Brewing is an ancient art on the island of Great Britain, and a number of practices in modern brewing have very deep roots. But the lineage does not run in a straight line, and there are also many paradoxes. The slender water channel that separates the island from continental Europe isolated brewers who were at times far ahead or far behind their contemporaries on the mainland.
Hops, for example, traveled throughout Europe before arriving last in Britain, and hop-free or low-hop brews (called “ales” locally — as opposed to the stronger, hoppy cousins known as “beer”) were produced until relatively recently. On the other hand, British brewers advanced the science of brewing light-years ahead of mainland brewers during the Industrial Revolution. They used attemperation (a method of controlling temperature), steam power, sparging (rinsing the grain), and advanced malting techniques in ways the rest of Europe could only marvel at. (It’s why the famous Austrian and Bavarian brewers Anton Dreher and Gabriel Sedlmayr traveled there to conduct “research” — some might call it industrial espionage — in 1833 and why the burghers of Pilsen outfitted their new brewery with a maltings, also known as a malt house, and kiln “equipped in the English manner” a decade later.)
But then everything slowed during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 1800s and has remained largely static ever since. If you have a chance to travel around to any of the old breweries now — Greene King, Samuel Smith’s, Hook Norton — you find “Victorian tower breweries” still in use that were state of the art in 1860. They use gravity to send the beer on its journey from the mill down to the mash tun, then farther down to the kettle, and finally down to the fermenters. Greene King, in fact, felt the old design was so important that it recently spent £14 million to restore the Victorian elements. (“We could have gone mash-filter, we could have gone lauter, but no, we said we’re staying with what we know,” brewer John Bexon told me. “Okay, we could have gotten a bit more efficiency by doing it, but I think you lose the authenticity.”)
This not only has created remarkable continuity in British brewing but goes a long way toward defining the contours of British ales. Made from single-infusion mashes on imprecise, manual equipment; boiled over open flames; and fermented in open, square fermenters, British ales have noticeable batch-by-batch variation (something that should hearten rustic homebrewers like me). Served on cask, the living beer evolves by the hour, so that drinkers develop a relationship with the mutability of their favorite pint.
John Keeling, the longtime head brewer at Fuller’s, says this is a feature of British brewing, not a flaw. “You can never make batches of beer that are exactly the same no matter how good you are, and in fact, to try to make them exactly the same, that means taking flavors out because they’re so hard to manage on that consistent basis. And that’s really what we call character.”
Since the turn of the new millennium, a strain of brewing in Britain has developed that takes its cues from the United States — stronger beer made with bales of hops. The older tradition is still dominant, however, and the new one has not lost a sight-line connection with cask ale. The British tradition, though evolving, remains very much intact. When you sit down in front of a pint of British ale or seek to brew one, these are the elements to keep in mind.
You have a dialogue with [each] beer. To me, it’s like walking into a bar and noticing your friend at the bar has had a haircut. He’s still your friend, he just looks a little bit different. It’s the same as going up to the bar, ordering London Pride and going, “Oh, can you pick out some orange notes in there?”
— John Keeling, Fuller’s
Base malt barley varieties. The key foundation to a British cask ale is the base malt, which provides the beer with the warm, comforting character that defines these beers. Americans have occasionally heard of one of these base malts, called Maris Otter, but this is in fact the barley variety, and there are a number of different ones in regular use: Pearl, Tipple, Halcyon, Golden Promise, and Optic. Each one gives a slightly different flavor. Some are nuttier and others more bready; some are sweeter and others drier; some have notes of toffee, figs, or Malt-O-Meal. Finding the base malt that exhibits the character the brewer wants is no less important on the flavor profile than finding the right yeast strain or hop variety.
English hops. English hops are less assertive than American strains, a virtue that helps them harmonize with the rich, aromatic malts. Even in beers where stiffer hopping is called for, English varieties tend toward sweeter, more marmalade-like flavors. It’s not always easy to source high-quality hops from England, but many American cultivars descend from English strains. Willamette descends from Fuggle stock and is a mainstay (because Fuggles are dying out in England, British brewers are replacing them with Willamette).
Fruity yeasts. Many old British breweries continue to use the same yeast strains they’ve used for decades, and they develop distinctive house character. This is another important way British ales are different from their American descendants, which commonly use neutral yeasts. English yeasts may accentuate the mineral quality of the water and often add jammy esters that taste like apricot, quince, and plum. They may also produce diacetyl, a flavor not out of place — in modest amounts — in a pint of cask ale.
Hard water. Everyone knows about the famously hard water of Burton upon Trent (which gives beer the sulfurous aroma locals call “Burton snatch”), but there’s more nuance here than is usually appreciated. Most old breweries get their water from wells. And while it’s true that most British water is hard, it’s not possible to generalize about “Burton water” or “London water.” One well dug at 25 meters will draw waters different from another well a few miles away dug at 50 meters. The unique water of each brewery is yet another element in the house character. Homebrewers trying to inject a bit of Britishness into their beer would do well to experiment to find which water amendments work best.
Brewing sugar. It is very common for British brewers to dose their grists with sugar to lighten the body and add a crisp finish to their beers. American palates favor fuller ales, but judicious use of sugar helps brewers achieve that famous “moreishness” in beers meant for being drunk in groups of twos and threes. Darker sugars may also be required in such low-alcohol beers as brown ales and milds.
Cask conditioning. Traditional British beer was made to be drunk from the cask. This is not a romantic comment but a scientific one. British ale goes from the brewery to the pub literally in days, sometimes even before it has completely fermented. It finishes out in the pub’s cellar, lightly carbonating inside the cask. This has a dramatic effect on the beer. Those flavors we’ve talked about — the rich malts, fruity yeasts, delicate hops, and minerally water — all blossom in the relatively warm environment (roughly 55°F [13°C]) of the cellar. When they’re served fresh, pints of cask ale taste more vivid, fuller, and livelier than anything from a bottle. The homebrewer can achieve some of the effect with bottle conditioning, but rigging up a home cask (see chapter 1, Cask Ales) is the way to enjoy the real thing.
There are, of course, many more subtleties to the wonderfully understated beers of Britain, so let’s dig and explore.
