English Ales - What's your favorite recipe?

[kmarkstevens]

lower-ABV British Strong

what is an oxymoron?

I kid and a good excuse to share a Barclay Perkin session imperial stout: Let's Brew Wednesday - 1921 Barclay Perkin IBS

 

[HM-2]

what is an oxymoron?

Low-mid 6%, so lower end of the BJCP guidelines

 

[Miraculix]

Low-mid 6%, so lower end of the BJCP guidelines

Pleeeeaaaase could we all agree to leave out the bjcp entirely from this wonderful thread?

Bjcp guidelines have no roots in British society. They want to overthrow the Queen. I heard they eat babys for breakfast. Their mother was a hamster and their father smelled of elderberries!

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Got my malt today

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Pleeeeaaaase could we all agree to leave out the bjcp entirely from this wonderful thread?

Bjcp guidelines have no roots in British society. They want to overthrow the Queen. I heard they eat babys for breakfast. Their mother was a hamster and their father smelled of elderberries!

I am pretty sure they are illuminati space reptilians aswell.
"You have no power here, BJCP stormcrow"

 

[DBhomebrew]

Got my malt today

Time to brew your favorite most simple of all simple bitters. GP is such a pleasant base, very little if any crystal needed. A little light invert, a little maize or wheat. Paired with something floral like EKG or Mittlefrue.

Now I'm thirsty. Cheers to GP!

 

[Miraculix]

Time to brew your favorite most simple of all simple bitters. GP is such a pleasant base, very little if any crystal needed. A little light invert, a little maize or wheat. Paired with something floral like EKG or Mittlefrue.

Now I'm thirsty. Cheers to GP!

View attachment 779582

Maaaan you got me thirsty now.

3.5h of work to go.....

 

[oakbarn]

I was stationed at RAF Alconbury in the late 1970s. A friend talked me into brewing in 2008. I got a "canned" Courage knockoff at the local LHBS. Once I tasted what we made, I never looked back. We only make a few brews, but our English Bitter is the most requested brew when we donate a keg or have a "brew party".

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

I got a mild that I will keg tomorrow also, and thought to try the caramel in it as it was not quite as dark as I wanted it to be.
Intend to naturally carb in the keg so the easiest would be to just boil the caramel with the sugar water and toss it in the keg then rack on top of it as usual right?
It's close to 10000 ebc so 1ml/10L should translate to about 1 ebc increase, plan on doing 30ml for 18L.

 

[HM-2]

what is an oxymoron?

So this one went a little...off-piste when I achieved nearly 85% mash efficiency and ended up nearly 10 points over my target OG...

 

[Miraculix]

So this one went a little...off-piste when I achieved nearly 85% mash efficiency and ended up nearly 10 points over my target OG...

I just experienced the opposite. I wanted to get 1.043, I got 1.04. so instead of 90% efficiency I got ... Something else

So my American session wheat stout is going to be really session like....

Ahhh f*CK me, I forgot that I made a plan for this case, which was adding invert to up the og.

Damn you drinking while brewing!

... it happened five minutes ago, I can already tell, I didn't learn from it, I will do it again .

Skol!

 

[zipfly]

so you were only 0.003 lower than predicted, not worth worrying about

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Mash going for a Brown Ale to try the Verdant/Liberty Bell mix in.
Pretty basic brown,
MO
6% Simpson heritage Crystal
5% Simpson Amber
4% Crisp Brown
8% invert 2 ( inverted Demerara, should be a good approximation of "real" #2)
15ml caramel colour
1.045 OG 25 IBU all challenger, 60 min, 0.5g/L @20 min and 0.5g/L flameout.
Plan to pitch at 18c, keep it there at the first ~24hrs of fermentation then let it rise to 19c until it slows down and gets kicked up to 20 to finish off.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

Oh and this is the next brew, I found some date syrup in the store and thought this might be s fitting beer to try a bit of it in.
This and the historic porter will age until Christmas and are intended as holiday beers...

 

[HM-2]

A word of caution, date syrup (in cooking, certainly) can bring a strange sourness which might not play well with your intended outcome. Not sure if it's the same for brewing but I tried to make a date infused jus for a pork loin using date syrup and it was not great.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

That's good to know, I plan on using a relatively small amount so if I don't like what it brings there won't be too much of it atleast...
Although while googling it seems date syrup is no problem to use in brewing, seems to be somewhat popular as an alternative to candi syrup.

