British Golden Ale Miraculix Best - Classic English Ale

[balrog]

Speaking of hopsytosis, I have about 4kg of hops in my freezer and... How long do I have left?

about as long as I have:

 

[Miraculix]

I'm off the hook for now.... Only got between 200g and 300g max.

 

[InspectorJon]

I have around 2 kg, enough for a year at the rate I use them, but I want other flavors . . .

 

[DuncB]

I'm in trouble 35 different hops in the freezer total weight just over 9kg, in my defence I did get at least 7kg when a small craft brewer closed down and got rid of his stock for a song. Mostly Fuggles, Sabro, Citra, Simcoe, Centennial, EKG and Mandarina Bavaria.
Probably why I've got too many specialist malts as well as a lifetimes supply of salts and whirlfloc, but I'm making big efforts to use them up, but then too much beer to drink , am I allowed to say that on the forum?

 

[Ren06]

Good Evening,

as I am drinking one right now, I feel like sharing the recipe of my best beer so far. I nailed the beer I had in mind 100% with the first shot, which never happened before. So don't judge me for being a tad bit proud. I shared the beer with a lot of friends yesterday and everybody was blown away, so my initial feeling was confirmed.

I believe that beer recipes should be as simple as possible and as complex as necessary, therfore my approach for this one wasn't too complicated.

I like the flavour of the southern English ales, but I do not like the cloying sweetness of, for example fullers. But the flavour of fullers is nice. So my aim was to get something with the nice and English fullers Flavour, but without it's cloying sweetness. In addition, I like a bit of head on my beer and a bit of carbonation. I took all of this into consideration and created the following recipe, which has all of the mentioned attributes.

Please keep in mind that this is for a 4.5 american gallon batch at 80% efficiency, therefore I give you the percentage in brackets by total fermentables so that you can adjust for your own system.

Ingredients:

1.8 kg Marris Otter (75%)
0.2kg spelt malt (torrified wheat or wheat malt works as well) (10%)
0.125 Crisp Crystal malt Ebc 150, 57L (5%)
0.3kg Golden Syrup (10%)

Hops: Magnum and Cobb's Golding (can be substituted with Goldings if not available)


MO is the base malt, could be theoretically substituted for similar base malts.

Spelt malt is in it to promote the head of the beer, you can use torrified wheat or wheat malt as well, this should also do the trick.

Crisp Crystal malt brings some caramel flavour. I recommend sticking to the one I used as crystal malt's tastes differ from maltster to maltster, even when having the same color.

Golden Sirup is used for flavour and to up the attenuation a bit. The choosen yeast strain is very very very tasty, but unfortunately a weak attenuator. It will flocc out like a stone but leave a cloyingly sweet beer, if not treated the right way.

Therfore the following mash schedule, to enhance head on the one side and attenuation on the other:

Water:

The water should promote Hops, but not too much. Aim for something like this:

Sulfate: 150
Chloride: 90
Calcium: 100

Lowest alkalinity possible.

This is meant as a ballpark thing. Don't sweat it too much. If you have more alkalinity, compensate with acidulated malt or some acid.


Mash Schedule:

1. Protein rest for 10 min @55c (this enhances head retention, but keep it short, and do not go lower than 55c!)

2. 45min @62C

3. 45min @72C

4. 15min @76C (Mashout, this releases a certain type of proteins that will also enhance head retention, just do it, also if you biab as I do )

After the mash finished, time for the 30 min boil with the following hop additions:

Hops Schedule:

@30min: 8g Magnum (11.9% Alpha) and 10g Cobb's Golding (6.1% Alpha)
@10min: 15g Cobb's Golding
@Flame out: 15g Cobb's Golding

NO DRY HOPS

This should add up to 30 Ibus.
Please adjust accordingly to your Hops and to your Flame out heat. Mine takes longer to chill, I will therefore get more Ibus out of it. You might need to add a little bit more Hops to the 30min addition.

The aim is to get the hops presence/flavour/aroma in the final beer, but not to overpower the caramel and marmelade tones of the yeast and crystal malts.

Chill this down to 25c, pitch the yeast and let it ride till it is finished without further temperature control at room temperature. It should be done in less than 4 days with the recommended yeast.

If you need to use dry yeast, windsor should be the closest, but this will yield a completely different beer. The Imperial Pub Yeast really provides this fullers marmelade moreish type of thing to the beer. It is simply amazing.

Carbonation: 2.5g sugar per 0.5l beer

This beer will be (semi) dry with an attenuation of about 75%. LOADS of flavour, low ABV and really really moreish.

