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...vous-about-mineral-levels.94723/#post-1044916

 

[bwible]

it gets more complicated once you get onto the fusion you're seeing with trad styles meeting New World hops.

I guess I’m somewhat a traditionalist, though not to the levels of CAMRA, etc. I would never even think of putting American hops into British beer. And there are so many new hops out of Australia and such now that nobody can keep up. The hops are a big part of what makes Bitter and Pale what they are. Using American hops just turns it into American Pale Ale, which is something completely different. I guess it goes to show people always want what they can’t have.

 

[WesBrew]

@Northern brewer. Thanks for the input. I saw admiral described as marmalade somewhere and slight orange elsewhere. Sounds like it’s not worth the bother
- those are pretty generic water descriptions I gave but I don’t get deep enough into water chemistry to target water profiles. I have good brewing water in Florida and just make minor salt adjustments. I’ll go back and compare my adj water link to the link you provided though

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Using American hops just turns it into American Pale Ale, which is something completely different. I guess it goes to show people always want what they can’t have.

No - it just shows that beer is always evolving and taking on inspiration from elsewhere and then tries to adapt to local circumstances. They're no more an APA than American Ambers are a kind of bitter, or steam beer is a helles. You don't get APA on cask, APA is not usually made with British malts, APAs don't generally get down to the high 3%'s. New-wave bitters are often all three. And the balance is different to an APA

Perhaps they're best explained through the eyes of a USian :

What’s This? “Juicy Bitter” on Cask? — Beervana (and following)
The remarkable thing is that it managed to create the kind of balance I’ve never encountered in a session IPA. Putting it on cask allowed the malt to emerge, both as a flavor note and textural element. Session IPAs are comparatively top-heavy: all hops with nothing underneath to support them....This “juicy bitter” solved the riddle by going on cask.

The presence of malt is what makes this beer sing, but I suspect we can taste and feel it on our tongue largely because the hops additions have been dialed back. On keg, I wouldn’t be surprised if everything seemed a bit pallid and sad. But putting it on cask, serving at 55 degrees, and allowing those hop aromatics to blossom, changes everything. You get intense juiciness, but not just juiciness. Less hops on cask means more flavor—of both malt and hop.

 

[bwible]

Yeah we do have session IPA here, some of which are very low alcohol. No, American beers are generally not served on cask. Some of the breweries here do use British malts and some of the APAs and IPAs here have British hops in the mix. A local very large brewery near here likes EKG and uses it in their American IPA.

Juicy is usually the word everybody uses here for NEIPA these days. The other word on every label description now is “dank”. The beers that have no hops added at all during the boil and everything goes in one giant charge at flameout. They are everywhere and I’ve not been a fan. I generally avoid beers that have those words in the description.

We have a problem here with the beers not being properly labelled and more and more of them are sold in cans now as canning machines have gotten cheap enough that every mom and pop microbrewery has one. So you can’t see what you’re buying. I don’t want my beer to look like a glass of orange juice and if you ask for a clear IPA in a restaurant here some waitress or bartender is going to have to go find a manager because they don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sometimes I wish beer would evolve a bit less.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Without beers evolving we wouldn't have milds and bitters. After all mild as we now it today has only really been around since the late ww1 and interwar period, and Bitters since around the late 1800's.
I get what you mean though, but that's why we homebrew, I also try to keep it traditional and to brew most my beers as what I imagine you would get in a pub when you ordered a brown, bitter, mild, porter etc in the good old days.
Evolving is good, as long as tradition is still remembered.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Yeah we do have session IPA here, some of which are very low alcohol. No, American beers are generally not served on cask. Some of the breweries here do use British malts and some of the APAs and IPAs here have British hops in the mix. A local very large brewery near here likes EKG and uses it in their American IPA.

Juicy is usually the word everybody uses here for NEIPA these days. The other word on every label description now is “dank”. The beers that have no hops added at all during the boil and everything goes in one giant charge at flameout. They are everywhere and I’ve not been a fan. I generally avoid beers that have those words in the description.

We have a problem here with the beers not being properly labelled and more and more of them are sold in cans now as canning machines have gotten cheap enough that every mom and pop microbrewery has one. So you can’t see what you’re buying. I don’t want my beer to look like a glass of orange juice and if you ask for a clear IPA in a restaurant here some waitress or bartender is going to have to go find a manager because they don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sometimes I wish beer would evolve a bit less.

Maybe Clear IPA will be the next provisional style. Until someone says, 'Hang on, we used to have this before!"

