English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[Northern_Brewer]

I've looked at some of the Untappds, going back to previous discussions, The Darkness is a mild from Break Rock in Quincy,MA rated at 3.981 and Addison's is a bitter rated at 3.86 from Brato in Brighton,MA - those ratings seem high by the standards of the styles here, I suspect they're benefiting from a bit of rarity value but who knows, they really might be better than just about any mild/bitter from the UK...

Tributary is owned by Tod Mott, one of the greatest American brewers who makes solid traditional styles. Dutchess is up and coming and highly regarded for their traditional styles. Jacks Abby House Lager is in constant rotation in my fridge.

So. Tod Mott deserves the hype, the Lowlands was great, one of my favourite beers of the day. But oh dear, the rest were a bit of a mess. That Break Rock "mild" for instance, drank more like a baby imperial stout, I don't know what the attenuation was - 60%? Anyway, it was nothing like a mild. Same with the Topstone "bitter" from Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT) - 5.9% is not a "hearty pub-style ale", and the structure was just all wrong, it's like someone's only experience of British bitter was an old bottle of Fuller's ESB mixed with an Amarillo-heavy WCIPA. It was kinda thin, then you had a rush of very "narrow" bitterness, overlain by a clumsy oranginess. It was a total mess.

The Brato Addison's XXtra from Boston was a bit better, at least it wasn't as thin but again it just felt rather uncoordinated. Lost Harbor from Vitamin Sea (Weymouth, MA) also didn't really work - like the Break Rock it was kinda sweet and boozy, and had a wave of oranginess but it all seemed rather disconnected. To be fair, the Gritty McDuff's Best (Maine) was something like right, but Fuggles-y which is less my kind of thing.

Obviously it's a bit unfair as just across the hall you had things like Shere Drop (technically still the Champion Beer of Britain) and the Anspach & Hobday ESB in prime condition on handpull with proper cooling, whereas the US bar was on gravity with cooling jackets that to be honest were struggling to cope with the heat. But at the same time they really showed what was lacking in most of the US efforts - balance. I know I keep going on about it, but balance is perhaps the defining characteristic of British beers, and it's what makes them so drinkable. Mott gets it, and arguably his "American Brown" was a lot more like bitter than some of the beers sold as such.

It's about integrating bitterness and maltiness and yeast character and carbonation and alcohol, and if you push too far in one direction, it really breaks the overall experience. So part of the problem is that USians think that it's OK to "just nudge up a bit" the ABV, or push for a one-note oranginess or whatever, and break the balance. And it doesn't help that their model seems to be Fuller's ESB from a tourist pub in London, which in many ways is something of an outlier. Yes there are beers here that follow that model - but something like Taylor's Landlord would be more representative of huge chunks of the UK. And attenuation here really isn't as low as USians think - even northwest milds which tend to be on the sweet side might typically have apparent attenuation of 79%.

The Airline Scottish Export (Amherst, ME) wasn't my thing - sweet, flabby and not bitter enough for an Export. The Odell 90/- was better but I have to admit I wasn't really paying attention as by that stage I was deep in conversation with some brewers about thiol release. Fair play to CAMRA, they had a thing in their "Discovery Zone" about thiols where you could drink a beer from Wild Beer Co designed to release thiols from malt and mash hops - unfortunately it didn't quite work as they hadn't briefed the staff well enough (eg they implied it had British hops but in fact it was a very Janish-y mash Saaz and Southern Cross etc with 34/70) but I congratulate them for trying.

But there was lots to enjoy - the Stone San Diego Pale was pretty good, and the La Cumbre Project Dank (Albuquerque, NM) did what you'd expect with 100+IBU. But I couldn't walk past things like the Harvey's Imperial stout on cask, or Struise from the wood, and there were some cracking lagers there like unfiltered Uneticke 10 and good old Tipopils.

No CBOB was awarded on the grounds of Covid disruption - which is a bit tenuous if you ask me, they could have made it work if they needed to - so they ran a homebrew competition for the first time to give them something to announce. The prize was brewing it commercially with the main brewpub chain here - I'm sure they will have been delighted to be presented with a 16.1% stout that had been aged for 5 years!!!