I hope you guys enjoy it as much as me and my friends did

Let me know how you like it!

Sounds like an interesting and delicious brew

 

[eshea3]

Happy National Beer Day. Brewing a British Golden Ale. Using Verdant IPA yeast for the first time. Finishing off the last of my Golden Promise stock and using some #1 invert

 

[Miraculix]

Just to let you guys who might care know, I got quite good news. I found a dry yeast combination that comes surprisingly close to pub taste wise.

50/50 mix of Verdant ipa and Nottingham. Pitch one pack each at the same time into a normal batch sized beer, no rehydration, nothing fancy, just two packs into the chilled wort. Keep the temperature low for the first three days, about 18-20 c, preferably 18 and you'll be good.

This combination restrains the excess fruitiness of verdant IPA quite a bit and the result tastes almost like pub. Only thing is, the dry yeast combination is a bit more attenuative (I like it) so you might want to mash a bit higher. The flocculation of Nottingham is really good, clear beer after 3 weeks in the bottle without fining or cold crash.

Cheers!

 

[balrog]

Just to let you guys who might care know, I got quite good news. I found a dry yeast combination that comes surprisingly close to pub taste wise.

50/50 mix of Verdant ipa and Nottingham. Pitch one pack each at the same time into a normal batch sized beer, no rehydration, nothing fancy, just two packs into the chilled wort. Keep the temperature low for the first three days, about 18-20 c, preferably 18 and you'll be good.

This combination restrains the excess fruitiness of verdant IPA quite a bit and the result tastes almost like pub. Only thing is, the dry yeast combination is a bit more attenuative (I like it) so you might want to mash a bit higher. The flocculation of Nottingham is really good, clear beer after 3 weeks in the bottle without fining or cold crash.

Cheers!

Well okay, then!
I've got my Lyles and I just need to get some more Maris Otter.

 

[Broothru]

Well okay, then!
I've got my Lyles and I just need to get some more Maris Otter.

I've got both (well, actually all four, counting the Verdant and Notty). Just waiting for my lagers to finish in the fermenters to free up some space and speed up the 'line' a bit.

 

[kmarkstevens]

Chris White did a recent Beer Smith podcast. Chris is now promoting mixing strains.

WLP002 is popular for flocculation properties.

Here's a White Labs 2014 NHC presentation "A guide to blending yeast strains". The example used is WLP002 and WLP007. Whilst no one at White Labs will admit it, I'm 99% sure that this means WLP085 is a combo of these two yeasties.

I made dozens of brews with WLP085. It's got a soft spot in my heart as the bartender at white labs san diego actually went in the back and found me a vial about 5 years ago. I stopped using it as my go to after a split batch with different yeasts revealed that WLP085 stripped out all the chocolate malt notes.

 

[DuncB]

Why not sell two yeasts instead of one, good strategy.

 

[Broothru]

Why not sell two yeasts instead of one, good strategy.

My thoughts exactly, to the statement, "Chris is now promoting mixing strains."

Why of course he is!

 

[Miraculix]

The mixed strain verdant/notti beer gets better every day. I think I'm not going to use pub too soon again. Directly pitching two packs of dry yeast while still paying less than for one pack pub is just too convenient with such a nice result.

 

[balrog]

My thoughts exactly, to the statement, "Chris is now promoting mixing strains."

Why of course he is!

It's all part of the cycle. In the beginning, there was the stirring stick used making beer, loaded with many multi strains. Then we get to the times of separating single strains. Now we're turning back to mixing strains.

We'll get back to the stirring sticks eventually. Carry on.

 

[monkeymath]

It's all part of the cycle. In the beginning, there was the stirring stick used making beer, loaded with many multi strains. Then we get to the times of separating single strains. Now we're turning back to mixing strains.

We'll get back to the stirring sticks eventually. Carry on.

In any such evolution, it is worthwhile to consider the driving force behind it. I don't think the selection for single strains was always solely motivated by the quest for ultimate flavor, but often driven by rather technical demands of an industry that we don't necessarily have to the same extent. For example, a big brewery will have attempt to keep mash and boil lengths as short as possible (energy costs as well as staff required) and try whatever it takes to get the beer out as quickly as possible in order to keep up production. For us homebrewers, these points are not quite so important.

The situation in bread making is probably analogous. I think most bakers, professional or at home, would agree that bread made over a timespan of one or more days using an in-house sourdough culture is in many ways superior to a bread where a large quantity of enzymes and packaged yeast was allowed to work its magic for only an hour. Nonetheless, that's how the vast majority of bread is made today (at least here in Germany and probably to an even greater extent in the US).