Cask ale is a presentation, not a style. It is separated out here for special treatment because of the import of that presentation. Although not widely popular in the United States, cask ales still represent the spine of the British brewing tradition. In an English pub you will always find a local bitter on cask, possibly more than one, possibly in differing strengths; it might be accompanied by other styles — a mild, stout, strong ale or even a hoppy, American-style ale. (Scottish pubs have less fealty to cask, and local ales are sometimes served on keg.) What knits these beers together is the way they’re prepared and served — alive, with fizz coming from fermentation just concluded, with low levels of carbonation, and at cellar temperatures.
Not all beer displays its qualities best in this environment. Cask ales are usually weak by American standards (3 to 5% is typical) and beguilingly simple. That’s important, because on cask the flavors of beer are more naked, more accessible. Flavors that would otherwise be washed out by stiffer carbonation and colder temperatures have a chance to blossom. The example offered here is a standard English bitter, but the process would work with a mild, a brown, a porter, or even a lighter, less insistently hopped American-style ale. This is the beer presentation most overlooked by Americans (or sometimes used with inappropriately strong, hoppy styles), which is a real shame. Although cask ales yield their accomplishment more slowly, they are the equal to any beer in the world. Brew up a cask or four and spend time with the results; see if you don’t discover their allure, too.
Greene King’s estate — and it does feel like an estate — is one of the grandest of any brewery’s. Sprawling across 44 acres, it combines the architectural splendor of a Georgian-era building with industrial Victorian steampunk touches. Giant steel tanks stand sentinel while pipes carry beer underneath the brewery — underneath the city streets, in fact — or sometimes soar aboveground, exposed, for hundreds of feet. The brewery itself overlooks the much shorter town structures like a benevolent lord surveying his domain.
The most fascinating part of the Greene King story is not its physical or corporate size. (With three thousand pubs and several important brands such as Morland and Belhaven in its portfolio, Greene King is the largest ale brewery in Great Britain.) The intriguing part is that, with all the resources at its disposal, Greene King continues to make beer the way it has since the nineteenth century. The brewery has the classic design, with grain sacks and mill at the top floor following gravity’s course toward fermentation several floors down.
A decade ago, as the brewery’s old copper equipment creaked toward its inevitable end, Greene King had to decide whether to patch things up or modernize. Amazingly, the brewery chose to spend £14 million, not to build a state-of-the-art facility optimized for industrial, high-gravity brewing but to restore all the copper. The brewery still looks much the same as it did 40 years ago, but the equipment is back to its original nineteenth-century condition. Whatever else you might say about Greene King — and people always have lots to say about a country’s biggest brewery — the beer is traditional from top to bottom.
Greene King’s flagship brew is called IPA, but it’s actually a light bitter, and a perfect cask ale. With just 3.6 percent alcohol (see? — not an IPA), it nevertheless has a toasty, caramel body and lively English hopping. It’s the kind of beer that absolutely was designed to be served on cask, where the flavors bloom, and enjoyed in triplicate down at the pub. Prodded by the excitement British craft breweries have generated, Greene King expanded the IPA line to three other offerings, but they too are typical English bitters. The brewery doesn’t ignore the march of time, but it has a characteristically traditional approach to addressing it.
Greene King has a difficult, almost contradictory charge: chart a course into the uncertain future while holding firmly to tradition. When outgoing head brewer John Bexon left in 2015, Greene King replaced him with a man who personifies change and continuity. Craig Bennett began homebrewing while he was at the University of Dundee, but his roots extend back even further than that — his uncle was also a brewer. After he received a degree in microbiology, he went on to get his brewing qualifications from Heriot-Watt University brewing school and then brewed for nearly a decade at McMullen & Sons. He joined Greene King 15 years ago and was recently involved in developing a line of experimental beers for Greene King under the Metropolitan label. So while he will guard beers such as Greene King IPA, Morland Old Speckled Hen, and the legendary Greene King Strong Suffolk, he has also developed green tea and whiskey beers. The future seems safe with Bennett.
Americans who have only ever tasted English ales from the bottle (especially bottles shipped from the UK and aged for God knows how long) may wonder what all the fuss is about, but the point is these ales were not meant to be served from a bottle. No other beer falls nearly as far from its ideal state as cask ale when bottled, and I wonder why breweries even bother. Proponents often say it’s a “living” thing that gets its character from the just-active yeast that settles inside the cask, but this isn’t quite right. Any unfiltered beer is “living” in that sense. What actually gives it the character is the beer’s freshness and the way it’s served.
Cask ale is extremely young beer. Traditional breweries package their beer after a few days, even while primary fermentation is still under way. It is sent to pubs, where the fermentation finishes out, carbonating the beer naturally. Very often, breweries add a sachet of whole hops inside the cask. When the publican taps the beer, it is vibrantly fresh, right in the middle of the process of dry hopping. Freshness is key.
Pouring it from the cask — or pulling it via an engine — is also critical. The fresh beer is only lightly carbonated. When you’re dealing with beers that largely fall below 5% ABV — and are sometimes just 3% — low carbonation helps create the sense of thicker body. Low carbonation and somewhat warmer temperatures encourage the flavors to emerge. This is particularly true with the flavorful base malts, which taste lush and full at the pub but fall away in the bottle. Serving these beers on cask is like creating a flavor magnifier. The malts, hops, and yeast all express themselves, but the beer is light and moreish, so you can sit back and drink two or three full pints without feeling tipsy or bloated. Even in Britain, cask ale is underappreciated — the fault of familiarity, probably — but a good cask bitter is one of the most impressive beers in the world.
For American homebrewers, brewing a cask ale is a snap. Traditional breweries like Greene King are imprecise (by modern standards) and simple — very much like home breweries. They employ single-infusion mashes, have straightforward boils and ferments, and are even packaged in a way that is, at least conceptually, wholly familiar to the homebrewer.
The thing to keep your eye on is the malt-hop balance and, particularly, on the importance of flavorful base malts. These are incredibly simple beers, but simplicity can be a trap. To hang flavor on such slender scaffolding, you have to begin with a classic English malt. Americans generally have access to Maris Otter, a winter variety, but there are so many other options. Optic, Tipple, Concerto (spring varieties) and Pearl and Halcyon (winter) are just a few examples of the different barleys used to make malt. We don’t get all of these in the United States, but we do get more than Maris Otter, so consider experimenting. In Britain brewers have their own preferences, choosing barleys with flavors that will harmonize with the brewery’s yeast and favored hops. In a good cask ale, malt flavors should not only be evident but distinctive.