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/great-british-beer-festival.99058/#post-1156478
Obligatory handpull porn :

And the legendary Roger Protz, flanked by Lotte Peplow (BA's ambassador for Europe) and Emma Inch (former British beer writer of the year) at the launch of their latest collab (along with the likes of Pete Brown who is off-shot to the right) which is a pretty decent "best 250 beers" thing (standing up is the CAMRA finance guy who was hosting the launch) :

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The Rye mild I tried a few weeks ago and in my humble opinion was not as good as the standard dark mild.

Favorite quotes from Ron:
Question: what is your preferred ABV that you enjoy but can still remember in the morning?
Answer: 7 or 8% ABV

I left when the Q&A kinda devolved a bit with audience members trying to show off their knowlege. Ron was patient but would retort something along the lines of "Northern Brown and Southern Brown distinction is bollocks. Newcastle Brown was always an outlier."

Heh, that sounds like Ron, although at 7-8% it sounds like he's taking it easy in old age. Bear in mind that his usual beer of choice is Abt12, his liver must be....well trained.

That rye mild sounds weird but potentially interesting, particularly with Mystic hops which were only released a couple of years ago and are still unusual even here , I never got to try them before I got my long Covid.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I planned to use it in a Best Bitter, I might do 6% crystal and do like 4/2% T50/Heritage.

Coming late to this but personally I'd cut down the amount - even Fuller's use 7.2% of "light" crystal in their main beers and for me that's getting towards the most I'd want in a beer (whereas I'm quite happy drinking a bitter with no crystal at all) T50 and Heritage are more like mediums so I'd go easy with them just for that reason let alone making it more northern (which is clearly A Good Thing).

Liberty Bell is fine as a dry yeast for bitter, like almost all dry yeast it's not as characterful as a good wet yeast but it does a decent job. At one point it was my standard yeast for my SMASHs, it's a decent workhorse.

 

[monkeymath]

So. Tod Mott deserves the hype, the Lowlands was great, one of my favourite beers of the day. But oh dear, the rest were a bit of a mess. That Break Rock "mild" for instance, drank more like a baby imperial stout, I don't know what the attenuation was - 60%? Anyway, it was nothing like a mild. Same with the Topstone "bitter" from Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT) - 5.9% is not a "hearty pub-style ale", and the structure was just all wrong, it's like someone's only experience of British bitter was an old bottle of Fuller's ESB mixed with an Amarillo-heavy WCIPA. It was kinda thin, then you had a rush of very "narrow" bitterness, overlain by a clumsy oranginess. It was a total mess.

The Brato Addison's XXtra from Boston was a bit better, at least it wasn't as thin but again it just felt rather uncoordinated. Lost Harbor from Vitamin Sea (Weymouth, MA) also didn't really work - like the Break Rock it was kinda sweet and boozy, and had a wave of oranginess but it all seemed rather disconnected. To be fair, the Gritty McDuff's Best (Maine) was something like right, but Fuggles-y which is less my kind of thing.

Obviously it's a bit unfair as just across the hall you had things like Shere Drop (technically still the Champion Beer of Britain) and the Anspach & Hobday ESB in prime condition on handpull with proper cooling, whereas the US bar was on gravity with cooling jackets that to be honest were struggling to cope with the heat. But at the same time they really showed what was lacking in most of the US efforts - balance. I know I keep going on about it, but balance is perhaps the defining characteristic of British beers, and it's what makes them so drinkable. Mott gets it, and arguably his "American Brown" was a lot more like bitter than some of the beers sold as such.

It's about integrating bitterness and maltiness and yeast character and carbonation and alcohol, and if you push too far in one direction, it really breaks the overall experience. So part of the problem is that USians think that it's OK to "just nudge up a bit" the ABV, or push for a one-note oranginess or whatever, and break the balance. And it doesn't help that their model seems to be Fuller's ESB from a tourist pub in London, which in many ways is something of an outlier. Yes there are beers here that follow that model - but something like Taylor's Landlord would be more representative of huge chunks of the UK. And attenuation here really isn't as low as USians think - even northwest milds which tend to be on the sweet side might typically have apparent attenuation of 79%.

The Airline Scottish Export (Amherst, ME) wasn't my thing - sweet, flabby and not bitter enough for an Export. The Odell 90/- was better but I have to admit I wasn't really paying attention as by that stage I was deep in conversation with some brewers about thiol release. Fair play to CAMRA, they had a thing in their "Discovery Zone" about thiols where you could drink a beer from Wild Beer Co designed to release thiols from malt and mash hops - unfortunately it didn't quite work as they hadn't briefed the staff well enough (eg they implied it had British hops but in fact it was a very Janish-y mash Saaz and Southern Cross etc with 34/70) but I congratulate them for trying.

