@Miraculix I hope he has a few that are more recent.
The brewery in my hometown - Holes, later Courage - still had AK as its flagship beer in the 1980s. Many AKs were parti-gyled, but not all of them.AK seems to have died out as a style in the 1930's. These were all partigyled anyway. Any "modern" recipes are new vs being a unbroken pedigree brewed for over a 100 years.
Fair point, and I had just assumed these were all parti-gyled. Like anything, there are outliers vs the "standard". If nothing else, the Shut Up About Barkley blog makes the point that there are plenty of brewery exceptions to the "standard" for every beer style in the Isles.The brewery in my hometown - Holes, later Courage - still had AK as its flagship beer in the 1980s. Many AKs were parti-gyled, but not all of them.
AK seems to have died out as a style in the 1930's. These were all partigyled anyway. Any "modern" recipes are new vs being a unbroken pedigree brewed for over a 100 years.
Fair point, and I had just assumed these were all parti-gyled. Like anything, there are outliers vs the "standard". If nothing else, the Shut Up About Barkley blog makes the point that there are plenty of brewery exceptions to the "standard" for every beer style in the Isles.
D'oh! Color me embarrased!And you just replied to Ron Pattinson (patto1ro) who writes that blog.
Alrighty, then. Time for me to brew up an AK.
85% Fawcett Optic
5% Flaked Corn
10% DIY Invert
FWH EKG 3.5%AA 2-7/8oz (49IBU calc'd as 60m)
0m EKG 3.5%AA 1oz
Dry Hop EKG 3.5%AA 1/8oz (.25g/l)
Mash 60m @ 152°F
Boil 60m
OG 1.043
FG 1.009
Pub @ 68°F
BU:GU=1.13
Sounds good, let us know how it goes! Maybe pub does not get low enough though...
Honestly, did nothing to my beer...Getting ready to bottle tonight, 10 days in the fermenter. Dry hopped Tuesday morning. Sample today tastes great, like it'll be ready to drink as soon as it carbs up. Amazing what the corn does to balance all those IBUs.
Honestly, did nothing to my beer...
It's not like it screams corn. But whereas my typical MO/C65/invert best bitter is balanced at ~35IBU, this one is at 49IBU and tastes no more bitter. I don't know what else to ascribe the balance to, it's not the first time I've done a bitter with FWH which does attenuate the perceived bitterness as well.
maybe this is depending on the actual kind of corn that is being used. There might be differences that affect the bitterness in different ways. Naybe different protein compositions in different corn varieties?
I don't know... my AK was barely drinkable with about 50 IBUs, after two months it was good, but it really needed the time to mellow a bit.
Man..... I should really buy his books.
I would use verdant, as it worked for me pretty well, but I never used 1099, so no idea how that one would compare.I'm gonna shoot for this next weekend if possible, but I need to place an order so I'm at the mercy of others...
This is what I was thinking for a recipe:
OG: 1.043 FG: 1.010 ABV 4.4% IBU's: 35-40 SRM: 5.31
40% Thomas Fawcett Golden Promise
40% Rahr 6-Row
10% Flaked Corn
10% Invert Sugar (12L)
Mash@156F
For hops I was thinking Bramling Cross but I have EKG on order as well.
I have a couple options on yeast. I have Wyeast 1099 Whitbread , and Lallemand's Verdant IPA. I'm leaning towards Verdant at this point.
American corn might be completely different than German corn. Maybe that's the reason?Could very well be. I used good ol' flaked corn from the American Midwest. Nothing fancy.
A far as the FWH, I don't know. I get a softer bitterness and some flavor. Maybe I'm tasting something I'm hoping to find, but I do find myself bumping my recipes up a few calculated IBUs since I started using them. Soft bitterness and flavor aside, I keep with the FWH purely for the anti-boilover properties. Those are not due to confirmation bias.
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I would use verdant, as it worked for me pretty well, but I never used 1099, so no idea how that one would compare.
The ibus are almost a little bit low. I'd go for 45. It might be a bit tough at the beginning, but after a few weeks is mellows into something nice.
We're talking about aks here, and not normal bitters! AFAIK, one of the key points of aks is the huge amount of ibus, compared to other "normal" British bitters.Verdant's OK, better than other dry options for British styles, but the vanilla thing is not very typical, whereas 1099 is far more "classic" and is the obvious choice of these two.