A corollary to the focus on malt is a de-emphasis (from the American perspective) of hops. Even bitter, a style that depends on hop assertiveness, is not very bitter. In this case “balance” means that the hops should be of roughly the same intensity as the combined flavors contributed by malt and yeast and no more. It’s hard for Americans to stay their hands when they reach for the hop sack, but if you try, you’ll be rewarded when you pour your third pint and realize why that balance is prized in Britain.
These are incredibly simple beers, but simplicity can be a trap. To hang flavor on such slender scaffolding, you have to begin with a classic English malt.
In commercial brewing, conditioning a beer in the bottle or can is rare, at least outside of Belgium. Most homebrewers will have experience with it. The process is very simple. Just before bottling, you’ll boil 2 cups of water and add dextrose, then add the solution to the carboy. Many sources give a defined amount of dextrose to use — usually around 3⁄4 cup. This is a decent average, but it’s much more reliable to go to an online calculator and find out exactly how much to add based on the level of effervescence you hope to achieve. Just type “priming calculator” into your search browser and follow the instructions.
Craig Bennett
Greene King
Ferment with an English ale strain at 66 to 70°F (16–21°C). Cool to 46°F (8°C) for 24 to 48 hours.
Cask condition (see Cask Conditioning at Home). If you want to make a standard English bitter and bottle it, increase the gravity to 11° P (1.044).
Notes: Bennett suggests a malt bill of 92 percent pale and 8 percent crystal for all-malt bitters, with an option to substitute up to 10 percent of the grist with sugar. Add the Goldings “at end of boil, in copper, whirlpool, or hop back.”
Bennett’s recipe creates a classic bitter, similar to a slightly souped-up version of Greene King IPA. It will deliver the balance and drinkability you want from a cask ale, but there are almost innumerable permutations. Not only can you tinker with the basics of a bitter recipe — changing the grist ratios slightly, using all-malt grists, or using different hops, base malt, or yeast — but you can create a stronger bitter, mild, brown, or porter to be served on cask (examples of which follow). Cask ales are simple to make, but they require real craft and attention to dial in. Beers such as Timothy Taylor Landlord, Fuller’s London Pride, or Greene King IPA didn’t happen by accident but were instead refined over years.
Bill Schneller is a beer educator, an award-winning homebrewer, and a Beer Judge Certification Program Master Judge — and one of the people I turn to when I have homebrewing questions. He’s also a big fan of using brewing sugar, particularly invert sugar (more on that in chapter 3).
“Increasingly, I make more and more bitters using dark sugar either instead of or in addition to crystal malt. I think most homebrewers, especially newer brewers, use way too much crystal malt. But if you use invert, you can drop the crystal altogether or you can drop it by half. Then you have a beer with 7 pounds of pale malt, a 1⁄4-pound crystal, and a 1⁄2-pound Invert 2 (90 percent pale, 3.5 percent crystal, and 6.5 percent sugar). Richer color, different dried fruit flavors than from crystal alone, plus a drier, easier-drinking beer than if you use all crystal malt.
“I even have started to use No. 3 and No. 4 in stouts and porters. It gives raisin notes without lending too much residual sugar the way a dark crystal would. You just can’t get the flavors of invert from crystal malts. Since I brew almost exclusively UK-style beers these days, I use it in almost every style of beer I make except for some of the bigger stock ales, which tend to be 100 percent pale malt. It adds complexity and flavors you just can’t get anywhere else.”
For a number of reasons, it’s hard to make cask-conditioned beer for the home. The biggest challenge is freshness. In the traditional setup, the cask is prepared so that it must be served within a day or two. As the beer is served, the empty space in the cask is replaced by the ambient air in the cellar. Within hours the flavor begins to change, and it will sour and stale after a couple of days. A homebrewer might prepare a 5-gallon cask for a party, but if it isn’t all used, she confronts the prospect of seeing a lot of good beer go to waste. That said, home-casking beer, even for special occasions, can be a real treat.
You can actually buy small English-style casks now. The little ones are called “pins” and hold 5.4 gallons — just about perfect for homebrewers. They’re somewhat expensive, and you need to buy the various accoutrements needed for serving — keystones, shives, and spiles — but the casks will be with you for a lifetime and they are mighty cool. If you want to improvise a home cask and you’re already using a Cornelius-style keg, you’re in luck. Here’s what you do.
Make a batch of beer as you normally would. If you’re familiar with your yeast strain and confident you know when it will reach terminal gravity, transfer the fermenting beer when it is 1 degree Plato (.004) from terminal. (The recipe in this chapter calls for a terminal gravity of 1.009, so you’d transfer at 1.013.) Alternatively, let it go to dry, and then prime with sugar, calculating to add around 1.5 volumes of carbon dioxide. I highly recommend dry-hopping with an ounce or two in a hop sack at this point — it adds a wonderful layer of aroma to the freshly served beer.
Give the keg several days to finish fermenting. Before serving, situate the keg horizontally, in the place from which you intend to dispense it, with the bottom propped up about 4 inches and the gas valve at the bottom. Your cask is now full of yeast, and you want it to settle before serving. Buy some sacks of ice the night before you plan to serve the beer and drape them over and around the cask to chill the night before serving, or a minimum of 12 hours.
Dispensing is straightforward, except that in this cask arrangement you reverse the gas and beer dip tubes, so the gas dip tube is positioned at the bottom and the beer dip tube is at the top. Attach a short hose to the top (the gas) post and poke a cotton ball gently in the end. Attach a regular serving line with picnic tap to the bottom (the beer) post and serve.
Here’s a not-traditional but important variation that will buy you more time: Proceed as above, but instead of attaching a serving-line-cum-cotton-ball to the air inlet, attach it to your regular CO2 tank and set it to 1 to 2 psi while you serve it. Instead of oxygen filling up the cask, you’ll be filling it with sanitary CO2. When you’re not using the cask, disconnect the gas so that it doesn’t absorb into the beer. The idea here is to put a blanket of gas over the beer, not further carbonate it. (As a commercial practice, this is frowned upon by certain advocacy groups in England for arcane political reasons. As purely a matter of beer, it’s completely respectable.)
