unusual british beer styles? white ale, brett etc

General Homebrew Discussion
1

does anyone have any british (or really, england, scotland, wales and ireland) beer styles that they’d like to share or even just mention the name of to get my thought process going. obviously beyond best bitter/ESB/porter/stout/strong pale ale/mild, unless you know of a lesser known variant of one of these.

I’m also looking to improve my british hop taste. im thinking of combining 75% EKG with 25% of a berry/stone fruity hop to try to get something like what i remember of the impossible to find bramling cross.

devon white ale (minus the eggs). what yeast? i want to try cloudy white ales with different yeasts for one.

also hoping someday to really pay homage to tradition and use brett in a big old ale that i can let sit for a long time.

2

Have you tried target or progress hops?

3

Have you ever looked at Shut up about Barclay Perkins ?
It has plenty of English variants.

If you do a web search you can find Brambling Cross Hops. Austin homebrew and AiH have it.

4

A newer style is the English Golden Ale, which is gaining in popularity, for something different.

5

I watched a few YouTube videos of Brit Homebrewers to get some ideas. Most spoke of HomeBrew Beer by Greg Hughes many referred to as ‘The Bible’ and CAMRA’s Essential Home Brewing among other references. I have found many interesting recipes and cross reference tables in these books. In fact, I have a Summer Ale on deck I got from ’The Bible’.

6

Ron Pattinson’s blog; Shut Up About Barclay Perkins is definitely a must stop on your journey. He is currently in the middle of a write up of AK beers which fits into your search for lesser known beer styles. Ron writes every day unlike many other bloggers so be prepared to read a lot. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/

The other must read is Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile blog. Not as prolific as Ron but just as likely to turn up something interesting. http://zythophile.co.uk/

7

It’s not really out there or anything, but Old Peculier is kind of its own thing in my mind. I see it called an old ale, but it is neither aged nor very high gravity. I’ve tried brewing a clone in the past, but it wasn’t quite close enough. I think yeast choice would play a big role in this one, but I’m not sure what is available that would get you close.

8

thanks everyone

from my local online HBS i dont have access to target or progress. i havent tried too many british hops beyond fuggles and EKG, though i have used EKG a LOT. i was always under the (likely wrong) impression that most british hops were created for value/agricultural reasons rather with taste as a secondary consideration so never tried them much.

i do have challenger hops. im thinking of mixing EKG with mosaic and another thing.

i have read a lot of barclay perkins, but its not the most navigable site, and while he does have a lot of recipes, i find a lot are very similar and very historically accurate from industrial brewers ie. 99.95% pale malt 0.05% caramel colour, etc. ive taken into consideration his thoughts on original style imperial stouts as being fair bit brown malt, small amount black malt and thats it for grist.

i might try to seek out bramling hops from other sites but i try to keep it to canadian homebrew sites so i dont have to pay excessive postage fees or border fees, but who knows.

marstons 61 deep is a nu-english golden ale i enjoy. i wish i had access to more marstons stuff like they used to bring in.

that zythophile blog looks great for beer fun facts and stuff.

looking at an old peculier recipe just now and based on what i’ve seen looking at a lot of recipes, i think the issue is a lot like how homebrewers were trying to formulate belgian brews with kitchen sink malt recipes and fancy sugars.

a lot of british brews are made with a very small amount of malt types ie. a good, solid base malt, a crystal malt between 50 to 80Lov., and various roasted malts we are all familiar with ie. chocolate/roasted barley/black malt and sugar/syrup. meaning the key difference between beers is in the actual yeast, mash methods, and with british brews compared to belgian especially, hopping.

so, im aiming to get the west yorkshire yeast this year at some point and try it out.

9

I think you’ll be pleased

10

is the WLP028 any good? any other recommended british yeast strains?

11

I love west yorkshire

12

Years ago I was PM’d the recipe below on a forum that isn’t around any more when I was asking about OP. The guy who sent it to me allegedly got it from a brewer from Theakston when he lectured at his brewing school. I don’t always believe these stories, but the recipe looks reasonable to me based on other British ale recipes I’ve seen.

Pale ale malt - 71%
Crystal malt (does not specify which) - 3%
Torrified wheat - 7%
Sucrose - 18%
DD Williamson Caramel Syrup - 1%’

30 IBU from magnum hops
Late hops with fuggle ( does not specify what time to add)

Sulphate - 400 mg/l
chloride - 200 mg/l
calcium - 170 mg/l
alkalinity - 25

13

nice, ive not had old peculier before, but recipes i saw recommended 1469 or chimay yeast. ive got some chimay yeast homebrew sitting around now and i can imagine this. the caramel syrup is likely just for colour and interchangeable with 1% black malt or something too.

14

I use WLP028 frequently, for Scottish ales and for stouts. I like it a lot.

15

The unusual English Ale style I intend to brew this year is Ebulon. I intend to make it in September when elderberries are ripe and plentiful and age it until mid winter.

16

You can dig backwards in time to find all of the interesting recipes with honey, fruit, various herbs and spices, but the last five hundred or so years has been an exercise in narrowing the field to a relatively small number of styles and recipes. (But that seems to be true for most European brewing over the same time.) Before the scientific and industrial revolutions in the nineteenth century you see a lot of similar recipes across the country and across a long stretch of time but the way brewers brewed and aged those recipes seems to carry far more variance. Combine sometimes elaborate brewing processes with local hops and grain, local water and the brewer’s mixed fermentation culture and you have unique character in these beers that is not easily replicated by taking a simple pale ale recipe and replicating it with the same grain, hops, yeast and water used by the industrial brewers in London or Burton.

17

Fraoch from Scotland, which is heather ale. The few i’ve had have been very nice.

Quite a few breweries here do elderflower ales, usually a blonde ale, or similar.

I’m a big fan of the English Golden ales on cask, which are very common here in England now. Lower hopping than a typical APA, but with nice yeast and malts and a well handled cask process they can be really fantastic. With English hops is good but the American hopped versions are wonderful. You can combine English and American hops very effectively too. IMO bottle conditioned beer is closer to cask than it gets credit for. It’s not exactly the same, but you can prime lowish and I find by swirling a pint it becomes pretty similar to a cask pint. I use around 4 to 5g per litre of dextrose for priming (not sure what this is in dollars sorry), which is a bit high, hence the swirling. I prefer this to priming lower, you get a nice condition and can knock out excess gas if you want. I’m a bit mid Atlantic with beers like this - mix English and American hops, use lower hop amounts than you folks but more than UK beers tend to, serve cooler than UK cask but not keg cold, more CO2 than UK but less than USA! Ha. Some UK pubs are serving cask a bit colder than is traditional, as it stores better and I suspect it is popular with a lot of people, particularly in summer - when golden ales are in full flow.

18

good analysis and ideas. i am going with the equivalent of about 6.3g per litre of dextrose, but am trying to get it lower and lower for some styles.

19

Try cutting to 5g maybe, for certain styles at least. And wait longer than 2 weeks, I find the condition really starts to hit its stride after around 4 weeks, varies obviously. Good cask isn’t flat at all, it just isn’t obviously fizzy. If you swirl the glass you’ll get a rush of small bubbles that form a strong head.You can get a similar effect in keg beer tbh, if you don’t over carbonate and allow the CO2 to absorb. I think that makes sense. My mate kegs all his beer but carbonates low.