homebrewandbeer.com

After 10 brews and plenty of patience I am starting to build up a reasonable quantity of beer in the shed. Still buying commercial stuff means that production is beating consumption (of course you need to sample some, just for testing purposes). Currently a lager in fermenter #2, so that should test patience further.

So far all brews have essentially been ales with different hops and some experimenting with grains, and I am looking to create something a little different from my usual drinking habits. I was raised to believe "You live in Victoria, so you drink Victorian beer (CUB), because it's the best in the world". Its not until the last few years that I found out any different.

I am looking for advice on good examples of beer styles in commercial beers, to sample and decide whether to brew. To date the only wheat beer I have tried is Redback, which doesn’t seem to be all that popular form the reviews I have read, and I don’t know whether I have eve tried an English bitter. Not looking for reviews of each style, just a good example of the style to try.

Cheers

English beers are my passion so am happy to help out with that style.

Hard to get good, fresh imported english beers here but even Dan Murphys has a decent selection.

Fullers
Ruddles
Youngs

If you have a good bottle shop you may be able to track down Landlord but again, freshness is the issue. Its my fave beer but its hit a miss.

There are some good examples of english beers in the craft brewing scene. Being a croweater i can only speak for what is brewed here - Lobethal Bierhaus makes a nice IPA and a very tasty brown porter, the Steam Exchange does an awesome IPA and a silky smooth stout.

As for recipes, what level are you at or willing to try? Kits and bits, extract, partial/minimash, AG?

IMHO the key to english beers is the yeast. You HAVE to go liquid. A huge chunk of the character of english beers comes from the yeast both in the aromas and also the impact of malt/hop balance, attenuation etc.

My 2 c
DrSmurto

drsmurto wrote: Hard to get good, fresh imported english beers here but even Dan Murphys has a decent selection.

Fullers
Ruddles
Youngs

If you have a good bottle shop you may be able to track down Landlord but again, freshness is the issue. Its my fave beer but its hit a miss.

Thanks DrS. The local First Choice has Ruddles and Youngs, can't say I have noticed Fullers on the shelf. I have tried Landlord out of the clearence bin at the bottlo, but cant comment on freshness as it was nearing the BB date and it was the only time I tried it. That said I enjoyed it greatly even if it had been handled badly.

drsmurto wrote:As for recipes, what level are you at or willing to try? Kits and bits, extract, partial/minimash, AG?

IMHO the key to english beers is the yeast. You HAVE to go liquid. A huge chunk of the character of english beers comes from the yeast both in the aromas and also the impact of malt/hop balance, attenuation etc.

At this stage only doing kits & bits with dried yeasts. I have progressed to Safale yeasts but that's about as far as I've dared venture.

I have got can of the Coopers English Bitter in the cupboard, so would probably look to build on this. I'm yet to see many recipes or reviews for this kit.

Cheers

My thoughts on making kits as best as they can be is to not start off with a can that has too much in it.

Use the lightest colour/IBU/flavour/aroma kit you can buy and use grain to get colour/flavour/aroma from. I used this thinking to make everything from english bitters, APAs thru dark ales and porters right up to stouts. The flavour/aroma etc was miles ahead of using a coopers stout tin to make a stout etc.

So for an english bitter, off the top of my head i would do something like this

1 can Coopers Lager
1.5kg LME
250g crystal (medium or dark). My personal preference is for english crystal but if you prefer the german versions then caraamber, caramunich or caraaroma.

*Hops - choose between EKG/Fuggles/Challenger/Styrian Goldings and use ~40g in 2 additions.

Yeast - Safale S-04 or Nottingham would be my preference in the dry yeast, maybe windsor.

Use kit yeast and i will personally smack you around the head with a wet fish for wasting my time and insulting an english beer

Hopefully i am not teaching you to suck eggs here but here is my (back in the kit brewing days) methodology

Steep the cracked crystal malt in ~1L of water at **65-70degC for 30-60 mins.

Drain and rinse the crystal with another 1L of 65-70degC water.

Bring the resulting liquor to the boil and add 20g of your chosen hops. Boil for 20 mins and then switch off the heat. Add another 20g of hops.

Add your LME and kit and stir to dissolve (or add these to your fermenter with boiling water).

You can either strain this mixture into the fermenter or not - the hops will settle to the bottom.

Top up to 20L - don't dilute any further. So you get a few less bottles. The resulting beer is better for it. Quality over quantity.

Once temp gets to 20C or below pitch yeast - use either Safale S-04 or nottingham. I'd go with S-04.

Cheers
DrSmurto


* You can use more than one variety. EKG/Fuggles is a classic combo - 10g of each at addition. Or maybe EKG for the 1st addition and Styrians for the 2nd addition. Plenty of combos and IMO there isnt a bad one.

** 65-70degC water is easily achieved using 2 parts boiling water and 1 part tap water (cold).

Thanks DrSmurto.

Nothing there I can't handle, and quite a few ingredients already in the cupboard. Haven't tried any of the hops you suggested, but can source all of them easily, probably go with your suggestion of EKG/Fuggles combo.

The threat of the wet fish wasn't necessary as I have already dropped the kit yeasts. So far only used US-05, but will be passing by the LHBS tomorrow and will collect hops and yeast.

I have on hand a tin of coopers draught which will give me a slightly darker and more bitter end result than your recipe, might drop the crystal back to 200g to adjust color.

The hot water tip is exactly what I've been doing as I don't have a thermometer that goes past 50deg. 1.5l of boiling water to 1.0l of our 22deg tap water into a preheated container should give me 65-70deg if my math is right.

Now just waiting for a tub to become empty, but first off to the bottlo on the way home to collect a couple of the beers suggested earlier (damn research never ends).

Cheers