But there was lots to enjoy - the Stone San Diego Pale was pretty good, and the La Cumbre Project Dank (Albuquerque, NM) did what you'd expect with 100+IBU. But I couldn't walk past things like the Harvey's Imperial stout on cask, or Struise from the wood, and there were some cracking lagers there like unfiltered Uneticke 10 and good old Tipopils.

No CBOB was awarded on the grounds of Covid disruption - which is a bit tenuous if you ask me, they could have made it work if they needed to - so they ran a homebrew competition for the first time to give them something to announce. The prize was brewing it commercially with the main brewpub chain here - I'm sure they will have been delighted to be presented with a 16.1% stout that had been aged for 5 years!!!

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/great-british-beer-festival.99058/#post-1156478
Obligatory handpull porn :
View attachment 776769

And the legendary Roger Protz, flanked by Lotte Peplow (BA's ambassador for Europe) and Emma Inch (former British beer writer of the year) at the launch of their latest collab (along with the likes of Pete Brown who is off-shot to the right) which is a pretty decent "best 250 beers" thing (standing up is the CAMRA finance guy who was hosting the launch) :
View attachment 776774

Sorry, but I just have to ask: did you have all those beers in a single day? I usually don't trust my taste buds after the third pint or so, to the point where I might skip checking beers in to Untappd.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Coming late to this but personally I'd cut down the amount - even Fuller's use 7.2% of "light" crystal in their main beers and for me that's getting towards the most I'd want in a beer (whereas I'm quite happy drinking a bitter with no crystal at all) T50 and Heritage are more like mediums so I'd go easy with them just for that reason let alone making it more northern (which is clearly A Good Thing).

Liberty Bell is fine as a dry yeast for bitter, like almost all dry yeast it's not as characterful as a good wet yeast but it does a decent job. At one point it was my standard yeast for my SMASHs, it's a decent workhorse.

I might reduce it to 3/2% T50/Heritage, or even 2/2. The T-50 from the colour and flavour descriptions seem to be in the borderlands between a light and medium Crystal, leaning a bit towards light, that's why I assumed it can be used as a light.
Plan on using a few percent of amber aswell.
I have my historic Porter fermenting with the yeast blend right now, The Brewly yeast I normally use has decent character for a dry, but I thought to mix it with m36 might get me a little more "complexity" +the Brewly can be a bit tricky to convince to attenuate fully, so I might get better performance by mixing two strains for a sort of "house blend" for all my English stuff.

 

[McMullan]

balance. I know I keep going on about it, but balance is perhaps the defining characteristic of British beers, and it's what makes them so drinkable

Absolutely. And pitching sufficient healthy yeast cells helps achieve a more balanced beer.

@monkeymath, it's not unusual for 1/3 pints to be served at festivals, which is fortunate if you're on a tasting spree.

Edit: here's a CAMRA festival glass, with enough room for a big creamy head above the pint line.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Sorry, but I just have to ask: did you have all those beers in a single day? I usually don't trust my taste buds after the third pint or so, to the point where I might skip checking beers in to Untappd.

Palate fade is a real problem, on the other hand it can be trained to some extent. Before long Covid I was semi-regularly doing tastings of 50-100 wines in a session with the occasional 200-wine all-dayers so I'm used to managing my palate and I try to do things in a sensible order with all the weaker and less extreme beers first. As McMullan says, these days it's normal to drink by the third at these things if you're "tasting" rather than drinking for the sake of the buzz, plus a few tasters - I've got Untappds on 19 beers I know I had thirds of and there's probably 1-2 I missed plus some tasters. Call it 7 pints over 10 hours. Admittedly that's imperial pints but at the same time the beers are weaker and the flavours less extreme than at the US equivalent. I'd say certainly up to 5-6 pints my ratings will be within 0.25 of what I'd do "fresh" and probably beyond that, I was rather more sober than sometimes.