Homebrewers like to try and copy what "the big guys" are doing, but I think that's not necessarily always the best idea, because our goals are different.
Now, let me get back to carving my stick...

 

[Mumathomebrew]

There's actually quite a good point for making our own brewing sticks. Soak them in the pure yeast of choice first then let them evolve naturally. Off to carve mine too.

 

[monkeymath]

There's actually quite a good point for making our own brewing sticks. Soak them in the pure yeast of choice first then let them evolve naturally. Off to carve mine too.

Awesome! We'll quickly come up with a manifesto and purity laws for the material, manufacturing and use of the sticks and call ourselves 'The Sticklers'.

 

[kmarkstevens]

It's about time for me to make a suicide mix of all the english yeasties I've got in the library. Probably close to 20.

I haven't done this is a while. My learning is not to put in every yeast. If one has a POF- or an off flavor you don't like, that's probably going to come thru in the final.

One mix I quite like is the Whitbread strains. S-04 + WLP017 or the Wyeast equivalent recombines at least two of the whitbread traditional strains. Combined was much better than either seperately

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

How did the yeast kamikaze go? @kmarkstevens

 

[Shenanigans]

The mixed strain verdant/notti beer gets better every day. I think I'm not going to use pub too soon again. Directly pitching two packs of dry yeast while still paying less than for one pack pub is just too convenient with such a nice result.

And what are your thoughts now 6 or 7 weeks later?

I have a mixed yeast slurry of LAIII and verdant. Plus a pack of MJ M42 which is supposed to be repacked Notti. So I might give this a go for a Fuller's ESB clone

 

[Miraculix]

And what are your thoughts now 6 or 7 weeks later?

I have a mixed yeast slurry of LAIII and verdant. Plus a pack of MJ M42 which is supposed to be repacked Notti. So I might give this a go for a Fuller's ESB clone

Haven't had one of these for a few weeks, will let you know next week how it developed.

 

[kmarkstevens]

Haven't tried the yeast "suicide" yet but will. Been caught up in trekking and backpacking this summer amongst other stuff.

 

[Miraculix]

And what are your thoughts now 6 or 7 weeks later?

I have a mixed yeast slurry of LAIII and verdant. Plus a pack of MJ M42 which is supposed to be repacked Notti. So I might give this a go for a Fuller's ESB clone

It just got better.

I got massive head problems, no head at all, but taste-wise, it is a hit. I do not think that the head problem has anything to do with the yeast, I have this from time to time and still have to figure out why it comes and goes.

 

[Shenanigans]

It just got better.

I got massive head problems, no head at all, but taste-wise, it is a hit. I do not think that the head problem has anything to do with the yeast, I have this from time to time and still have to figure out why it comes and goes.

Cool, thanks for the update. Might try it in September when I start brewing after the Summer break. Hopefully the yeast slurry is still viable after 5 months.

 

[Miraculix]

Cool, thanks for the update. Might try it in September when I start brewing after the Summer break. Hopefully the yeast slurry is still viable after 5 months.

I would not count on it. In any case, do a propper starter!

 

[DBhomebrew]

Cool, thanks for the update. Might try it in September when I start brewing after the Summer break. Hopefully the yeast slurry is still viable after 5 months.

You could keep that slurry fresh by fermenting a SNS starter all the way out every so often. Super simple, not much effort.

 

[monkeymath]

You could keep that slurry fresh by fermenting a SNS starter all the way out every so often. Super simple, not much effort.

Sounds like a good test of your sanitation practices, at least

 

[Shenanigans]

You could keep that slurry fresh by fermenting a SNS starter all the way out every so often. Super simple, not much effort.

Not sure what SNS is but yes I could decant and revive it with a bottle of Malzbier (Malta) to keep it going for a few more months.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Not sure what SNS is but yes I could decant and revive it with a bottle of Malzbier (Malta) to keep it going for a few more months.

Shaken, Not Stirred

https://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/saccharomyces/shaken-not-stirred-stir-plate-myth-buster

 

[monkeymath]

Shaken, Not Stirred

https://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/saccharomyces/shaken-not-stirred-stir-plate-myth-buster

I find it interesting that an article claiming to "bust a myth" does not contain any references or experimental data.
Since there are several experiments that do show a significant difference in growth - e.g. Kai Tröster's experiment
https://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2012/03/03/yeast-propagation-experiment/ - I wonder how that myth is to be busted without a dedicated experiment (or reference to one) showing the contrary.

Anyway, sort of getting off track. This is about Miraculix' recipe, there's a dedicated thread for SNS starters.