British Golden Ale Miraculix Best - Classic English Ale

[balrog]

TWO MONTHS??!!

I know, I know. I've even benefited from having taken advantage of copious ABT* in the Fall of 2022, and got the pipeline full, and several recent kegs had aged about that time and yes, they were much better than when young.

(*Available Brewing Time)

 

[duncan_disorderly]

So I'm going to be brewing a single bbl batch of this grain bill as an experimental brew at a local pro brewery as a guest brewer.

They already do a pub ale thats similar, but they also do a pale ale made from a 30 year old sour dough starter for yeast.

The pale ale is very dry and fairly clean with just a teensy hint of funk. So it seems that it is probably just sacc cerv. As soon as I tried it, I told them they needed to do a pub ale with the yeast and put it on nitro. It tasted extremely similar to several pale ales I had in the UK that had brett in them.

I'll be tweaking their pub ale grain bill over to this and brewing it around the middle of this month and looking forward to it!

What were the pale ales you had in the UK with brett in them? They are pretty rare here.

 

[TheMadKing]

What were the pale ales you had in the UK with brett in them? They are pretty rare here.

I had a cask conditioned pale ale in Porthmadog, Wales from the Purple Moose brewery that definitely had brett in it. I also had an IPA (english style) at a small pub on the outskirts of Manchester (near the airport) that had brett funk to it.

Whether the brett was intentionally added or was a byproduct of the process, I can't say but it was there clear as day. It wasn't advertised as a brett beer though

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I had a cask conditioned pale ale in Porthmadog, Wales from the Purple Moose brewery that definitely had brett in it. I also had an IPA (english style) at a small pub on the outskirts of Manchester (near the airport) that had brett funk to it.

Whether the brett was intentionally added or was a byproduct of the process, I can't say but it was there clear as day. It wasn't advertised as a brett beer though

Ok. Interesting! Thanks. What was the Manchester beer, do you recall? And was it cask or keg?

 

[TheMadKing]

Ok. Interesting! Thanks. What was the Manchester beer, do you recall? And was it cask or keg?

It was cask, both were billed as a real ale

I can't remember the name of it though I'm sorry. I'll do some googling and see if I can find the pub at least, hang on

 

[TheMadKing]

It was cask, both were billed as a real ale

I can't remember the name of it though I'm sorry. I'll do some googling and see if I can find the pub at least, hang on

It was The Bull's Head, Hale Barns

 

[Brooothru]

Be prepared for extended aging times necessary. I've brewed this with Chevallier recently and this will need to age. My guess is two months or more.

Patience is a virtue, I'm told. Originally this beer was supposed to age for several months after brewing while we took an extended trip following a family reunion during Easter week. Since there has been a delay on gathering all the various and sundry parts in a timely manner, it looks as if the project will have to wait until after we get home, sometime in late May/early June.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I had a cask conditioned pale ale in Porthmadog, Wales from the Purple Moose brewery that definitely had brett in it. I also had an IPA (english style) at a small pub on the outskirts of Manchester (near the airport) that had brett funk to it.

Whether the brett was intentionally added or was a byproduct of the process, I can't say but it was there clear as day. It wasn't advertised as a brett beer though

Well the Bull's Head is a Robinson pub, who don't do Brett beers (there was a shortlived version of Trooper with a "Belgian yeast" but that's about as close as they've got), and Purple Moose are a relatively traditional brewery who don't normally stray far from British styles - and a glance at Untappd confirms that, they've never gone remotely Belgian.

I'd have thought that either you're confusing a Brett flavour with something else (a lot more British yeasts are phenolic than people realise for instance, the US yeast labs give a very misleading picture of the British yeast universe), or it was something going wrong in the cellar like dirty lines.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

It was cask, both were billed as a real ale

I can't remember the name of it though I'm sorry. I'll do some googling and see if I can find the pub at least, hang on

It's highly unlikely that brett was used deliberately in a cask ale used on a pub system. I suspect NB is right, it's a beer that may seem to have brett but hasn't.

 

[TheMadKing]

Well the Bull's Head is a Robinson pub, who don't do Brett beers (there was a shortlived version of Trooper with a "Belgian yeast" but that's about as close as they've got), and Purple Moose are a relatively traditional brewery who don't normally stray far from British styles - and a glance at Untappd confirms that, they've never gone remotely Belgian.

I'd have thought that either you're confusing a Brett flavour with something else (a lot more British yeasts are phenolic than people realise for instance, the US yeast labs give a very misleading picture of the British yeast universe), or it was something going wrong in the cellar like dirty lines.

It's possible but I'm quite familiar with brett. Maybe it was simply a POF+ yeast but both were certainly more funky than a simple phenolic flavor.

It wasn't the least bit unpleasant, but it also was not what I would expect from a standard ale yeast either. It was more like someone had fermented a beer with a traditional cider yeast.

The beer I've produced at the local brewery is fairly similar to my recollection using a sourdough starter. So maybe these breweries have a mixed culture including some wild yeasts they are unaware of?

Brettanomyces does after all reflect "british yeast" in the name. Is it possible that smaller breweries and some cellers have it as a contaminant that's just considered part of the character of that place at this point?

 

[duncan_disorderly]

It's possible but I'm quite familiar with brett. Maybe it was simply a POF+ yeast but both were certainly more funky than a simple phenolic flavor.

It wasn't the least bit unpleasant, but it also was not what I would expect from a standard ale yeast either. It was more like someone had fermented a beer with a traditional cider yeast.

The beer I've produced at the local brewery is fairly similar to my recollection using a sourdough starter. So maybe these breweries have a mixed culture including some wild yeasts they are unaware of?