There are elaborations to this basic system. You can create a container for the cask that is easier to keep iced. You can add a beer engine to the system and pump the beer. (A cheap alternative to a pub engine are hand pumps used in RVs that you can buy for 30 bucks online.) People tinker with the dip tubes and gas posts to pull less yeasty beer out. Once you have mastered the basic system, making incremental improvements is easy enough over time.
Strong ales were until recently not at all common in the UK. On a 10-day brewery tour in 2011, I got so used to 3.8% beers that when I encountered a “strong” ale in Yorkshire on about day 7 — it was all of 5% — I caught myself murmuring to the barkeep, “Wow, that is strong.” In other words, strength is relative. Regular bitters start out around 3.5%, and by the time they’re a percentage higher, they creep into a middle netherworld. Strong bitters fall in the 5 to 6% range and are not especially common. This confuses some Americans, who equate bitter and in some cases all of English beer with ESB — and here we need to do some unpacking.
There is no ESB “style” in Britain. Breweries try to signal to their customers when they’re making stronger-than-usual versions with names like “best,” “special,” “strong,” or “premium.” In London one brewery styled their strong bitter “Extra Special.” Fuller’s ESB was (and is) such a good beer that it came to represent not only strong bitter in the minds of Americans but all bitters.
I can’t actually blame my countrymen. If you haven’t had a bottle recently, track one down. Fuller’s ESB is a surprisingly powerful beer (and therefore a poor candidate to represent a common English bitter), with a boatload of hops and quite a decent alcohol punch (5.9% in the bottle). Its stats suggest something closer to the American lineage, but on the palate it’s purely British. A toffeeish malt base is accented by marmalade hops fading into pepper and a twist of lemon, all wrapped up in lovely, fruity esters. If it is not the quintessential bitter, it may well be the quintessential strong bitter.
Fuller, Smith & Turner — Fuller’s, to most people — has been making beer in London since 1845. As is often the case in Europe, brewing on the site predated Fuller’s, going back at least to the late 1600s. The name of the building itself — the Griffin Brewery — dates back to a previous owner and hints at the site’s long lineage. The modern Fuller’s we know — festooned with awards and famous around the world — was not always so. John Keeling, the head brewer, described the brewery in the decade before he arrived. “In the sixties, Fuller’s was really a company not going anywhere — like a lot of regional breweries in the UK. Seventies come along, [and it was] still just pottering along, not really thinking about the future.” The owners decided to make a change in the late 1970s and put Fuller’s on its current course. Between 1978 and 1989 its three core bitters, ESB, London Pride, and Chiswick Bitter, each won a medal as Champion Beer of Britain, the country’s most prestigious cask ale award — and ESB won it three times.
London was once the seat of British brewing, but over the centuries the number of breweries dwindled. By the time Young’s closed down in 2006, Fuller’s was the one remaining traditional London brewery. Now when people visit the capital and stop in for a pint, they often find themselves in a Fuller’s pub. All three of the brewery’s flagship bitters are made using the very old parti-gyle method of brewing (see Parti-Gyle Brewing), making Fuller’s one of the most traditional breweries in the world.
And yet when visitors pop in they’ll have a range of choices from dozens of beers Fuller’s makes each year. As craft beer has flourished in the city (there are now more than 60 local breweries), Fuller’s has embraced hoppy, strong, and dark ales. Their approach has created a blueprint for other traditional breweries for adapting to the changes in twenty-first-century tastes.
John Keeling arrived at Fuller’s in 1981, but three and a half decades haven’t dulled his drawn-out, rounded Manchester accent in the least. His arrival coincided with the brewery’s illustrious revival, but Keeling’s greatest contribution has been guiding Fuller’s through Britain’s craft beer era — during which London has seen its number of breweries jump to over five dozen. Unlike some traditional breweries that refuse to evolve, Keeling has reveled in experimentation and collaboration, exploring what tradition looks like when it’s given a bit of air to breathe.
That willingness has paradoxically allowed many people to rediscover Fuller’s traditional offerings. Because of Keeling’s willingness to embrace the new, he has become an eloquent spokesman for the old and traditional. “Yes, I want it to occasionally surprise you,” he says, of London Pride — though he could have been talking about any of Fuller’s offerings. “Today it’s a little bit more malty or caramelly or hoppy or fragrant or whatever — so that you are having a dialogue with that beer. And that’s really what we call character.”
Given how much strong bitters (ESBs, as Americans think of them) superficially resemble IPAs, it’s surprising how different they are — and the differences are instructive. Modern American IPAs are built to highlight hops. Yeast and water play almost no role, and malt, to the extent breweries want its presence known, contributes only a dollop of sweetening caramel. Strong bitters rely on a balance of all these elements. The malts may contain a note of caramel or toffee, but the rich base malts have more aromas and tastes to create textures of flavor — you might get hazelnut or toffee or biscuit and the scent of warm bread.
It’s typical for English strong bitters to begin with stiff, minerally water, and this in turn helps the hops, which are less assertive than in IPAs, pop. Finally, English breweries use ester-producing yeasts that fill out the palette of flavors with distinctive fruitiness that comes from house strains.
In the world of English brewing, strong bitters are a decided minority — their smaller kin are much, much more common in pubs around the island. That niche status allows brewers a little leeway in accentuating one element over another — Adnams Broadside is a velvety, sweet version, while Wells Bombardier is a rich, fruity ale. Others focus on nuts or hops, or highlight their flavors with a strong mineral profile. Homebrewers may be tempted to drive a strong bitter in the direction of an American IPA, but by finding one of these other elements to highlight, you’ll produce a wonderful beer that impresses on its own merits.
Much as with the regular bitter, there are no special tricks to brewing strong bitters. They go through single-infusion mashes and typical hopping schedules (though many breweries use hop backs after the boil). This is one of the few styles for which you might want to consider treating your water. Many breweries fully Burtonize their water, but that might be overkill. Burton water, depending on the well from which it’s drawn, may have tons of minerals (magnesium, sodium, calcium, bicarbonate, sulfate, and chloride). I’d recommend starting with just a modest gypsum (calcium sulfate) addition — say, a tablespoon per batch.
John Keeling and Georgina Young
Fuller’s
Ferment with Wyeast 1968 or White Labs WLP002 at 65°F (18°C). Transfer to secondary after 1 week, and let condition for an additional 2 weeks.
Bottle or cask conditioning are ideal (see Cask Conditioning at Home). If kegging, carbonate mildly, and chill only to 50°F (10°C).
