Wells Bombardier

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PeteNMA

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This first section is taken from the Brewing Network Can You Brew It episode from August 27, 2012. The guys interviewed Neil Spake of Wells and the pertinent stuff is below:

The bottled Export version is 5.5%ABV, where the domestic is somewhat lower, between 4.1-4.7% ABV, with the bottled version at the higher end at 4.7%, canned at 4.3% and the cask version on the lower end at 4.1%.

Details from CYBI show are for the Export version:

OG: 1.050-1.051, FG 1.011-1.012 Color EBC: ~50, Bitterness EBU: 30-32

Grain bill for 250 hectalitre batch
Pearl/Flagon 2.9tons (84% by weight of grain, 51.7% extract)
Crystal 130-140EBC 0.55 tons (16% by weight of grain, 9.27% extract)
Invert Sugar No. 5 0.72 tons (21.27% extract)
Corn Syrup 0.75 tons (17.81% extract)

The corn syrup is added to boost the ABV as needed for the different strengths.

Mash Profile:

Infuse at 52C for 40 minutes
Step to 74C with a rise of 1-2C/minute, hold 50-60 minutes at 74C until fully converted.
Sparge at 78C

Water treatment

Wells’ water comes from a private well drawing from the Oolite aquifer. The water is reported to be hard, subsequently softened by the brewery. They report adding 6-6.5kg of CaCl to each batch.
The water profile as used for Bombardier is reported as:
300ppm Calcium
300ppm Sulfate
20ppm Magnesium

Boiled for 60 minutes (approximately 8% evaporation)
Challenger added to approximately 29EBU at 60 minutes
Fuggles added at 5 minutes at 10-12kg per batch

Fermented with Wells’ house yeast strain. Started at 17C, allowed to free rise to 20C, cold crashed to -1C, pasteurized during packaging for bottles/cans.

My Proposed recipe:

I designed this to be closer to the domestic cask product, as that’s what I developed my love for this beer on, and these days I prefer lower alcohol stuff so I can drink more of it. From the CYBI episode, it sounds like the extra ABV is coming from the corn syrup addition so I’ve eliminated that.

The ratio of base malt to crystal malt is maintained to keep the color in the same ballpark, and the golden syrup is maintained to keep the fermentability in the same order.

The mash schedule used by Wells was duplicated by the CYBI folks, and whilst it looks eye-popping at first when you consider the whole recipe it makes more sense. They are doughing in at protein rest temperature for haze stability (probably less of a concern for us homebrewers) then stepping the mash up quickly through the beta-amylase range to the high end of the alpha amylase range. This alone will leave a beer with a fairly high FG and lots of body due to the limited beta-amylase activity, but the addition of simple fermentable sugars will drop the FG down with the production of alcohol. This way you end up with a beer with more body than you would get from a single infusion mash whilst keeping an easily fermented wort.

Grain bill
6lbs 2-row
1.25lb English Medium Crystal 55L
12oz Golden Syrup

Base malt would be Pearl to follow Wells to the letter, however I expect you could sub any variety of English malt and come out with a decent beer. Golden Promise, English Pale Malt, Maris Otter, whatever your LHBS has. Neither of mine carry Pearl so I’m going to use Maris Otter as I usually keep a sack on hand. I’d suggest finding something characterful though, as I suspect that American 2-row will be a little bland for this beer, or you could add a touch of Biscuit or Victory to compensate.

You can probably also sub out the Golden Syrup with a light brown sugar, but you can usually find Lyle’s golden syrup in the International section of supermarkets. I found 12oz jars in the baking section of a Harris Teeter. Sooner or later I'll do a split batch with something cheaper, but I'd like to follow the recipe as given for the first run as a baseline.

My water is very soft, with low hardness (33ppm as CaCO3) and low sulfate (30ppm) so I will add 1.8g of gypsum per gallon of water used to get the sulfate levels in line. If required I will acidify the mash using lactic acid.

I currently do not have a RIMS/HERMS system to do the step mash procedure as described in the CYBI podcast, so I am probably going to try a simple step procedure with no sparge. I plan to infuse at 1.0qts/lb targeting 148F for some beta-amylase activity for 10-15 minutes, then adding boiling water to the mash to increase the temperature to the 160+ range, where I’ll let it rest for 30-40 minutes. I’ll then add the last of the liquor and lauter into the kettle.

I’ll add 1 oz Challenger at 60 minutes and 10g Fuggles at 5 minutes. No hot whirlpool for this one, once the five minutes is up I’ll immediately start chilling and pump out into the carboy around 70F, depending on my hose water temperature.

