When boiling a high OG ale make sure you have a kettle capable of holding double the capacity of the liquid in the boil. E.g. If you have 3 gallons of liquid make sure you are using a 6 gallon kettle. High OG means lots of malt and lots of malt leads to a large hot break (think thick creamy foam) in the kettle. When I brewed my 1123 OG Barleywine with over 14 lbs of DME I could barely keep it inside a 7.5 gallon kettle with only 3 gallons of liquid. Be warned.
Been more in the groove this week, head not spinning so fast and managed to get some posts done. Getting used to the commute, the work and occassional travel and the wife drinking my ales without me home. I am happy about this fact I think. It was fun to brew this weekend, tried “hop-bursting” for the first time using over 1 lb of hops in a brew (12 oz in the last 15 mins). I also found some time to research another classic Old Ale, Old Speckled Hen, so its off with this weeks On Tap Update.
Primary
Secondary
Bottle/Keg Conditioning
Drinking
Online version with calculator can be found here.
Next up in the series on Old Ales and Browns is another classic Old Ale available in both the UK and US, Old Speckled Hen, brewed by Greene King after its acquisition of the Morland Brewery in 2000. We have already covered the history of Greene King with the Abbot Ale recipe last year but Morland also has an interesting past.
Prior to its acquisition by Greene King, the Morland Brewery was located in Abingdon, now part of Oxfordshire, in the UK and has a history dating back to 1711. The original brewery was located in the town of West Ilsley started by a local farmer John Morland to brew stouts and porters, the popular ales of the time. Over the next 150 years the brewery slowly grew, remaining a family business, eventually acquiring 2 small breweries in nearby Abingdon in 1860. By 1880 Morland had moved its operations from West Ilsley to Abingdon and by 1885 they incorporated as a limited company registered as United Breweries. From this point on the company grew rapidly, buying out a number of local breweries. The company went public in 1994 and was acquired by Greene King in 2000. Throughout its history the company had a reputation for respecting the breweries they acquired, maintaining the original brewery names and brews. Post Greene King acquisition though only the Morland name survived, the Abingdon brewery did not and all production is now in the Greene King brewery based in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, UK.
The history of Old Speckled is not so old but is definitely one worth noting. I found this description on wikipedia:
Old Speckled Hen was first brewed by Morlands of Abingdon in 1979. MG cars celebrated the 50th anniversary of their move to Abingdon, from Edmund Road in Cowley. They asked Morland to brew a special commemorative beer for the occasion, for which they would suggest the name and they would design the bottle label. The name chosen was Old Speckled Hen which took its name from a car which was brought to Abingdon, when the factory moved.
The car was called the MG Featherweight Fabric Saloon made from cellulosed fabric stretched over a wooden frame and was black speckled with gold. It became the factory’s demonstration model and general runabout and as it chugged about the factory people would say “There guz the Owd Speckl’d un”.
The original beer label bore the MG colours of cream and brown. The bottle dressing was finished with a green foil capsule, which matched the background colour of the Borough of Abingdon Arms. The beer was an amber colour and was brewed at a gravity of 1050 to denote 50 years (i.e. 1929 – 1979) of production of MG cars in Abingdon.
According the company website the ale is described as:
“Old Speckled Hen” has a full, smooth flavour and is very easy to drink. Its rich amber colour and superb fruity aromas are complemented by a delicious blend of malty tastes.
Toffee and malt combine with bitterness on the back of the tongue to give a balanced sweetness. This is followed by a refreshingly dry finish.
I can attest to the validity of the above notes for the pre-1999 version. In my experience the current export version is not as balanced or as rich and comes across a little dialed down in the flavour department. Not to worry though as is what this blog is about, trying to recreate the original and sample the ale fresh as John Morland intended.
The company website gives nothing away around ingredients, colour, or bitterness. It states the ale comes in 2 varieties, a cask version at 4.5% ABV and a bottled version at 5.2%. We will focus on the bottled. I consulted with the The Real Ale Almanac (5th edition, last published in 1999, so prior to the Greene King acquisition. Important to note considering many experts on this beer claim the recipe was changed) and it confirms the bottle strength is 5.2% ABV, with an OG of 1050 (a given considering the history of the ale), uses Pipkin Pale Malt as a base, Crystal Malt, brewers sugar, Challenger hops for bitterness, Goldings and Challenger for aroma with a range of 30-35 IBUs of bitterness.