And apart from a third of cold Uneticke to wet my whistle after a sweaty Tube train, I had more of a plan than usual and was straight onto the US bitters and milds, so the Break Rock and Top Hill were my 2nd and 3rd beers of the day. The only one of the US beers I might have been a bit unfair to was the Odell 90/-, I hadn't been meaning to do the US Scots but I was feeling fairly fresh after doing my must-have beers so I came back to them late, by which time it was being served rather warm and I ended up being distracted by thiol talk. But I had a taster of the Airline Scottish Export and obviously pulled a face, the barman said something to the effect that it wasn't great, a number of people had been unimpressed by it. We can only rate based on how a beer is presented on the bar, and the nature of cask is that it is inherently more variable than something pasteurised and frozen to within an inch of its life. Plus in this case you have the variability of being shipped across an ocean.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I might reduce it to 3/2% T50/Heritage, or even 2/2. The T-50 from the colour and flavour descriptions seem to be in the borderlands between a light and medium Crystal, leaning a bit towards light, that's why I assumed it can be used as a light.

Meh, in Crisp world perhaps (where light crystal is 160EBC). But among normal maltsters at 130EBC it may technically be halfway between eg Simpson's light and medium on EBC, but the border of taste is not so symmetrical and I would treat it more like a light medium than a darker light IYSWIM.

Anyway, bringing together the two threads, Hazelwood Brewery over on THBF won the Premium bitter class of the new CAMRA homebrew competition and has shared the recipe, which may be of interest here not least because it used generous amounts (two packs in 21l) of M36.

Other key points - 5.4% ABV, 0.76 BU:GU, 76% attenuation, 103 Ca 126 SO4 88 Cl, Simpson's Otter with 4.8% melanoidin 50EBC, 3.6% crystal EBC225, 2.4 torrified wheat, 2% flaked oats, bittered with Fuggles at 30 minutes and then a mix of 2.4g/l Fuggles and 1.4g/l EKG at 10 minutes (all leaf).

All pretty standard, although the melanoidin is relatively unusual and while more trad beers are using oats these days I don't particularly care for them as I seem to taste them as "porridge" at quite low levels.

 

[cire]

Can't make it to the USA but have made it to the five points brewery pub in Hackney. Pretty pleased with my efforts although perhaps I don't need to strive for clarity!
Baking hot here at 36 degree and damm hot in pub but beer at cellar temp to glass.
My beer the picture with a great view, not a pub view.

View attachment 775302View attachment 775303View attachment 775304View attachment 775301

Not long back from a pub along the road where I live in northeast England, to find Five Pints XPA (Extra Pale Ale) on hand pull. The pint presented was clear, but not bright, and Citra completely dominated the drink. It had no body nor any observable flavor other than Citra. No malt discernable despite Maris Otter being the main ingredient.

Now I must confess to not being a fan of Citra hops, but the absence of even a modicum of an attempt to balance the beer made it one for me to steer well clear of in any future confrontation.

I would suggest adding calcium chloride and some magnesium to the brewing liquor that would both brighten the beer when served and add some sorely needed balance.

 

[DuncB]

I tried the five points xpa on keg, admittedly at a stall they had at an independent record fair on a day in London about 35 degrees.
Cold citra xpa I can imagine this being pretty hopeless on beer engine. Reckon most xpa would be, tried a neipa somewhere on beer engine and that was awful.
So many beers seem to be made with planned imbalance, its citra ,you'll get citra, not let's make beer and use citra.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

So I took a gravity reading just now on the Porter, a week after brewing it, and it had only gone down to 1.017 from 1.051, gonna take a new one in 2 days to confirm.
I think it might be the only about 50% of grain in the mash being base malt thing doing it, now I understand why the Porter brewers back in the day had such long mashes, this probably would have benefitted from a 90 or even 120 minute mash. Well, well, next time.
Taste was fine though, extremely bready and kinda nutty, slightly astringent but it's a week old Porter straight out the fermenter, nothing worse than I think will mellow with some ageing.

 

[DBhomebrew]

WLP-037 is now available! Just ordered some through my very excellent LHBS's group buy.

 

[Miraculix]

So I took a gravity reading just now on the Porter, a week after brewing it, and it had only gone down to 1.017 from 1.051, gonna take a new one in 2 days to confirm.
I think it might be the only about 50% of grain in the mash being base malt thing doing it, now I understand why the Porter brewers back in the day had such long mashes, this probably would have benefitted from a 90 or even 120 minute mash. Well, well, next time.
Taste was fine though, extremely bready and kinda nutty, slightly astringent but it's a week old Porter straight out the fermenter, nothing worse than I think will mellow with some ageing.