 

[monkeymath]

I am about to order a new 25kg sack of basemalt, and thought to try Golden Promise instead of Maris Otter.
Looked around a little and my choices are either Simpsons or Fawcett, Fawcett are ~ 160 SEK(~16 Euro) more expensive but you know, floor malted.
Are the extra bucks for floor malted worth it since I brew mostly English styles where the malt character noticed more? The Fawcett is not THAT much more expensive so if it is a significant increase in quality/flavour it is IMO worth the little extra money, anyone who has any experience using Fawcett who could chime in?

So I just made some malt "teas" (just tiny mashes, really) from Weyermann Pale Malt (being the generic, easily obtainable "Pale Malt" in my neck of the woods), Crisp Maris Otter and Warminster Maris Otter. I was interested to see how the latter two compared, and threw in the Weyermann as a "base line" of sorts.
I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the Crisp MO. It was actually thinner than the Weyermann Pale and had a slightly sharp edge to it that I didn't love, even though it was minor. The Weyermann Pale is actually quite rich, round, grainy and nutty - really a nice base malt; I might even use it in place of Pilsner here and there, just much more flavourful.
The Warminster MO was less sweet, more bready and "deeply malty", for lack of a better descriptor. Like somewhere between the Pale Malt and a Munich malt. I wonder if you could mix the two and get something similar out of it.

 

[kmarkstevens]

Had a couple of really nice beers in a couple of local places with @Northern_Brewer, who decided to grace the Pacific Northwest in probably the best weather of the year. He kindly brought a couple of bottles of yeast conditioned Fullers and Shepherd Neame to reculture as soon as I have time. BTW, standing offer to any HBT members visiting the Seattle area that if schedules are willing, I'm happy to pour a few pints down your neck.

Typically, my Northern Brewer hops are ready for a fresh hop ale on the labor day weekend. For some reason, this year whilst I have hop cones, still lacking in hop lupins. Hopefully, they will ripen up as I have N Brewer, Willamette, East Seattle Goldings and Tettnanger all on the bine. Therefore, I brewed about 7 gallons of Tony's pre-1970's Boddington, and turned it into a split batch yeast off between WLP026 and WLP028. Both yeasties recommended for Tony's and long overdue for a cage match. I made yeast starters (well, more of a vitality starter since I only tried to revive these buggers about 24 hours before pitching) off of ~year old yeasties stored in a small mason jars. Will also step up the erlenmeyer flasks so next time I've got a few good starters. Fingers crossed.

 

[user 263363]

I’ve been looking for a bit of a different English beer to brew for the fall so I’ve been scouring this thread the last couple days.

I’ve got plenty of ideas now, but my biggest regret is not looking through here sooner as I was in Seattle a couple weeks ago and I would have absolutely loved to check out Machine House Brewery. Oh well, I hope to return some day so that will just be a top item on my list.

 

[marc1]

Just started an all Chevallier ale with EKG and Willamette, using WLP066 London Fog. The grain was $$$$ so I'm curious to see how the finished product tastes.

 

[HM-2]

Just started an all Chevallier ale with EKG and Willamette, using WLP066 London Fog. The grain was $$$$ so I'm curious to see how the finished product tastes.

Any reason why you've gone for Fog? IME it's basically LA III in terms of flavour profile, but a rubbish flocculator.
Might be my personal experiences but I really don't like it, even for the hazy IPAs it seems mostly used in.

Interested to see the recipe!

 

[marc1]

Any reason why you've gone for Fog? IME it's basically LA III in terms of flavour profile, but a rubbish flocculator.
Might be my personal experiences but I really don't like it, even for the hazy IPAs it seems mostly used in.

Interested to see the recipe!

I'm using Fog because I'm also going to be doing an NEIPA soon. I figured I could try it as a double duty yeast for a bit.

Recipe:

12.5 Gallons post-boil
OG - 1.049
FG (estimated) - 1.015
ABV - 4.6%
IBU - 41

Overall Water (from RO):
Chloride - 91
Sulfate - 200
Calcium - 135

Crisp Chevallier 100%

Mashed at 151 for 1hr
9 gallon mash
88% lactic acid for mash pH adjustment
Measured mash pH at end of mash: 5.45

5 gallon sparge

1 hour boil
2.2mL 88% lactic acid to boil
post-boil pH - 5.24

1oz EKG 60
3oz Willamette 60
3oz EKG 15

Whirlfloc 10

Ferment with London Fog @68F

 

[HM-2]

Be interested how you find Fog. I've used it twice and subsequently sworn off it because other than not flocculating it doesn't seem to do anything else it's designed to IME. Both times it crapped out low 20s and took what should have been unnecessary efforts to get back going. It didn't really add much to the flavour profile either.