No way. As someone who grew up drinking bitter and who likes them on the bitter end - I personally wouldn't go above BU:GU=0.9 just on drinkability grounds, and certainly by going over 1.0 you are wrecking the balance that is key to British styles.
If it needs "mellowing out" then you've brewed it wrong in the first place. The whole reason why AKs became popular with brewers is that after 1880 the tax system changed to one based on the OG of wort, paid at the end of the month in which the wort was produced. This pushed brewers towards Running Bitters that could be turned round quickly as opposed to traditional "IPA"-style Pale Ales which needed aging. This is the beer equivalent of vin de table, quick turnover and knocked back in quantity.
And just look at the BU:GUs of some of Ron's recipes, with the exception of the last two which can perhaps claim war as a justification, they're smack in the usual range for bitter :
0.88 Eldridge Pope 1896
0.83 Russell 1911
0.80 Greene King 1937
0.76 Kidd 1934
0.75 Fullers 1914
0.60 Crowley 1914
0.44(!) Sheps 1946 (12 IBU in 1.027 but hey, times were tough)
0.30(!!) Boddies 1914 (what's their excuse?!)
AFAIK, one of the key points of aks is the huge amount of ibus, compared to other "normal" British bitters.
We're talking about aks here, and not normal bitters!
I don't know if I brewed it wrong, could very well be as others seem to have better results with these high ibu aks, but maybe it is also my personal taste that just doesn't like these higher ibus that much. My personal sweetspot was always around 30ibus. I just brewed a barley wine, that one has 50 ibus but also 11% abv in this case, I like the 50 ibus, it's quite balanced. But in a 4.5% Beer it's a bit high for my liking.
I was actually fearing the vanilla a little bit in verdant, but at the end, I did not get it... Our maybe my taste buds were to overwhelmed with the 50 ibus
Hahahaha, seems like I got carried away by this one and the following discussion here in this thread:Citation needed. I've given you a ton of links above of Ron's AK recipes which suggest exactly the opposite, they mostly look pretty much in line with modern Best recipes - or at least a more adjuncty version, so perhaps 1980s Bests?
So what's your evidence to the contrary?
You've always got to be wary of relative comparisons, so much depends on what you're saying they're "more bitter" than. If you're used to southern bitter, then some northern bitters will seem "a lot more bitter", particularly if not served through a sparkler.
As above. Bear in mind these were not premium beers, similar beers were also known as "Dinner Ales" and "Family Beers". Something to give to one's wife and servants whilst the man of the house might drink a bottled "proper" Pale Ale to relax after a hard day designing the Suez Canal or planning the invasion of Matabeleland. In that context you wouldn't expect them to be particularly extreme, and those recipes bear out that thought.
BU:GU is your friend in these contexts, bitterness on its own doesn't mean much. Again - these are non-fancy beers for the mass market, they're not going to be hard to drink.
The latter. I've got a bit of a surplus of yeasts to work through so I'm not going to be getting any Verdant just yet,but one thing I'm interested in is whether the vanilla increases with maize/wheat in the grist, the vanilla pathways are linked to ferulic acid chemistry so potentially if you have a wort that would give lots of clove from a hefe yeast, that should make Verdant go more vanilla-y.
Hahahaha, seems like I got carried away by this one and the following discussion here in this thread:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2011/08/lets-brew-wednesday-1930-whitbread-ak.html
this may be construed as a keeping beer (age it a month or two?)
No. B but you can obviously do what you like!If I had some S-04 floating... I'd be inclined to try that! So I have all of my grains together. I'm wondering since this may be construed as a keeping beer (age it a month or two?)... would a touch of oak be appropriate?
I'm wondering since this may be construed as a keeping beer (age it a month or two?)... would a touch of oak be appropriate?
I really wonder what the deal was with these 4-12 months ales. All my English ales are far beyond their peak after 4 months, except the barley wine. Do you know what might be the difference here between modern bitters and these keeping ales that moved their peak time to past 4 months?Not really. Ron Pattinson regards the "Keeping" thing as more of a style identifier, it's a member of the Pale Ale family rather than the Mild family, and not an indication of how long they were actually kept. According to this evidence to a parliamentary committee in 1899, AK was kept 2 to 4 weeks before delivery, compared to 4-10 days for Mild and 4-12 months for Stock Ale.
2-4 weeks is typical of modern bitter, it just needs a bit of time for the malts to knit together properly.
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