Notes: Fuller’s prefers Tipple and Concerto, varieties of spring barley with high nitrogen content. English base malts are hard for homebrewers to source, so use any variety your local store stocks. For dry hopping, use whole-leaf Goldings if available, and add only during conditioning.
Two elements to consider tweaking are hops and yeast. Traditional English breweries still observe the bittering/aroma distinction between hop varieties. (You’ll note that Fuller’s still uses Target, an 11 percent alpha acid hop, to bitter.) You can experiment. Most of the hops will display different qualities depending on when they’re added during (or after) the boil. This is no more evident than in the classic English hop, East Kent Goldings, which can seem comfortingly homey and fruity in one beer but bracingly spicy and floral (as lavender is) in another. Most of the hops that derive from English stock seem to have this mutability, so they’re fun to play with.
English hops are known for their fruity, earthy quality. Below are the flavor and aroma characteristics of the classic varieties.
Admiral (13–16% AA): An intense, resinous hop, with notes of orange and herbs.
Boadicea (8–10% AA): A mild, floral variety that offers apple blossom aromas.
Bramling Cross (6–8% AA): A somewhat rough, peppery hop that has notes of black currant and citrus.
Challenger (6–9% AA): Bittering is clean and rounded, with a cedary quality; when used in late additions, it will produce green tea and sweet floral notes.
East Kent Golding (4–6% AA): The most important English hop, and one of the most versatile. It can produce marmalade or honey fruitiness, floral notes of lavender or lemon blossom, or herbal notes of thyme and pepper.
First Gold (7–10% AA): A fruity hop that at times produces tangerine, orange marmalade, magnolia, and spice.
Fuggle (3–6% AA): Along with EKG, the most ancient, classic English hop. Produces a warm, delicate earthy bitterness and gentle forest-floor aromatics. Fuggle is a dying breed in England, but it is being replaced by Willamette, a hop of mostly Fuggle parentage.
Northdown (7–10% AA): Another hop with classic English flavors of cedar and forest, berry, and subtle floral notes.
Pilgrim (9–13% AA): A blend of fruity, berrylike flavors with a distinctive spicy note; can read as mildly lemony in some cases.
Progress (6–8% AA): An earthy, spicy hop that has notes of honey, mint, and grass.
Target (9–14% AA): One of the most intense English hops, Target provides a sharp spice-to-citrus bitterness along with hints of flower and sage.
Yeasts are no less important. Many traditional breweries such as Fuller’s have strains dating back decades (at least). That makes them distinctive but often finicky. Steve Barrett, the longtime head brewer (now retired) at Samuel Smith’s, described his extremely flocculent house yeast. “The rousing effectively means that we pump from the bottom of the tank up and . . . it keeps the whole thing in a dynamic state.” During fermentation, beer sprays out of a fan into the famous Yorkshire squares, a process that sends the yeast back down into the beer. “It’s quite unusual to do that during fermentation. You wouldn’t expect to be throwing your yeast through the air.” Yet this is what happens to yeast that has spent decades in the same brewery — it develops its own peculiarities.
Since the process of producing house character takes decades, it’s not practicable for the homebrewer to wait for the process to happen naturally. One trick is to experiment with multiple strains. Indeed, English breweries do it themselves. Adnams, from Southwold, on England’s east coast, pitches a mixed strain for their traditional ales (like Fuller’s, they also experiment with stronger, hoppier, American-style ales). “One is flocculent, one not, and they don’t work well alone but do harmonize,” says owner Jonathan Adnams. “It’s not 100 percent under control,” he says, laughing, “but we manage.” You’re looking for interesting esters that will add character, so consider blending English strains or an English strain with one of the more sedate Belgian yeasts, such as an abbey strain.
Fuller’s conducts one of the more remarkable practices in the brewing world, parti-gyle brewing, and you can, too. The process is so obscure now that most people slightly misunderstand how it works. The idea is to pull multiple worts (or gyles) off a single mash, boil them as usual, and then blend them back together to get beers of different strengths. (Most people understand the first two steps but not the third.) Fuller’s uses the parti-gyle system to produce the three workhorses in the brewery’s line: ESB, London Pride, and Chiswick Bitter, as well as a slightly obscure stronger beer, Golden Pride.
Fuller’s parti-gyle works like this. They begin with a grist of 97 percent pale English spring malt and 3 percent light crystal. For efficiency they use two mash tuns, staggered so one is draining while the other converts. They begin by taking the first runnings from one mash tun of strong wort and then follow it with the second mash tun, combining the strong worts from both mashes in the same kettle. Next, they run the weak worts from both mash tuns into a second kettle. To repeat: both strong worts go into the same kettle, and both weak worts go into a second, different kettle. The runnings at the end of the second mash are barely more than water — the wort has a gravity of just 1.005.
The boiling process for both worts is the same: 60 minutes, with two hop additions, just as in the recipe above. (The strong wort gets twice as many hops as the weak one for obvious reasons, but they are the same varieties in the same proportions.) Only once the worts are cooled and pitched with yeast do they begin to combine them to get the beers they want. ESB gets a larger proportion of the strong wort, a more balanced blend goes to London Pride, and the majority of the low-gravity wort is used for Chiswick.
I suspect there might be subtle benefits to blending different worts (differing levels of hop utilization or Maillard reactions, for example, but John Keeling, ever the flinty, pragmatic brewer, dismisses this entirely. “It is quite simple really. Parti-gyles are the most efficient way of using a mash tun, both in terms of speed and in terms of extract. It is not complicated and is rather simple and elegant.”
Conducting your own parti-gyle is entirely feasible, but it requires a fair amount of juggling and the use of random vessels during blending. As chilled wort was sloshing into side pots during the blending, I became a bit anxious about sanitation, but just make sure your yeast is ready to go and you shouldn’t have any trouble.
The procedure is straightforward enough. You begin with a boatload of grain and make two mashes. The first mash will go into a kettle for boiling while you draw off the second mash. Because the first mash converts starches to sugars, the second mash is more of a grain rinse — and this is good, because it means you can have it in the kettle within a half hour so the first kettle doesn’t have to sit as long once it’s done boiling. You’ll use the same hop varieties in both batches, adding them at the same time (though you’ll add about twice as many in the first wort as the second).