I am waiting until White Labs releases WLP006 Bedford Ale Yeast for this, as I expect that one of the keys to success with this beer is using the Wells strain. I’m sure it will be a fine beer with a different strain, but the CYBI guys reported that using the right strain really nailed the final beer.

I've typed this all up as some googling only found a few threads pointing to the CYBI episode, and it's much easier to read than to listen and take notes. This and St Austell's Tribute (see my recipe thread in the English Pale Ale section) are two of my favourite beers from back home, and I'm pretty happy with the Tribute so this is the next one to take on.

I'll update this as I brew it, any feedback from anyone else would be received with interest
 
Really looking forward to your brew day & tasting notes. My "googling" led me to this thread as one of the first hits...great info. Thanks for your work. Definitely report back when you have additional info. Happy brewing!
 
Very inspiring. I've discussed the "mash high and add sugar" before so it's nice to see Wells do it. Btw, invert #5? I've never seen that before. The darkest I've seen around is #4. You could add some blackstrap molasses to your invert to try to replicate it.
 
If I had to guess invert #5 was misspoken in the initial interview. I think that the colour is pretty much solely from the crystal malt based on previous brews with similar amounts of crystal malt
 
Brew day.

A speedy one as it was fit in around nap schedules for the kids.

I mashed
6lbs Golden Promise
1lb Muntons C-55 caramel malt

In eight gallons of water at 156F for 45 minutes. 5g of gypsum and 2.5g of calcium chloride were added to the mash. No pH measurement as I forgot.

Got about seven gallons of runnings (no sparge) into the kettle at 1.029. Added 1oz Challenger (7%AA) and brought to a boil.

Boiled for 50 minutes. 1/2 a whirlfloc tablet at 10 minutes. Added 15g Fuggles at 5 minutes. Hit an OG of 1.035. Addition of 12oz of Lyles Golden Syrup brought the OG to 1.042.

Pumped out via the counterflow but warm ground water meant that I only got it down to 85F. 5.75 gallons of wort currently sitting in my kegerator to get down to about 65F

I don't have WLP006 yet so am giving this a shot with Wyeast 1469 which may not be identical but should nevertheless make some good beer.

A pretty relaxing brew day overall, a nice simple one to blow the cobwebs out.
 
Ok. This has now finished fermenting and has been on gas in the keg for a week

Initial impressions:

Body is spot on

Yeast flavour has a nice fruity edge which fits very well. It doesn't have the slightly minerally edge that the real stuff has so it drinks a little sweet on the finish. I expect that the correct yeast will fix this, however 1469 is a very good stand in. Also of note, it took about five days to ferment from 1.0160 to the final 1.0115 FG. If you are going to bottle then make sure that it's absolutely finished.

Colour is just slightly too light, it's very close but just on the wrong side of red. I think adding the missing 0.25lbs of caramel from the scaled recipe ( I only used 1lb, not 1.25) would put this exactly where it needs to be.

Flavour overall is great. I think you could up the late addition of Fuggles to an ounce, as the bitterness is about right but it could do with a little more assertive hop character on the nose. This may also be a factor of the yeast used.

Overall I'm very happy with this as brewed. It's a nice simple recipe, the step mash as used by wells does not appear to be necessary on a home brew scale and whilst the wlp006 might be needed for a dead on clone, you get an excellent special bitter with 1469. I would guess that this would work well with any medium attenuating English yeast, and this would probably be a great recipe to split batches onto multiple yeast strains.

Overall: not cloned but very close. A fine beer in the mean time.
 
I think the recipe is probably right, more flaws in my execution :)

I have a couple of vials of WLP006 on order from my LHBS, so a rebrew is on the cards very soon. I suspect that bumping up the C55 to 1.25 and using WLP006 will put this right on the money
 
It only needs a tiny nudge into darker brown. You could probably add a couple of ounces of dark invert along with the golden syrup but I prefer to keep my recipes simple wherever possible so I'll go with nudging up the crystal to the level from the scaled recipe
 
Invert the golden syrup a tad more with some water and add a measured quantity of blackstrap. That should sort it quickly plus it addresses the fact that golden syrup isn't fully inverted.
 
Still a lot more complicated that just adding another four ounces of crystal
 
Thanks Pete,

Trader Joes here in the states had a special buy on this beer. 6 pack of PINTS for $6! Needless to say I was driving to every Trader Joes in town to stock up. How they made any money on a pint of British ale at $1/pint is amazing.