1.017 is not bad at all. It's well within the expected range of British yeasts.

And as long as the taste goes into the right direction, who cares about numbers.

 

[kmarkstevens]

WLP-037 is now available! Just ordered some through my very excellent LHBS's group buy.

Good luck with that! It was too much yeast for me. POF+. I made several batches. Some were pure saison. Others started out nice and two months of bottle conditioning morphed into something not for my palate. I gave up as it is much too finicky a yeast for my poor talents, and frankly was never sure even if I got the yeast right that the results would be worth it.

If you tame this beast, please do share tips and tricks as I can prolly revive a mason jar sitting in the fridge.

 

[kmarkstevens]

So I took a gravity reading just now on the Porter, a week after brewing it, and it had only gone down to 1.017 from 1.051, gonna take a new one in 2 days to confirm.
I think it might be the only about 50% of grain in the mash being base malt thing doing it, now I understand why the Porter brewers back in the day had such long mashes, this probably would have benefitted from a 90 or even 120 minute mash. Well, well, next time.
Taste was fine though, extremely bready and kinda nutty, slightly astringent but it's a week old Porter straight out the fermenter, nothing worse than I think will mellow with some ageing.

If you like the taste, then that's great. That said, 1017 is way too high for my tastes. You might consider hitting it with Nottingham or another yeast to see if you can bring it down a few points.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

WLP-037 is now available! Just ordered some through my very excellent LHBS's group buy.

Just make sure you give it lots of oxygen, it's hungry for it by all accounts and needs it to tame the phenols.

In other news, this is what Ragus invert looks like in the wild for those who haven't seen it :

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

That looks like a nightmare to work with...

 

[DBhomebrew]

Good luck with that! It was too much yeast for me. POF+. I made several batches. Some were pure saison. Others started out nice and two months of bottle conditioning morphed into something not for my palate. I gave up as it is much too finicky a yeast for my poor talents, and frankly was never sure even if I got the yeast right that the results would be worth it.

If you tame this beast, please do share tips and tricks as I can prolly revive a mason jar sitting in the fridge.

Just make sure you give it lots of oxygen, it's hungry for it by all accounts and needs it to tame the phenols.

Yep. While I'm not about to replicate @McMullan's homemade square, this will be my first ferment in an open bucket.

 

[McMullan]

WLP037 is a very nice brewer's strain. Great for English ales. I have no hesitations using it. One of my favourites. Makes very nice beer I enjoy. I think far too many people develop an unnecessary hang-up with POF+ strains. Some are used to produce among the finest English ales. Belgian, too I'm not so convinced POF- is necessarily an indicator of domestication. But obviously it needs to be believed to be so to make the story sound more convincing. POF+ is the normal phenotype that probably got lost by a random event early on in our brewing adventures rather than selection for 'better' beer. Fact is, some of us might find POF- strains unbearably boring

 

[tracer bullet]

POF = Phenolic Off Flavor, took me a bit.

 

[DBhomebrew]

WLP037 is a very nice brewer's strain. Great for English ales. I have no hesitations using it. One of my favourites. Makes very nice beer I enjoy. I think far too many people develop an unnecessary hang-up with POF+ strains. Some are used to produce among the finest English ales. Belgian, too I'm not so convinced POF- is necessarily an indicator of domestication. But obviously it needs to be believed to be so to make the story sound more convincing. POF+ is the normal phenotype that probably got lost by a random event early on in our brewing adventures rather than selection for 'better' beer. Fact is, some of us might find POF- strains unbearably boring

Do you have a recommendation for a max ferment temp? I'm wondering how long I should wait as my basement cools into Autumn. I'm not afraid of some clove/pepper, but I don't want to overdo it.

 

[McMullan]

Do you have a recommendation for a max ferment temp? I'm wondering how long I should wait as my basement cools into Autumn. I'm not afraid of some clove/pepper, but I don't want to overdo it.