Same is happening in the UK, especially in urban areas. Pubs are closing and craft bars multiplying. Lots of hazy fruit juice. Often badly presented, in my opinion. It's driven prices up a lot too. When I visit less urban places and get a pint of cask in a pub, it's half the price. I'm seriously considering moving out of the city!

I do like US hops and lots of English beers use them now. A welcome addition. NZ hops too obviously. The hops we import have given brewers a much broader palette to work from and many have used that really well. UK beers are much more varied and interesting than they were, hybrid I guess, with the inclusion of hops from far away.

 

[Miraculix]

I just don't care for these hybrids. I tried a few, but every time I had an "oldschool" English cask bitter, the sun was shining. Even the beers that I did not care so much from the bottle were really really nice once they came out of these English cask pumping stations of which my German brain is still trying to digest their very existence. For example Fuller's London pride. Meeeh... from the bottle, moooooooooore! From the tap! Proper job, same story. I miss pubs

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I just don't care for these hybrids. I tried a few, but every time I had an "oldschool" English cask bitter, the sun was shining. Even the beers that I did not care so much from the bottle were really really nice once they came out of these English cask pumping stations of which my German brain is still trying to digest their very existence. For example Fuller's London pride. Meeeh... from the bottle, moooooooooore! From the tap! Proper job, same story. I miss pubs

Yeah it's all personal taste. Proper Job contains US hops though!

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

To be fair many older us hops don't taste that far from uk hops. The modern catpiss ones I can't stand though.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Yeah we do have session IPA here, some of which are very low alcohol. No, American beers are generally not served on cask. Some of the breweries here do use British malts and some of the APAs and IPAs here have British hops in the mix. A local very large brewery near here likes EKG and uses it in their American IPA.

There's always outliers - but eg Untappd's top 5 session IPAs are all 5% (or within a whisker of it), whereas many British pubs won't even put on anything over 4.5% on cask, and the median for the British beers we're talking about is somewhere near 4%. Cask on its own makes a huge difference, but I'd agree with Jeff that the difference is that they're not just about the hops, there's more of a balance when you've got characterful British malts and yeast, and lower carbonation, and they tend to have less of the stupid amounts of dry hops.

There's similarities - but we can allow different traditions to approach things differently, in the same way that eg lagers and saisons have many ingredients in common, but the result is rather different.

 

[eshea3]

I guess I’m somewhat a traditionalist, though not to the levels of CAMRA, etc. I would never even think of putting American hops into British beer. And there are so many new hops out of Australia and such now that nobody can keep up. The hops are a big part of what makes Bitter and Pale what they are. Using American hops just turns it into American Pale Ale, which is something completely different. I guess it goes to show people always want what they can’t have.

Many of the newer British hop varieties, e.g. Jester, Olicana, Harlequin, are pursuing those "American" flavor notes. While not for traditional bitters, very many brewers are using those and American hops in cask beer. The story of beer in Britain is one of constant evolution.

 

[Miraculix]

Yeah it's all personal taste. Proper Job contains US hops though!

The Point is that it tastes British.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

The Point is that it tastes British.

I think it's a spectrum. It has American Chinook, Cascade and Willamette hops in it! And I think you can tell. But it's not overtly American, it's a very English kind of beer, especially on cask. This is what I mean, there are English beers using American hops that are not really out of style. There are others where the American hop character is more pronounced.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I guess I’m somewhat a traditionalist, though not to the levels of CAMRA, etc. I would never even think of putting American hops into British beer. And there are so many new hops out of Australia and such now that nobody can keep up. The hops are a big part of what makes Bitter and Pale what they are. Using American hops just turns it into American Pale Ale, which is something completely different. I guess it goes to show people always want what they can’t have.

I like cask pales served in England that contain hops from USA, NZ and Aus, but I also love traditional English bitters and golden ales etc. I like beers that mix English and imported hops.

Personal taste. I like variety. I like the balance of English cask ales. Even where US hops are used, they are not used the way they are in craft IPAs, they are used like they are in English bitters, pretty much, and you get a really nice balance of hops, malts and yeast in a cask conditioned context. Amarillo has proved really successful in the format, for one. Plenty of others obviously. Cascade of course, which started the trend here.

 

[D.B.Moody]

Here's a memory of mine about variety, cask ale, and personal taste:
In 1988, on our first trip to the UK, I was falling in love with the house bitters in each of the pubs we visited each night. One evening the tour bus driver came into the pub and I bought him a pint. He ordered a "bitter and light." I inquired about what that was. He explained that no place could brew a truly good ale outside his local area, so he had to cut the house bitters with a national. I don't recall where he called home.