Now the math. Here's a handy rule of thumb: if you divide your mash into two gyles, the first half will contain two-thirds of the sugars. I’m terrible at math, and knowing that has been extremely useful when I’m trying to figure out my initial recipe. If you make an initial mash that produces a wort of 1.080, you should be able to get close to 1.040 with the second wort. You’ll probably lose some efficiency with a higher-gravity mash, so make your recipe based on 70 percent efficiency.
Once you’ve boiled your two worts, take gravity readings, and then prepare to blend. If you’re doing two beers, the math is easy — take gravity points away from one wort, and they’ll reappear in the other. If you’re splitting the wort into three beers, the math becomes more challenging, but remember that your final three worts will have as many total gravity points as your initial two. (If you start with gyles of 1.080 and 1.040, your three beers will have 1.120 points of gravity among them.) When you distribute them to the three worts, they should still add up to 1.120.
In addition to gyles of bitter, the process would work with a number of different types of beer: American-style hoppy ales (an IPA, pale ale, and session IPA), dark ales (export stout, dry stout, and mild), wheat ales (wheat wine, American wheat, session wheat), and so on. And Keeling is right about one thing: it is a very efficient way to make multiple batches of beer.
Understanding British beer begins in the cozy warmth of the local pub. Mild ale is one of those rare styles of beers to fully display its delights only after two or three pints — preferably in the company of people you enjoy. For centuries the pub has been the focal point of British drinking, and the beer served there was made to be drunk in sessions lasting hours. Today those sessions are fueled by cask bitter or light lagers, but in the middle of the last century, seven of ten pints served were mild ale, a creamy, usually dark ale of very modest strength.
Originally, the word “mild” meant sweet young beer, not yet tinged by the drying effects of wild yeast. It wasn’t a style but a category of beer, and milds might have been light or dark, weak or strong. In their modern form milds have evolved into something like a style, though they may still be light or dark (most are the latter). They are unfailingly light of alcohol now, typically at or below 3.5%. Most have little hop character to speak of, and some are sweetish and full bodied. Others might make up for the lack of hops with a layer of bitter, coffeelike roasted malts. Whatever the formulation, milds are built to be drunk in bulk, to taste as pleasant on the first sip as on the fourth pint, a trick that isn’t as easy as it sounds.
The trajectory of British brewing mirrored America’s in many ways, with inexorable consolidation leading to a market dominated by giants, a situation that sparked a small-brewery revival. In Britain, however, many of these new breweries sought to restore tradition rather than upend it. When John Boyce founded Mighty Oak in Essex, he wanted to brew classic pub ales made from English malts and the kind of hops grown just across the Thames river to the south in Kent.
Boyce has been working in breweries since 1975 and brings a deep appreciation of traditional English beers to Mighty Oak, which he founded in 1996. The brewery has a broad range of regular and seasonal offerings, but it is best known for its mild, Oscar Wilde. An all-malt dark mild of comparatively strong heft (3.7%), it has won both Champion Mild of Britain (twice) and Champion Beer of Britain, making it one of the most celebrated beers on the island.
Americans have a hard time appreciating mild ale, a style rarely brewed stateside. They are in many ways the polar opposite of the strong, intense ales that most American beer geeks love, and in order to properly appreciate them, you have to abandon the IPA mind-set. Mild ales are gentle to the point of innocuousness and in the wrong hands become insipid. Their essence is complexity through subtlety, and in the right hands — and with some attention — you’ll be impressed by how layered and delicious they are. If you approach a mild looking for shafts of intensity, you’ll always walk away disappointed. For those willing to listen carefully, however, milds offer flavors that whisper rather than shout, and good ones feature surprisingly complex layers of flavor.
One thing to look for in a mild is a full, silky body. This is a big part of what keeps them interesting over the course of a session. The sense of fullness in such a light beer doesn’t require a lot of residual sugar, so while they may taste full and a bit sweet, good milds don’t get gummy on the tongue and begin to cloy. Unlike bitter, which is a fairly narrow style, mild ale is much broader, and breweries add distinctiveness by the use of different hops, malt, or yeast.
Many English milds are made with a decent proportion of sugar in the grist — often dark sugar, which adds color without roastiness — which further smooths and softens the palate. Since Americans have developed a taste for all-malt beers, these milds may be a bridge too far. All-malt milds, balanced either with a perceptible hop note or roasty malts, are more likely to edge (barely!) into the American palate. That’s what John Boyce brews, and it’s the kind of recipe he offers.
There’s nothing particularly difficult about brewing a mild ale — unless you want to use invert sugar for a traditional midcentury-style mild (see Making Invert Sugar). I would strongly recommend a British base malt to add depth to the malt profile. A warm mash and longer boil will help add body and flavor. Water adjustments are optional, but Boyce notes that “a relatively high alkalinity is used” to make milds, and “where required, salt (sodium chloride) is added, not traditional brewing salts.”
John Boyce
Mighty Oak
Ferment with Wyeast 1469 (West Yorkshire Ale), White Labs WLP022 (Essex Ale), or your choice of British strain. Lower temperatures (65 to 68°F [18–20°C]) will suppress esters, while warmer ones (72 to 76°F [22–24°C]) will encourage them, so proceed as befits your preference.
Cask- or bottle-condition. If kegging, limit to 2.0 volumes and serve at 55°F (13°C).
Notes: Yeast selection will dictate a lot of the character. To get a classic mild profile, do not choose especially dry strains. Ester production is fine, but those that accentuate malt are the best. For a fuller body consider mashing at an even higher temperature — around 155°F (68°C) should do.
Although John Boyce prefers all-malt ales, in England a good many of them are made with sugar. Which kind of sugar? Well, funny you should ask. Back in 2011 I was touring the Greene King Brewery in Bury St Edmunds. We began the tour, as all tours of Victorian breweries do, at the top — in this case on the roof so we could look out over the verdant countryside. The head brewer at the time, John Bexon, pointed to a field of sugar beets. That seemed fortuitous, I thought, sugar that close by. But Bexon crinkled his nose as if offended by a foul odor when I asked if he used them in his beer. I pointed out that Belgian breweries used beet sugar, with no apparent harm done. “I know, but it’s beet. It’s the wrong sugar profile.” (It turned out his view was hardly rare among his countrymen.)
