No I hadn't, sorry to hear that, what happened? Second thoughts, don't answer that, at least no on board.
Hey Northern,
Oh, just one of the many peculiarities of this condition I've had for a decade basically is that I can walk like an idiot sometimes. I literally took a step and next thing I knew, I'd been very polite to say hello to the pavement prior to jamming (thank god) first my knees, then my face, into said obdurate and unfriendly welcome mat. Fine, just felt brilliant rejoining my wife and son in the car. Oh, same leg of the journey, prior, gas nozzle got stuck on "on" for some reason and I withdrew the thing, only to be hosed down with a good amount of petrol. Mr. Bean, on a bad day?
Not quite clear why bottle conditioning affects dryhopping? Do it in the primary/secondary tanks surely? ... Still can't quite see the problem with finding a couple of days in the schedule to dry hop, can't you do it with leaf in socks and pull out when done? I'm definitely of the 2-3 day dry hops school myself, but could perhaps add a day or two if doing it at low temperatures?
I have thought of switching to leaf hops and going over to a hopback anyway, so perhaps this is one good reason to impel my move. As it is, I hop slurry. I will abandon it to a method that suits what I want to do, but for the time being, I really do want to pierce Black Sheep's way a bit, especially as I'm using their yeast. I can't seem to marry their fermentation regime with my 3-day slurry, crash cool, and rack.
Maybe you've a specific idea here? Given they open ferment at 20ish for 3 days, slow cool to 10 over 3 days, day or two there then on to conditioning tank where it rests for another day or two at 10 before racking (if I've interpreted it right, they seem to go by yeast counts to know when to rack off into casks).
Anyway, if I do what I usually do and dry hop near the end of primary, .5-1.0P above terminal, then go 3 days warm, that would be longer than B.S.'s warm period, much more, I should think. And I crash cool, which encourages good dropout, so I can rack clean into a final vessel. I don't know what a slow cool down to 10C would do, in terms of pellet slurry dropout. I also don't know how much a dry hopping at 10 v. 20 would blunt extraction. Perhaps the only way to know is to try.
Maybe I am just missing something obvious?
An acquaintance who brewed there made dark mutterings about what was happening on the brewing side at the time, but would not be drawn further. From the outside, it looks like partly just a succession thing, new guy wasn't as good a brewer, also the success of Spitfire made them think of themselves more as a national brand, and it became more about the MBAs and marketers than about the guys making the product (qv clear bottles). You had a lot of brewers ditch brewing after the Beer Orders and concentrate on their pubs and property - Sheps had more pressure on that front thanks to being in the southeast where property prices went most crazy, but they kept the brewing but concentrated more on contract brewing foreign lager brands like Asahi and Oranjeboom, I think the ales got rather neglected as a result. Now they've been riding the next bubble with a series of fake-craft beers, but they don't seem to be doing it quite as well as say Adnams.
So short answer - beancounters and marketeers.
Thanks for going into it. Makes it perfectly clear, though again, this stuff saddens me (I know, you're right. I'm hopeless when it comes to change, particularly "of an era.") I have no idea the real impact of the Beer Orders but know it's moved a lot of breweries into pub business. Not sure if this is part of the Orders or another (perhaps aged, at this point - across the pond and ignorant as to current developments). Did I read somewhere about some kind of collusive thing with distributors such that some of these new "publicans" had essentially gotten around tied house amendments, and have de facto returned their business where it was before? Wish I could try more of them. I'm still moving with a northern palate, if I can be so pompous, but also have a lot of fond tastes in memory of southern ales and want to play with that sensibility, too.
Generally breweries rack off most of the yeast, then it's a choice between leaving some in to carbonate as many do, but the more professional/industrial/keg-influenced breweries tend to rack completely bright and then add a specialist conditioning yeast as carbonating is more predictable and consistent that way.
I do know of the latter approach but have never done it and doubt I ever will. Not trying to sound pompous, but it just feels.....weird to me, inauthentic to the purpose, perhaps? I don't know, that is pompous. I just really want to use the batch yeast only. If I could come up with a dependable way to know my counts - I don't have a 'scope and hemacytometer - that would be great. Probably nothing less than doing a million batches by the same process, to see what I come up with, will do. Or more probably, I'm making way too much of this as usual. My first extract beers, well, didn't suck, you know? I can't even remember - probably just some measure of how far off terminal, a given priming solution, and go. Working that simple thing into the ideas above, with cooling and dry hop regimes, these complicate that first, simple thing.
Phew! Talking too much. I blame the face plant.
I've just come across some pure yeast porn, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their yeast. Seems I was right about it coming from John Smiths (they even know which train it arrived on!), but they needed a new one not because of a flood but because their supplier in Burton closed down. Obviously it's changed after 3000 generations but the original was 75% attenuation and dropped well.
https://www.harveys.org.uk/60th-anniversary-harveys-yeast/
Thanks for that one. This is awesome! Read somewhere today, too, on Chevallier, which makes me also drool. I don't think we can get it in the States, but man I wish we could. Would love to try it in strong bitters and old ales.
Meh - change is the only constant. Each generation has its own beer - porter, mild, bitter, lager, APA, and the industry has to reconfigure accordingly. We need to kill off the likes of Barclay Perkins in order to make room for the Beavertowns - and the old regionals made a lot of indifferent beer as well. There's also the deadening effect of their local pub monopolies - drinkers in Kent would be far better served if Sheps was reconfigured into 20 companies each with a 20bbl plant and 20 pubs in place of the current near-monopoly.
OK, point taken. And appreciated. I'd like to think more on this.
See, that's always been one that's confused me, because Brakspear is nowhere near Burton. Also it's known that their original multi-strain was derived from Mann's in London - it's not clear, but I suspect it came from the yeast that evolved at Simpsons of Baldock after they bought it from Mann's in the 1930s and which was spread around quite widely after they were bought by Greene King. So either a "Brakspear" yeast is a component of that original multistrain, or it's one that was brought in when they reopened after Marstons got involved. In which case it's a Marston yeast, and yes it would be from Burton.
Maybe it's a component of the multistrain that behaves in a Burtony way - the double drop system is quite Union-like, so the yeast could be similar.
I am embarrassed to say I had no idea till reading this, looked at your country's map, and went, what the hell? Your good reasoning notwithstanding, I guess I can't simply know how you can market something as a "Burton Yeast" from the Thames Valley. Knowing what you've told me, now, a big American "duh."
I understand the union reference and Burton quality, but who is or was doing the double-dropping you reference - is it Mann's, and you're saying the double-dropping selected for yeasts that share many of the characteristics union yeasts shared/share with Marston's now?
Looking at them they seem OK - but as I say he does use shortcuts and has changed his ideas a bit through time. I'm not really into cloning so I've never actually tried any of his recipes. I think BU:GU breaks down a bit at low gravities, but certainly 0.8-0.9 is pretty common for standard British beers (although many are lower).
OK, thanks. I'm not really into cloning, but for two reasons - one, I can't get many of the beers I really love, so to the extent I can get close, makes me all giddy. Secondly, an eternal, feudal apprentice, if I can "steal the mind" (a Japanese training concept) by doing it, I feel I've learned much more about the brewer or brewery, than the beer.
Had no idea the BU:GU's were this high. Thanks. Very valuable.
Thanks for such a considered couple of posts, Northern. Truly appreciated.