Here are the tasting notes from the Almanac:
Nose: Superb Goldings hop aroma (considering using Goldings for a flavour addition at the end of the boil)
Palate: Full hops and fruit in mouth, long dry finish with hops and delicate fruit notes
Comments: Rich coloured and fruit flavoured strong ale with generous hop support.
(my italics) The only hint we have for colour is it is “Rich” and “Amber” (from the company website). My own experience put the colour as a light amber almost a dark golden colour. Given we have the OG and final ABV, bitterness and fermentables I believe the colour is a variable that will resolve itself. For yeast I will go with Wyeast #1275 Thames Valley Ale, its high attenuation will give the dry finish and both yeast and ale hail from the same location. So lets get busy and input the ingredients into the beer calculus system on hopville.com and balance the quantities in order to create a workable recipe conforming as best we can to the constraints above.
Morland Old Speckled Hen (BJCP Beer Style: Strong Ale, category: Old Ale)
Base Malt and Fermentables:
Specialty Grains:
Hops
Yeast
Other Additions
Process
After cracking open a bottle and pouring a drink ensure to empty the bottle of sediment and rinse the inside in HOT water a couple of times. Experience has shown me that if you do this all that is required to clean the bottle in the future is a tiny amount of dish soap and a bottle brush. You save time and money by not having to use sanitizer.
Finally the time has arrived to review the Flower Original Ale clone recipe, the penultimate brew in our English Pale Ale series. Well the title says it all, its a winner and the first recipe to be promoted to my permanent recipes page. It really is a pleasure to drink. It has a light mouthfeel, going down easy as a good session beer should. The flavour is packed with fruit, its fresh with a balanced malt/hop flavour profile with the Target and Goldings hop really coming in on the front and a sweetness from the Crystal coming in the back. The tasting notes call from a “hop edge and a dry finish”, this recipe delivers.
The brew process went well. The OG came in at 1042, exactly on the money with the recipe, the colour came out exactly as planned though to be honest I am comparing with memory (unreliable given the amount of this stuff I drank in my youth) and some pictures I found on Google images. The fermentation process went well with the recipe calculator calling for a 1009 FG which is exactly the measurement on the hydrometer out of the primary. Aroma seemed close to. I was indeed hopeful but I have been hopeful before and walked away disappointed. I bottled the beer after 1 week in the secondary using Cooper Carb drops for priming. Following my own tip to leave ales primed with Coopers for 4 weeks I waited one whole month before sampling the final brew. So here we are, our first beer to get promoted to the permanent recipe page, and the first of the BJCP English Pale Ale series. 🙂
So my record in the English Pale Ale recipe section has picked up a bit in recent weeks. Here is the current roundup with 1 recipe to go:
I have the Fullers London Pride clone conditioning and showing promise. So maybe I can get 2 of my English Pale Ale classification recipes to reach my self imposed 8/10 grade required to be promoted to my permanent recipes page. Getting to this page ensures its a recipe I have faith in and something I would recommend to other people to brew. I will continue to refine the other recipes that did not make the grade with the goal of getting all of them over 8/10 and therefore enjoyable by all.
I welcome everyone to go ahead and brew this recipe and enjoy a near reproduction of a British classic. Send along your comments, brew notes and suggestions, we still have one 1 point to gain for a 10/10 after all. Give one to a Bud Lite drinker, it will make them cry, InBev can go……… nite nite
Sorry for the light post week, its been my first week at work and my head is spinning, not from the work but more just being back in the corporate world. So far so good and I actually found myself enjoying wearing a suit, weird. I have been brewing though (and finishing a couple of the older batches), managed a new brew on Saturday and moved some beer around. Guess its time for the On Tap Update
Primary
Secondary
Bottle/Keg Conditioning
Drinking
When using Coopers Carb tabs to carbonate your bottled conditioned ale do not open a bottle for at least 4 weeks. Coopers takes double the time of cane sugar or DME to carbonate an ale.