Brettanomyces does after all reflect "british yeast" in the name. Is it possible that smaller breweries and some cellers have it as a contaminant that's just considered part of the character of that place at this point?

I'm pretty sure that, if there was a brett in it, then it won't have been deliberately added to the beer. It just doesn't happen with draught ales. Do mixed fermentation beers get put on taps in the US?

So it sounds like contamination either in the brewery or in the pub I think, if it was brett.

What was your take on UK cask ales, and keg craft?

 

[TheMadKing]

I'm pretty sure that, if there was a brett in it, then it won't have been deliberately added to the beer. It just doesn't happen with draught ales. Do mixed fermentation beers get put on taps in the US?

So it sounds like contamination either in the brewery or in the pub I think, if it was brett.

What was your take on UK cask ales, and keg craft?

Yes mixed fermentation and sour beers are very commonly served on draft in the US. The sourdough fermented beer that I helped brew is on draft in that brewery now.

I adore cask ales so it was a real treat to get to experience so many of them. They are hard to find here, and when something is labelled as a cask ale it's usually a beer that didnt go as planned and the brewery decided to add a bunch of adjuncts to it and sell it from a cask for the novelty. Think peanutbutter habenero chocolate stout...

I did have a couple up in Scotland that were not great and had very high acetaldyhide levels, and tasted like they were old and stale from low turnover, but that was the exception.

I much prefer a pale ale hand poured from a cask over a standard carbonation level keg ale.

My own beers at home tend to reflect traditional styles rather than trendy, or adjunct filled monstrosities as well, so I think that's just a reflection of my preferences in general.

 

[Miraculix]

Yes mixed fermentation and sour beers are very commonly served on draft in the US. The sourdough fermented beer that I helped brew is on draft in that brewery now.

I adore cask ales so it was a real treat to get to experience so many of them. They are hard to find here, and when something is labelled as a cask ale it's usually a beer that didnt go as planned and the brewery decided to add a bunch of adjuncts to it and sell it from a cask for the novelty. Think peanutbutter habenero chocolate stout...

I did have a couple up in Scotland that were not great and had very high acetaldyhide levels, and tasted like they were old and stale from low turnover, but that was the exception.

I much prefer a pale ale hand poured from a cask over a standard carbonation level keg ale.

My own beers at home tend to reflect traditional styles rather than trendy, or adjunct filled monstrosities as well, so I think that's just a reflection of my preferences in general.

I think we have quite the same preferences.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Yes mixed fermentation and sour beers are very commonly served on draft in the US. The sourdough fermented beer that I helped brew is on draft in that brewery now.

I adore cask ales so it was a real treat to get to experience so many of them. They are hard to find here, and when something is labelled as a cask ale it's usually a beer that didnt go as planned and the brewery decided to add a bunch of adjuncts to it and sell it from a cask for the novelty. Think peanutbutter habenero chocolate stout...

I did have a couple up in Scotland that were not great and had very high acetaldyhide levels, and tasted like they were old and stale from low turnover, but that was the exception.

I much prefer a pale ale hand poured from a cask over a standard carbonation level keg ale.

My own beers at home tend to reflect traditional styles rather than trendy, or adjunct filled monstrosities as well, so I think that's just a reflection of my preferences in general.

Thanks for a very interesting answer. It feels like there is a huge fear of contamination of beer in the UK to the extent that any kind of mixed fermentation is deemed dangerous, and only specialist, small breweries do it. UK brewing historically involved brett and other things but science and progress removed it all!

The one thing we retained was cask ale, and that was under threat 50 years ago.

Our cask ales have the beauty of cask conditioning, which i prefer in standard ales to forced carbonation, but don't have the complexity of mixed fermentation. That's an acquired taste that was lost I think, and is still very much a niche thing. We do get a few sour beers in kegs in craft bars but you have to search for them or get lucky. They'll usually be simple Berliner types.

I mostly use standard English ale yeasts and Belgian/diastatic strains. I dabble occasionally with other things. I like bretted beers but only occasionally find them. I like some sours but some are too intense for me. My daughter says "the more sour the better." She literally sucked lemons as a 2 year old. Women seem more disposed to sour beers than men in my experience. Is that more widespread I wonder?

P.S. when Laĺlemand worked with Verdant in England to isolate their yeast and market it in dried form, they found three strains. The brewery had set out with one strain and picked two up. So that obviously happens. Breweries do use companies like Brewlab to test their yeast and supply new pitches etc though. Of course.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

So maybe these breweries have a mixed culture including some wild yeasts they are unaware of?

Brettanomyces does after all reflect "british yeast" in the name. Is it possible that smaller breweries and some cellers have it as a contaminant that's just considered part of the character of that place at this point?

That's certainly true in some of the old family breweries - Harvey's has some Debaryomyces hansenii kicking around which doesn't have time to make its presence known in the normal beers - even the lab can't detect it - but does play a Brett-like function in their Russian Stout so may be getting picked up in the maturation somewhere along the line. But Harvey's is still very much an old-school brewery, as you can tell from this screenshot of Miles holding forth in his hop room.

Compare that with the brewery your Robinson beer was made in, which was completely replaced in 2012 thanks to all the money they were making from their Iron Maiden beer, their equivalent room is all German stainless steel :

So it's a very different philosophy, I imagine they wouldn't want any wild bugs going anywhere near that kind of kit. Certainly there's no obvious Brett in their beers.

I don't know Purple Moose other than I've had the odd pint at festivals. I'd guess that as a 1990s creation, they probably propagate yeast in house that they originally got either from the NCYC or more likely another local brewery. But I doubt they'd have Brett in it deliberately.

It's possible there's Brett in the brewery, but Ockham's razor says it's more likely to be poor cellar work in the pub.