The new face of an old recipe

It's been a long time (several months) since my last post so I apologise for that.  A lot has happened in that time; I've been made redundant, become a house-husband and am currently investigating the feasibility of starting a small-scale commercial brewery.

Part of my feasibility study is coming up with recipes that I think would sell.  That means casting aside some of the stronger beers that I enjoy making and focusing on lower gravity, "Normal" beers.  There are a number of parameters that I have considered in coming up with the first recipe; duty payable, drinking trends, cost of ingredients and, perhaps surprisingly, CAMRA's preferences.

One beer that's drawn much praise over the last couple of years has been my Green Bullet Gold.  This beer is about 4% alcohol by volume, light in colour with citrus aroma and flavour.  So far, so good.  Where this particular recipe falls down is that I designed it with a relatively small proportion of flaked maize.  This helps to dilute the protein in the beer which in turn helps to produce an exceptionally clear product.  So, why am I removing it from the recipe?  Put simply, CAMRA.

Now, I believe CAMRA have done much for the real ale industry, however, while they don't condemn the use of adjuncts in beer the following statement, taken from their web page does seem to cause people to shun beers made with ANY adjunct.  The CAMRA site statres, "Excessive use of fermentables that are not malt is one cause of dull beer".  So I'm taking maize out of the recipe.  

Additionally, I'm swapping caragold out for standard crystal malt, I'm using Nottingham yeast rather than my trusty stock of the Fullers strain and I've further reduced the bitterness down to about 30 IBU.


I brewed this beer on Wednesday last week and it's currently sitting at 5C while the yeast count drops sufficiently for casking (below 2 Mcells per ml).  I'm expecting to rack the beer to cask on Thursday  from where it will be bottled at the weekend.


As for the other recipes being commercialised, watch this space.

People's Stout

Finding time to do all the things I need to do around the brewery is difficult with two boys under 2 (actually William is now 2 but that doesn't make it any easier) but tonight I managed to get a beer racked and another into the FV.

Last year CAMRA started a campaign to get reduced tax on low gravity beers; the figure of 2.8% ABV was suggested.  I don't know the ins and outs of the campaign and, to be frank, I don't really care.  What I do know though is that the North Hants Brewers saw this as challenge to brew the best beer possible under 2.8%.

We agreed back in December that this would be a good theme for a meeting and July is the chosen month.  No table full of beer strong enough to floor an elephant this month.  Just 2.8% beers of any style you can dream up.

So, with the meeting only 12 days away, I figured it was time to get brewing.  The easy way out would have been to brew a simple bitter but mashed at a higher than normal temperature.  Not me.  I wanted more of a challenge, so I'm brewing a stout with an OG of 1.028!

I know, the style police will be there telling me that a stout should be a certain gravity...blah....blah....blah....  but I don't care.  It's a bit of fun!

So, what's the recipe tonight?

For 55 (actually ended up with 60) litres

5.75kg Pale malt
0.5kg Crystal Malt
0.5kg Roasted Barley
0.25kg Carafa Special III (for colour mainly)

Mashed at 68°C

100g Fuggles (First wort hops)

WLP002 from a slant, grown to 3.5 litres.

The big question is, "Why make up the colour with carafa special malt when I'm using such a small proportion of roasted barley? Why not just use more roasted barley?".  Well this is simple.  I have 12 days to brew, ferment, mature and condition a beer.  There's no time for the beer to mellow and I don't want it too roasty.

So, what did it taste like going into the FV?  A bit bland to be honest but if I can get it fermented cleanly and conditioned in the bottle or cask it should make an "Interesting" beer.

I'll post some kind of review, if anyone's interested, in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully I'll be preaching the virtues of low gravity beers.  We'll see!