For those that are regular readers you know that in between my British ale brewing I brew a bunch of kits from Northern Brewer (NB). The quality of the brews is high and every few months they introduce something new. I especially enjoy the beginning of every new quarter when Wyeast and White Labs put out a special limited edition selection of yeasts and NB crafts a special recipe to showcase the yeast. This quarter NB put out a Rogue Dead Guy Ale clone and Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout clone to complement the Wyeast Special Edition release of PacMan yeast, the proprietary strain from Rogue Breweries
I have brewed quite a few of these kits over the last 12 months, some more than once and a couple one too many, so I thought I would provide my own little guide to the kits I have drunk and some little tips I have picked up along the way.
1) Quality – Almost all the pre-prepared recipe kits I have brewed have been of the highest quality. The ingredients are fresh and pre-packed to the right quantities. Grains are crushed and hops are sealed and fresh. If brewed correctly the quality of the finished brew is also of the highest order with some exceptions. I thoroughly recommend the clones such as the Broken Spear Bitter (Brakespear Best) or the Grateful Dead Guy (Rogue Dead Guy Ale). I have done side by side comparison with the commercial version and the clone and they are so close, helped of course by the fact that the yeast strains hail from both version are the same.
Here are my top 3 quality favorites:
#1 New Old Ale – winner of my 2009 brew of the year. This ale matures well with age, strong fruit with a rum quality on the back with a balanced hop flavour make this strong old very approachable. Many friends who are not ale drinkers have been converted after drinking this ale because it is so well balanced with a distinctive flavour. Leave this brew in the bottle for at least 2 months before drinking,
#2 Sinistral Warrior IPA – this brew is currently in my 2010 favorites list. A killer American Style IPA with a high IBU count. But give this brew 2 months in the bottle and watch as the ale begins to mellow slightly whilst retaining the hop driven peppery spice leaving a really smooth IPA. It goes down way too easily for its alcohol content, so be careful.
#3 Peat Smoked Porter – an American style porter that goes down smooth like desert. It has a full mouthfeel and delivers a balanced hop malt character. The kicker with this stout is the inclusion of peat smoked malt giving an almost bourbon note to the drink. This ale will fill you up, its not a session drink and is great as an end of the evening brew. Needs at least 1 month in the bottle.
2) Degree of Difficulty – NB extract kits are not hard to brew, if you can cook oatmeal you can brew these kits. The OG’s tend to be conservative but SRM and IBU calculations to my eyes and taste are typically on the money. There are some exceptions.
#1 Lord Fatbottom Ale – a very viscus Barleywine. The kit ships with a monster 14 lbs of extract and its nearly impossible to avoid the hot break boiling over. I recommend using a 10G boiler for this brew. Many people who have brewed this ale have reported the need to kick start the primary fermentation with champagne yeast as the ABV climbs over 10%, most yeasts pack up and go home with ABV’s over 10. Its a tough one to brew, I have and its is a decadent, thick hop bursting delight. I have one in the carboy conditioning away at a happy 13% ABV. Needs almost a year to finish. I recommend at least 1 month in the primary, 6 months in secondary. But come prepared.
3) Ones to avoid – not everything or everyone is perfect and NB kits are no exception. We all have times when our brews have gone wrong due to matters well within our control, wrong ingredients, poor sterilization, temperature etc. But sometimes there is nothing we can do, the ale just isn’t that good. Here are my least favorites from NB
#1 Cream Ale – just don’t try it, it’s bland, has poor head retention with nothing distinctive whatsoever. The brew process was accurate, OG, FG, color and IBU perfect. It just doesn’t taste of anything.
#2 Irish Draught Ale – this was a big disappointment but the wife liked it. None of the nutty character claimed by the kit was present, it was a little too dry and left an after taste not too my liking, the late clover honey addition appeared to have no effect. I had high hopes for this brew based in the reviews but I will not be brewing this one again. Again the brew process was perfect, the taste just wasn’t there
So that’s my list for now. I have the two Rogue clones on the go right now and I cracked a sample of the Dead Guy Ale clone and had a bottle of the real thing immediately after. The results are almost identical. This brew will definitely be making my favorites list this year. If you have a favorite kit drop me a line or post a comment, would love to get some recommendations.