 

[InspectorJon]

I'll guess that this is a good place to ask this question. I have been itching to brew an English Ale. I have read a bunch of Ron Pattinson's Shut Up About blog and find "Enzymic Malt" to be a common ingredient. A google search turns up minimal and conflicting information about this malt. Some say it is acidulated malt used to lower mash pH and others say it is malt high in enzyme content. Both are presumably intended to improve mash efficiency. Is there any definitive answer to this or will this simply be a continuation of different opinions? It is used in such small quantities I wonder if it makes any significant difference. For what it is worth to the conversation, my local water is very soft, almost like RO water with virtually no alkalinity.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I'll guess that this is a good place to ask this question. I have been itching to brew an English Ale. I have read a bunch of Ron Pattinson's Shut Up About blog and find "Enzymic Malt" to be a common ingredient. A google search turns up minimal and conflicting information about this malt. Some say it is acidulated malt used to lower mash pH and others say it is malt high in enzyme content. Both are presumably intended to improve mash efficiency. Is there any definitive answer to this or will this simply be a continuation of different opinions? It is used in such small quantities I wonder if it makes any significant difference. For what it is worth to the conversation, my local water is very soft, almost like RO water with virtually no alkalinity.

Either way, it's an adjustment tool. To be used as needed. With modern malt there's no need for extra enzymes and you need to adjust pH to your water anyway.

For a British approach to water adjustment and mineralization, check out this very recent thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/fullers-water-profile-200-sulphate-zero-chloride.697864/
FWIW, I've got extremely soft water too. Budweiser water, it's right up the road. This is what I've got going for the 1939 Fullers OBE I'm boiling right now. To get it, I used zero acid and reserved some of the salts for the kettle.

Source
Ca 27.7
Mg 6.75
Na 5.15
Cl 12.4
SO4 37.4
HCO3 71.7

Target
Ca 166
Mg 7
Na 34
Cl 136
SO4 263
HCO3 18
Mash pH 5.45

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'll guess that this is a good place to ask this question. I have been itching to brew an English Ale. I have read a bunch of Ron Pattinson's Shut Up About blog and find "Enzymic Malt" to be a common ingredient. A google search turns up minimal and conflicting information about this malt. Some say it is acidulated malt used to lower mash pH and others say it is malt high in enzyme content.

Sometimes known as Dixon's Patent Malt - the earliest patent seems to be from 1929 and the idea seems to have been to use acid to release the contents of the seed to give a higher yield of fermentables and enzyme. So you can understand the confusion, although they seem to have later done a patent specifically for acid malt for the German market. There was a bit of a fad for using Dixon's malt in smaller British breweries in the mid 20th century.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1914244A/en?assignee=Enzymic+Malt
But Ron's general advice seems to be to just ignore it and replace with pale malt.

 

[Miraculix]

I think it's a spectrum. It has American Chinook, Cascade and Willamette hops in it! And I think you can tell. But it's not overtly American, it's a very English kind of beer, especially on cask. This is what I mean, there are English beers using American hops that are not really out of style. There are others where the American hop character is more pronounced.

I agree. I also didn't want to say that American hops shouldn't be used at all in British beers. But it should be in a way that complements the beer, rather than overtaking the whole thing.

If the American hop character is too strong, the beer becomes an American pale in my head. It just lost it's Britishness, if such a thing exists. Camden pale ale is on the edge of this for example, but I really like it. All the Beavertown beers are not British to me anymore, but I like them. Brewdog... There are more, but I forgot the names. I'm trying to figure out this one brewery, the name sounds Indian or something like that... Jaipur, jalipur.... What was it?

 

[cyberbackpacker]

...Jaipur, jalipur.... What was it?

Correct, Jaipur by Thornbridge Brewery.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I agree. I also didn't want to say that American hops shouldn't be used at all in British beers. But it should be in a way that complements the beer, rather than overtaking the whole thing.

If the American hop character is too strong, the beer becomes an American pale in my head. It just lost it's Britishness, if such a thing exists. Camden pale ale is on the edge of this for example, but I really like it. All the Beavertown beers are not British to me anymore, but I like them. Brewdog... There are more, but I forgot the names. I'm trying to figure out this one brewery, the name sounds Indian or something like that... Jaipur, jalipur.... What was it?

I really like cask. Some cask ales use American hops in a subtle way and that is good. Others use them less subtly and that is also good, and can be a revelation. English yeast and malts, fruity hops, cask conditioning. When it's done well it's lush.

Camden pale is not English in style. Modelled on SNPA, surely. Jaipur really isn't English In style. It's crossover, I'd say, with a big American influence.