You might want to plan to gelatine fine this one (or similar) in addition to the Whirlfloc but otherwise sounds like a great, easy drinking English style pale.

I'm also keen to see what you think of the Chevalier. It's not obscenely expensive here (in fact not really any more than your common-or-garden MO) so maybe something worth using in my next British brew.

I've just kegged my second English ale batch done with a Lallemand London/S-04 co-pitch (a British Strong) and it's definitely shaping up to be my favourite yeast combination for British ales. I rated it highly the first time I tried it but this is tasting bloody brilliant out of the fermenter, I can only imagine how much better it's going to be with a few week's conditioning time one it.

 

[marc1]

Be interested how you find Fog. I've used it twice and subsequently sworn off it because other than not flocculating it doesn't seem to do anything else it's designed to IME. Both times it crapped out low 20s and took what should have been unnecessary efforts to get back going. It didn't really add much to the flavour profile either.

You might want to plan to gelatine fine this one (or similar) in addition to the Whirlfloc but otherwise sounds like a great, easy drinking English style pale.

I'm also keen to see what you think of the Chevalier. It's not obscenely expensive here (in fact not really any more than your common-or-garden MO) so maybe something worth using in my next British brew.

I've just kegged my second English ale batch done with a Lallemand London/S-04 co-pitch (a British Strong) and it's definitely shaping up to be my favourite yeast combination for British ales. I rated it highly the first time I tried it but this is tasting bloody brilliant out of the fermenter, I can only imagine how much better it's going to be with a few week's conditioning time one it.

I'll see how the fog does, gelatin is always an option.
The Chevallier was $3/pound, so it was shock level grain prices. It was still pricey, but more reasonable, at $90 a sack, but I didn't want to buy a whole sack if I ended up hating it.
My observation so far is that the wort didn't taste as sweet as I expected it to going into the fermenter.

 

[jturman35]

Anyone watch Apartment brewer? This looks like a good little Bitter recipe. Although I would like to try this with Nottingham yeast.

 

[kmarkstevens]

Chevallier is pretty nice me thinks.

You could always pitch a clean up yeast such as notty after most of the fermentation is completed. That ought to make all the yeasties drop out.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

I'd use a yeast with a little more character, and use either special roast or biscuit, prefferably real Brittish amber malt.

 

[HM-2]

Anyone watch Apartment brewer? This looks like a good little Bitter recipe. Although I would like to try this with Nottingham yeast.

View attachment 780268

I watch him from time to time. Not tried any if his recipes though I did use one of his as a base for a Belgian Tripel.

Think I've mentioned it in thread before but my secret weapon when it comes to bitters (particularly best and strong) is ~5% Simpsons DRC. IMO it's the best British crystal out there (though I am fond of Crisp 100EBC extra light crystal in my British beers too), brings lovely toffee and dried fruit flavours without the slight astringency you can get from other higher EBC crystals.

 

[Miraculix]

I watch him from time to time. Not tried any if his recipes though I did use one of his as a base for a Belgian Tripel.

Think I've mentioned it in thread before but my secret weapon when it comes to bitters (particularly best and strong) is ~5% Simpsons DRC. IMO it's the best British crystal out there (though I am fond of Crisp 100EBC extra light crystal in my British beers too), brings lovely toffee and dried fruit flavours without the slight astringency you can get from other higher EBC crystals.

Thanks for the reminder,I forgot about it!

 

[user 263363]

So going back through my notes, I realize I’ve brewed two good, but not great, English styles in the last couple years.

The first was a Dark Mild.

Golden Promise 80%
Amber Malt 6.7%
Brown Malt 6.7%
Pale Chocolate 6.7%

Mashed at 158°F

Fuggles at 60 and 10

Verdant yeast (my first run with that)

This beer was good but it seemed that the fruitiness from the Verdant took over as it aged. This was also my first time using Fuggles and I had a feeling I didn’t care for those but the yeast was so overpowering I wasn’t sure. I’ll be using EKG and Pub yeast my next go around.

The next was a bitter of sorts.

90% Maris Otter
10% #2 Invert

Mashed at 150

Fuggles again at 60 and 10

Imperial A09 Pub yeast

This was another good beer held back from being great by my use of Fuggles. This is what cemented my dislike of that variety. Grain bill wise, I like the simplicity. I might experiment with Golden Promise my next time around.