I pitch at 17°C/63°F and let it free rise in my large ferm chamber that's in a cool part of our basement. My cave, apparently. It rarely threatens to go above about 21-22°C unless it's hot outside and my cave warms up a bit. I rarely have both the cooling and heating connected to my temp controller. Usually either one or the other, depending on time of year. I pitch at a high rate. I don't bother quantifying it. It's 'bucket science'. I recommend making a starter and pitching into a 1/2 batch, harvest (top crop) then repitch fresh into a full batch or another 1/2 batch. Repitch again, if possible. Now it's on form. Any 'clove' blends nicely as some subtle complexity in what should be a balanced beer due largely to a decent pitching rate. Under pitch, it sticks out like a sore thumb with a lesser balanced beer. You can do the same for other characterful English strains, like Ringwood and Harvey's. You don't have to recirculate fermenting wort periodically during active fermentation, like I do, but be confident to rouse it with a spoon or something occasionally during active fermentation, not before or after.

Edit: @DBhomebrew, I forgot to note my fermentation temperature numbers refer to wort temperature rather than chamber/ambient.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Thank you!

 

[DBhomebrew]

Edit: @DBhomebrew, I forgot to note my fermentation temperature numbers refer to wort temperature rather than chamber/ambient.

Of course.

I think I have a plan. I've got a small dorm fridge that doesn't fit my full fermenters, but it does fit a 2G bucket. I'll do a string of a few 1.5G batches and by the time I get 3 or 4 in, the basement should be ready for a passively cooled full 4G batch.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Just as a headsup for those who can get to Seattle towards the end of this month, Foggy Noggin in Bothell have Ron Pattinson for a tasting of AKs, followed a week later by John Keeling with a tasting of Fuller's core beers against the Foggy equivalents.

Ron's blog has caught up with his trips to Foggy Noggin and Machine House.

 

[kmarkstevens]

Holy crap, Ron got taken care of in Seattle. The first hotel is a former catholic seminary that was converted a year or two ago. Pretty pricey I understand and the park is nice.

And Ron had a burger at Dicks. Dicks has about 6 locations in Washington, including one in Spokane my grandmother took me to about 50 years ago. It's super cheap. It is one of two local burger places that Bill Gates has frequented forever.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Just a quick question for any of the Europeans on here guys, I am thinking about buying some caramel colour to expermiment with in my more vintage inspired ales.
Found some on Brouwland, and a Swedish webshop carried what I presume is also the same variety (e150a) but it was only 25ml flasks for about the same price so I will likely order from Brouwland.
I know proper Class III or e150c brewers caramel is about 33000 EBC and this stuff clocks in at 9500 EBC. I found out via googling that Class III raises the color by 2 EBC for every 6ml added per 100L, anybody know what the formula is for the class I stuff so I can make some basic calculations on how many ml to add for some experiments?
And as I understand, this mostly adds colour but also a minor flavour contribution, anyon with experience using this stuff might chime in?

Edit: Found this on Humle.se for Sinamar
Dosage:
Use 14 g (11.9 ml) of SINAMAR® Color Malt Extract to darken 1 hl of beer or wort by 1 EBC.
So I suppose to count on 11ml/Hectolitre or 1ml/10L rasing the EBC by 1 would be a good starting point.

 

[Miraculix]

Just a quick question for any of the Europeans on here guys, I am thinking about buying some caramel colour to expermiment with in my more vintage inspired ales.
Found some on Brouwland, and a Swedish webshop carried what I presume is also the same variety (e150a) but it was only 25ml flasks for about the same price so I will likely order from Brouwland.
I know proper Class III or e150c brewers caramel is about 33000 EBC and this stuff clocks in at 9500 EBC. I found out via googling that Class III raises the color by 2 EBC for every 6ml added per 100L, anybody know what the formula is for the class I stuff so I can make some basic calculations on how many ml to add for some experiments?
And as I understand, this mostly adds colour but also a minor flavour contribution, anyon with experience using this stuff might chime in?

Edit: Found this on Humle.se for Sinamar
Dosage:
Use 14 g (11.9 ml) of SINAMAR® Color Malt Extract to darken 1 hl of beer or wort by 1 EBC.
So I suppose to count on 11ml/Hectolitre or 1ml/10L rasing the EBC by 1 would be a good starting point.

Sinamar seems to be used a lot by the German home brewers, but isn't it an extract from roasted malt and not caramel based? Could be wrong though...

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

It was just that they seem to be somewhat similair color wise. So in theory I should be able to use the dosage advice for Sinamar on the caramel colorant.

 

[cire]

Caramel does have taste when used in any quantity that gives a marked change in color. It provides the sort of taste you would expect in dark beers, except perhaps the so called Black IPAs, which I think are mostly awful.