In mild ales the “right sugar profile” is obtained by the use of a peculiarly English (and old-timey) form of sugar called invert. Invert sugar is made by cleaving sucrose (like you get in beets and cane) into glucose and fructose — two highly fermentable forms of the sugar molecule. In Britain invert sugar comes in a range of colors; it can, in beers such as stouts and milds, add color along with high fermentability. Invert sugar is readily available in the UK but isn’t sold in the United States; I’m told Lyle’s Golden Syrup is a reasonable alternative. If you want a no-hassle sugar-based mild, you can substitute regular sugar — either table sugar or dextrose (corn sugar) — for a portion of the pale malt grist and proceed as usual. Homebrew shops typically sell dark “candi” sugar for Belgian beers, and that can be used in place of some of the black malt for a less roasty mild. Of course, that wouldn’t pass English muster, so instead try a darker cane sugar such as Demerara or turbinado. If you are really hell-bent on making a traditional mild with dark invert sugar, have a look at Making Invert Sugar
Other variations to consider: first, the pale mild. Although relatively rare, pale milds do still have a following. It’s not always obvious what distinguishes pale milds from basic bitters, but you should be looking for a richer body and more complex malt flavor with the mild. I would not use sugar in this recipe. Instead, consider touching up the malt bill with specialty malts. A smidgen of Gambrinus honey malt can sweeten the palate, while biscuit malt will enhance the bready qualities. Other malts may add character to any mild, pale or dark. Briess now makes a mild malt, which is slightly darker and leaves more body than regular pale malt. You might also try a small amount of oats (no more than 5 percent) to add a further silkiness to your mild.
Milds are great beers for investigating yeast characteristics. Since they’re so naked, the yeast has a chance to shine. Milds are also a great style for experiments in fermentation. Split a batch, and pitch the same yeast, but ferment one side cool and one side warmer.
In England hops are used in milds as accents, adding woody or fruity or marmalade notes to the finished product. Most American brewers (you know who you are) will probably transgressively pump up the IBUs to something north of 20 and possibly double or treble the finishing hops. (Don’t give me that innocent look.) That’s perfectly fine, and if an “American mild” ever emerges, it will probably be a hoppier variety. Keep in mind that roasty notes clash with hops, so look for malt-hop balance if you do decide to boost the lupulin.
You have decided that nothing but the most authentic treatment is good enough for your mild, and you will, by God, use invert sugar to make it. (At least once.) I admire you, because the process of making that invert sugar is laborious and slow. Don’t let me dissuade you, though — mild made with invert will taste different from an all-malt mild, and you might prefer it.
In the UK invert sugar comes in four types (numbers 1–4), growing darker as the numbers increase. The invaluable Ron Pattinson, an English historian living in Amsterdam, gives the easiest and simplest instructions for making your own invert, and there’s no reason to deviate from his method.
By tradition (and why else would you be making invert sugar?), you want to start with cane sugar. The British bias against beets is not confined to John Bexon, and Pattinson suggests a less refined form of cane sugar, such as muscovado or Demerara — often called “raw” sugar in the United States. That’s fine, but note that the darker impurities are essentially molasses, and they can result in sugar tinged with that characteristic flavor.
The procedure is simple enough to understand — but remember to bring your patience along as well. For every pound of sugar you plan to invert, bring 1 pint of water to boil. Remove from the heat, and dissolve the sugar in the water. Add 1⁄4 teaspoon of citric acid per pound of sugar, and then put back on the heat and raise to 230°F (110°C), stirring frequently. Once the concoction reaches 230°F, you raise the temperature as slowly as possible until it reaches 240°F (116°C), and then the fun begins. The next step is holding the sugar at between 240° and 250°F (121°C) while it slowly caramelizes. Pattinson suggests the following times to make sugars similar to commercial varieties:
Invert No. 3 is the classic preparation for a dark mild. If you’re interested in a pale mild, you could get away with a shorter caramelization — a smaller investment that would nevertheless allow you to see its effect on body and flavor.
Homebrewer Bill Schneller regularly brews milds and English throwback styles of beers and has become accustomed to whipping up batches of invert. He speaks for traditionalists who, unlike Mighty Oak’s John Boyce, believe it adds its own character. (Boyce: “Generally microbreweries in the UK produce all their fermentable sugars from malt and grain-based adjuncts, including malted, torrefied, or roasted wheat, oats, and rye.”)
Schneller says, “The importance of invert is the flavor more than anything else, which is why I always make it with a less refined, more flavorful sugar. If you make No. 2 or No. 3, it has a rich flavor and adds a lot of dried fruit notes to the beer. I think it’s far superior to dark crystal malt for those kinds of flavors in English or Belgian beers. It’s why most homebrewed ales don’t taste the same as commercial UK examples, but sugar still has a stigma among homebrewers. It’s gained more respect as a quality ingredient, but there are still a ton of people who think sugar is cheating or is a cheap ingredient. You can’t make mild or Burton ale without dark sugars. Well, you can, but they won’t be very interesting.” Again, Boyce would take issue with this point, but it’s far from a heterodox one.
First things first: yes, I do recognize that Ireland is not a part of Great Britain and that, indeed, that has been a matter of some controversy for the past five hundred years. I mean to cause no offense. But the truth is that in beer terms, Irish stout is a tributary in the river that runs through the neighboring island. (And the influence goes both ways — Guinness was for a long time the only dark ale regularly available in pubs in Britain.)
Everyone knows this ale (for some people, it’s the only ale they know), yet rarely do we stop to appreciate its quirks. The standard Irish stout is pub-strengthened at around 4% and meant to be drunk in sessions. And yet these beers can be flavor powerhouses, with tons of acrid malt bitterness often backed up by strong hop bitterness. Guinness gets credit for introducing a nitrogen dispensing system, and this presentation adds a creamy fullness to the equation. What you end up with is an assertively flavored session ale with a deliciously silky mouthfeel. For such a small beer, it’s quite a trick.
As closely associated with beer as Irish culture is (only the Czech Republic can rival it), it’s surprising how few breweries were, until recently, located there. The reason, of course, was the unique dominance of what Porterhouse brewer Peter Mosley calls the “large brewer in Dublin.” Nowhere in the world does one brand so dominate its home country. That’s why, when Liam LaHart and Oliver Hughes opened their own brewery in Dublin 20 years ago, it bordered on radical.