Alas when I pressed management about when the Borbardier would be back in stock they said it was a "one time 'hustle' buy." Which is corporate speak for you'd better hustle up and buy what you can now because once it's gone , it's gone.

Needless to say we lived it while we could. I guess the Brits weren't favoring Bombardier that particular year. Hmmm

I guess the only way to get this great beer on the cheap will be to make it myself. Thanks for the recipe, Pete!

Alan
 
So round two of this beer is being brewed this weekend, and this time I'm going for a 10 gallon batch.

I've got 12lbs of Golden Promise, 2.5lbs of Munton's C-55. Will be mashed at 156 for one hour in about eight gallons of water. Mineral additions to suit, hopefully this time I'll remember to check my mash pH.
2 ounces of Challenger for bittering, some fuggles for the late addition, along with two jars of Lyle's golden syrup.

The real kicker this time is that I've got a 2L starter of WLP006 which is reputedly the actual Wells strain cold crashing in the fridge as I type. Hopefully this will seal the deal and get this about as cloned as possible.

I'll check back in with a report once the brew has happened.
 
So some first impressions:

WLP006 definitely has a characteristic flavour and results in a very nice mouthfeel. However getting it to finish was a challenge, largely due to me missing the time to start ramping the temperatures. This was holding nicely at about 62-64F, but once the krausen dropped it was another day before I brought the temp up to 70F, and by that time the yeast had dropped like peanut butter in the fermenter.

It did finally scrub off the final few points from 1.018 down to 1.014, a touch above the target of 1.011-1.012. I'll dial down the mash temp to 154 for the next round. I'll also crank up the sulphate addition a bit more, targeting 250-300ppm whereas this one went to about 180-200ppm.

I filled a keg and also 56 bottles so this should get some age on it. The keg actually got filled at 1.016, the bottled carboy took a full seven days to get to 1.014 and sat at that FG for five days before I bottled.
 
Thanks so much for the update. Would you recommended starting at 154 for mash? Also, about how many days/hours would it have been had you ramped at the proper time?
 
Certainly my next try will be to mash at 154 unless you have the facility to perform a ramped mash as per the original recipe.

It took less than 24 hours to hit high krausen as I pitched very fresh yeast from a decently sized starter. The yeast was pitched at approximately 6pm on a Sunday and the air locks were bubbling fast by 7am on Monday

It hit high krausen about 24 hours after pitching, and the krausen dropped about 72 hours after pitching.

I will try holding at 62-64F for three days then ramping up to 70F after 72 hours. Then leaving it for four days at 70f with a few days cold crash at the end.
 
Watch your pitching rate and oxygenation with this yeast, it ferments better when both are on the high side; as is true with most highly flocculant English strains.
 
I actually brewed up a red ale with orange peel and a boat load of Cascade which got the last of the yeast from the aforementioned starter. That got 90 secs of neat O2 and has been fermenting happily along, hard to be sure due to the different recipe but the oxygen certainly seemed to help it get started
 
Some recent updates on this:

I've done a couple of test brews looking for a good substitute for the seasonally available WLP006, and have found what so far seems like a good step-in in Mangrove Jack's M03 Newcastle Dark Ale yeast.

This yeast has a reputation for being a low attenuating strain, but the vagaries of this recipe with its ramping mash program and sugar addition in the kettle actually combat this nicely.

I've recently moved over to a RIMS system so I've tried a variation on the Firestone Walker mash schedule, holding at 148F for 30 minutes after dough in, then ramping up to 152 for 15 minutes then up to 165 for 15 minutes. The final step is just to let me get to a boil quicker after pumping out.

The most recent batch brewed went from 1.041 to 1.013 in three days, I expect that after one more day it will scrub off that final gravity point then I'll be at target.

Flavor wise this yeast works very nicely with the high levels of sulfate in the water, I've been adding enough gypsum to get up to 200ppm of SO4, along with a touch of CaCl targeting about 60ppm Cl. The finished beer is refreshing, the yeast adds some real depth to the flavor which complements the malt and the late Fuggles addition very nicely.

Is it the same as WLP006? No, but I've yet to find anything that is. This yeast mirrors a lot of the best characteristics of WLP006 whilst being available year round, and also very convenient in dried form.
 
Newcastle dark ale is a really cool underrated yeast. Are they still making it? I noticed they recently revamped the whole MJ lineup. Makes sense that it would work with high levels of adjuncts / sugars.
 
I'm pretty sure they're still making it. Sadly the Burton Union strain bit the dust though, that was a good one
 
Hi: Found this thread and decided to give it a shot, as Bombardier is one of my favourites.