Tomorrow I will be starting my new job, exactly one year to the day that I officially parted ways with Fidelity after an almost 9 year career there. This past year has been amazing, I have been a full-time father, got to spend the 1:1 time with the wife we never had before our first child was born (and loved every minute), built a very large blue stone patio, watched our house addition get built, have some great trips, become school treasurer and board member and last but by no means least re-connected with my hobby of old, home brew. Its been a great time, a time of reflection, growing and learning the true value of people and things. So going back to the office will be bitter sweet. I am not saying goodbye, the kids, wife, house, school and beer will all still be there but the relationship will change as I add a work life to the mix. But I have changed to, priorities have been reset this past year and I hope I have grown enough to not let work get in the way of my real life back home, one that has On Tap Updates like this one.
Primary
Secondary
Bottle/Keg Conditioning
Drinking
As readers are by now painfully aware I had some issues with my Fullers ESB Clone recipe. My first review of the clone came after only 2 weeks of conditioning in the bottle and only 4 weeks since the brew began. A little early methinks. Well the review gave low grade, only 4/10 citing poor clarity, overly malty and sweet and low carbonation. But this is not the end of the story, a week later we get a slightly happier tone in the On Tap Update under “Drinking” citing better mouthfeel and improved flavour. I seem to remember it had cleared also. What a difference a week makes. Well 2 weeks on from the original review during a review for a disappointing Wadworth 6X clone (still is disappointing btw) we get great news, I have upped the rating to a 6/10 as the flavour had now drastically improved over the original.
This brings me to the other night, almost 7 weeks to the day from its bottling date and only 2 bottles remaining. I crack a bottle, carbonation is perfect, flavour is definitely ESB, a really bright beer that goes down smooth. I have to rate this an 8/10, its good, really good. So what have I learned from all this. First up, don’t write a review on ESB’s until at least 6 weeks, let beer condition for longer, it obviously needs it. The ESB clone has showed just how drastically an ale can improve over a 5 week period.
So what does happen to ale as it ages? First of all it depends on how long and where. Most beers can last for months in a temperature controlled, dark area. Once a beer has carbonated (typically 2 weeks), it is best stored at 55ºF in a dark room. Light is the first enemy of aging as it causes a premature breakdown in the hops leading to a skunky, “off” taste. Over time the hops will naturally breakdown but constant temperature and lack of light will greatly prolong an ales life. Temperature is the other big factor with aging, a fluctuating temperature can cause spoiling and rapid aging leading to prematurely off beer. This can and has happened during hot summer months and is why I am seriously considering converting an old fridge for beer storage this coming year.
So, given we have taken temperature and light into consideration what does happen to the various flavour notes? Aging essentially is a mellower. Hops will gradually breakdown causing strong hop flavours to blend into the malt profile (important for Imperial IPA’s and Stouts, that need at least 3 months), strong caramel and toasted malts subside into subtle coffee notes, alcohol notes become soft tawny port, and the sweet base malt breakdowns into a more complex blend of flavours. This happened with the Fullers ESB, the “overly malty sweetness” balanced out perfectly with the hops, become more fruity with a hint of citrus.
Some beers really benefit from extended aging, something typically synonymous with wines. Sweet malty beers with a baseline ABV level of 8% often fare well if stored for prolonged periods of time. Barleywines, Imperials, Old Ales, and Browns are good candidates. A general rule of thumb, the higher the ABV the longer it will age.
To wrap up, I have changed the Fullers ESB clone recipe from version 1. I still think the 120L Crystal is too much malt and have opted for the 60L instead which will also lighten the colour a little, something I still believe is required. I have managed to acquire the complete hop mix recommended by the brewers website which appears to be working well for my London Pride clone. I have also learned that White Labs English Ale is actually the Fullers yeast strain. So some major changes, it will need one more run before being declared a success but I do know that next time I will definitely be leaving the finished product in the bottle for at least 6 weeks before I crack open a bottle.
