Old Ale

[Drinking Sensibly]

Bit late but thought I'd better make a beer for Christmas/winter. Brewing this tomorrow. The plan is to ferment it out, cold crash a few days, transfer to secondary, add some oak chips, leave at cellar temp (approx 13C) until mid-December, bottle. Hoping the oak chips and a bit of oxygenation will make an interesting flavour. Nothing really out of the ordinary in the recipe but I haven't used the yeast before. Sounds a bit like Nottingham so should be OK

Old Ale:
22 litre batch, OG 1060, IBU 55, colour 38EBC, 6%abv,
Fermentables:
Maris otter (6ebc) 2.2Kg - 41%
Golden promise (6ebc) 2.2Kg - 41%
Torrified wheat 300g - 6%
Medium crystal (150ebc) 300g - 6%
Brown malt (150ebc) 250g - 5%
Chocolate malt (790ebc) 150g -3%
Hops:
Fuggles 50g 60 mins
EKG 40g 30 mins
EKG 40g 15 mins
Mash @ 67C for 60 mins, mash out
Yeast: WHC Pub Yeast (aka "Bond"), dried

 

[AlexKay]

I like to add some very dark sugar to this kind of beer. I did a really good one with Jamaican burnt sugar. Clearly not a traditional choice, but it turned out great.

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

Yes, I should think that would work well. I should see if I can find any of that for another time. I've used treacle a couple of times, once overdone it and made something totally undrinkable
I'd usually use dark muscovado but I've used it a lot recently so I felt like I wanted to leave it out.

 

[kevin58]

For dark sugar look into sourcing or making invert sugar. Invert #3 would be my first choice and it will give your beer a more traditional English character.

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

I have made invert a couple of times but I decided it was more effort than it was worth. It's much easier, and works reasonably well, to make an approximation with mixes of light brown, dark brown and granulated sugar. It isn't inverted but the yeast doesn't mind. If you do want it inverted it's pretty simple to make a syrup and boil it with a little acid.
Dark muscovado is roughly equivalent to invert no. 4. Mix some light muscovado to approximate no.3. etc.

 

[Drinking Sensibly]

 

[kevin58]

I have made invert a couple of times but I decided it was more effort than it was worth. It's much easier, and works reasonably well, to make an approximation with mixes of light brown, dark brown and granulated sugar. It isn't inverted but the yeast doesn't mind. If you do want it inverted it's pretty simple to make a syrup and boil it with a little acid.
Dark muscovado is roughly equivalent to invert no. 4. Mix some light muscovado to approximate no.3. etc.

Get a Dutch oven or other covered deep dish you can put in the oven. Mix the sugar and water then set the oven to the temp needed and pop it in the oven for the required length of time. One thing I learned is that it takes the same amount of time to make several pounds of invert as it does to make one pound so make it in bulk and store the rest in sealed mason jars for future use. It stores well for many years.