Googled the Swedish resellers for Mangrove Jack's Newcastle Dark Ale M03 and found one. But, it turned out they just forgot to remove it from their site as, according to them, Mangrove renamed M03 to Empire Ale M15. They offered to send me the yeast without the shipping fee, so I accepted.

I then emailed Mangrove and asked them about it. Their answer:

We completely updated our yeast strains at the end of 2015, changing and increasing the range of dried strains that we offer. M15 is the closest to M03 though so should get you great results.

So M15 is not M03 renamed, but another yeast. So, should I go with M15 this weekend? Or dump a bag of Nottingham Ale instead? Or maybe even be a little adventurous and ferment half with M15 and half with Notty?

I´m just a bit worried that M15 attenuates better and that all that extra sugar will be fermented so I end up with a very strong ale. Thoughts on that?
 
Nottingham and M15 will be drastically different. M03 was a poor attenuator, I guess M15 will be a medium attenuator, but Nottingham is a proper beast!
 
Thought I should give some feedback on this.

Used M15 and noticed a taste that to me came out as "sulfury". Thought this was due to water treatment. The taste later on faded somewhat and the beer tasted pretty good.

Now I have made a Brown Ale and decided to use M15 again and again noticed this taste. I think it should be thought of as "dark fruits". But to me it just tastes... to much. I will evaluate this a bit more when my brown ale conditioned a couple of weeks more.

Think I need to find me a sample of WLP006.
 
What are you doing to your water re gypsum additions? Oxygenating with O2?
 
Interesting, M03 didn't have any sulphur... but it's attenuation was 60% at best. What did you get out of M15?
 
What are you doing to your water re gypsum additions? Oxygenating with O2?

I added 5 grams of CaCl2 to 29 liters of water. I got 21 liters into fermenter, so I guess the calculations where based on wrong volume.

No I just shake the fermenter.
 
Interesting, M03 didn't have any sulphur... but it's attenuation was 60% at best. What did you get out of M15?

57 %, so maybe it is actually just M03 renamned.

Made a starter and pitched it to a brown ale and that one attenuated at 68 % however.

I´m actually starting to come around regarding this yeast. My Bombardier clone is now 2 months old and tastes pretty darn good! At only 3,5 % abv.
 
What were your gravities to end up at 3.5%? It should finish up fairly dry at 1010-1012
 
What were your gravities to end up at 3.5%? It should finish up fairly dry at 1010-1012

For some reason, I rarely manage to get FG within those ranges. With any yeast. Regardless of starter or not.

I use a refractometer and therefore use a calculator. The one I use shows:
Brix OG: 11.9 - 1.046 OG
Brix FG: 8.6 - 1.020 FG
ABV: 3.5 %

I compared with Brewer´s Friend:
Brix OG: 11.9 - 1.048 OG
Brix FG: 8.6 - 1.021 FG
ABV: 3.67 %

I don´t find the beer to be overly sweet, but rather dry. I actually would want it a bit sweeter, but then it´s not Bombardier. Will def. make this one again, maybe with Lyle´s and some treacle for coloring.
 
For some reason, I rarely manage to get FG within those ranges. With any yeast. Regardless of starter or not.

I use a refractometer and therefore use a calculator. The one I use shows:
Brix OG: 11.9 - 1.046 OG
Brix FG: 8.6 - 1.020 FG
ABV: 3.5 %

I compared with Brewer´s Friend:
Brix OG: 11.9 - 1.048 OG
Brix FG: 8.6 - 1.021 FG
ABV: 3.67 %

I don´t find the beer to be overly sweet, but rather dry. I actually would want it a bit sweeter, but then it´s not Bombardier. Will def. make this one again, maybe with Lyle´s and some treacle for coloring.


Aren't Refractometers inaccurate after fermentation due to the alcohol content. Maybe a hydrometer reading might account for the missing alcohol. But as has been previously mentioned, if it tastes good, drink it!

Alan
 
Aren't Refractometers inaccurate after fermentation due to the alcohol content. Maybe a hydrometer reading might account for the missing alcohol. But as has been previously mentioned, if it tastes good, drink it!

Alan

Hence the use of a calculator. It takes this into account. Not exact probably. But hydrometers are not that exact either. And also, different hydrometers shows different values. This one guy had 4 different hydrometers, all calibrated. And they all showed 4 different values!
 
Since WLP006 still isn't available over here, and I can´t wait to redo this beer, I´m going for it anyway.

I have an order with London ESB Ale (Wyeast 1968) and Ringwood Ale (Wyeast 1187) incoming. Which of these would be most suitable for this clone?
 
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