To enter such a market, Porterhouse led with a stout as a luring mechanism. “Once we had them in the door,” Mosley explains, “we could show them what other beers we could do and also how styles could be reinterpreted. They were in a position to look at our other stouts, which would be different, but still stouts nonetheless.” Porterhouse added a more robust 5% stout to its standard version and later helped reintroduce the world to oyster stout.
Ireland is still trailing behind other European countries in terms of total breweries, but the number is growing rapidly. Porterhouse, which has earned itself a case full of trophies, showed that it was possible to open a brewery in Guinness’s backyard and succeed. There are now Porterhouse pubs in three Irish cities, as well as in London and New York. Even in the city of Guinness, people can be persuaded to branch out and try different Irish stouts, so long as they’re a recognizable expression of the tradition and made to the highest standards.
Liam LaHart and Oliver Hughes started out as pub owners, and when they decided to expand into brewing, they needed someone with experience who could help them realize their vision. They turned to Peter Mosley, referred to them through a mutual friend. Mosley got his start at a small brewery in Bradford, Yorkshire, but decided to augment his biotechnology degree with a diploma from the famous brewing program at Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh. At Porterhouse he’s authored a range of beers, including hoppy ales, strong ales, and even a few lagers. But it’s the stouts for which Porterhouse — and Mosley — are known, local Dublin products that are very slowly changing the way people think about Irish stout.
Stouts came from porters, and porters came from London; they were the world’s first super-style. At the dawn of the industrial age, London’s great breweries began making a strong, dark beer that was aged in wooden barrels, becoming dry and vinous with time. Sent out in the holds of British ships — which by that time were encircling the globe — it inspired breweries elsewhere to start copying it. One of the first countries where this happened was Ireland, in the 1760s.
The old London porters were made with acrid brown malt, which was both rough and not especially good for brewing. (It was harsh, and one of the reasons brewers aged their porters was so the beer would mellow.) Brown malt had a paucity of the enzymes needed during mashing and so made for inefficient brewing. Brewers realized this with the invention of the saccharometer in 1784. Pale malts were far better, they learned, and here is where Dublin’s brewers made an important change. While London brewers carried on with brown malt, Dubliners instead switched to a blend of pale malts and black malts. For the first time there were two different types of porter. Those lines stayed separate, and eventually Dublin’s dark ales (later called stout) flourished, while Britain’s drinkers turned to mild and bitter.
Modern Irish stouts are further distinguished by unmalted roasted barley, an ingredient Guinness started using after 1880. Roasted barley imparts a dry, astringent, coffeelike bitterness — the flavor we now identify as distinctive to the style. The “great gravity drop,” which occurred when grain rationing forced brewers to make low-alcohol beer, crushed the British brewing world in the first half of the twentieth century. It didn’t affect Ireland as viciously, but over the course of the century, standard Irish stouts nevertheless settled into strengths roughly equivalent to those across the Irish Sea.
A true Irish stout should have a strong dark color, black at first glance, though a deep ruby would be more correct on closer examination.
— Peter Mosley, Porterhouse Brewing Company
What else? Well, let’s turn to Mosley, who has a wonderful description at the ready. “A true Irish stout should have a strong dark color, black at first glance, though a deep ruby would be more correct on closer examination. It will typically have a roasted malt flavor, with some bitterness and even a slight sourness, one not always derived from the roasted malt and barley. The ABVs tend to be quite modest, in modern times typically between 4 and 5%. Stouts should also have a rich, full-bodied mouthfeel, traditionally from the roast barley. In an ideal world the head should also be creamy white and contribute to the sensation of a full-bodied beer. Domestically this is very important.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
We shouldn’t conclude without nodding to a variant of the style that retains some of the hallmarks of the porters of yore and that takes tangible form in Guinness’s booming 7.5% Foreign Extra Stout (FES), which has been sold in different forms across the globe since 1817. It is clearly within the family, with roasted, ashy malt, but with this strength and density it is the opposite of a session beer. Other breweries have dabbled in export stouts, but they don’t have large commercial appeal like their smaller cousins, so they’re rare and not always as characterful as you’d like them to be. Irish brewers also seem to ply those waters only rarely; Porterhouse’s strongest stout, for example, is just 5%. Even on the strength of Foreign Extra Stout alone, the strong Irish stout has long mesmerized drinkers across the globe.
It would be wonderful to tell you the ways in which Guinness deviates from Porterhouse, but Diageo’s brewing jewel is kept hidden away from prying eyes. One is no longer allowed to tour the brewhouse, and when I spoke to master brewer Fergal Murray, he was careful not to divulge any of the more important secrets. I was particularly interested in the acidic tang that appears in the beer they sell as Extra Stout in the United States. It’s an echo of descriptions from decades past, when the beer was still aged and slightly soured in wooden casks — Michael Jackson, in his Beer Companion, wrote that Foreign Extra Stout “featur[es] lactic, winy, and ‘horse-blanket’ (Brettanomyces) notes.” Mosley hinted at it when he said Irish stouts might have “even a slight sourness.”
But Murray seemed mystified at the suggestion. “We wouldn’t describe it as a sour note. The roasted barley probably impacts that. The pH of the beer is probably lower than — as a stout there’s a lower pH. There’s no acidification process.”
We talked further, and he came around to the points he thought most valuable to know, but which you and I will find wanting. “If you’re writing a story on stout, you talk about roasted barley, you talk about Guinness in its unique mystery, you talk about stout yeast, and we talk about hop flavor and the impact of what nitrogen will have done to the world of beer. Five things stand out: roasted barley, hops, yeast, Guinness mystery, and then nitrogenation.” Those are great points for the advertising department, but they’re not so useful for those of us interested in the brewing process.
All was not lost; he did mention something I found most curious. All Guinness, even FES, is now high-gravity brewed. “It’s a high-gravity brewing process. Starts as high gravity and then prepared for different packaging formats for around the world. You’re talking about 22,000 kilograms of grain being converted and an original gravity in the region of 1.080. It’s a 6.5-million-hectoliter brewery [5.4 million barrels] that with tweaks can go up and down.” Guinness now has a state-of-the-art brewery, but one that has substantially shifted the way beer is made at St. James’s Gate. “It’s been an amazing journey in the last 10 years of doing things differently compared to what would have been done for the first 240 years.”
So in terms of brewing a traditional Irish stout, I think Mosley’s experience is more valuable to the homebrewer — even without the unique mysteries.
In terms of technique nothing here will look unfamiliar, especially if you’ve already brewed some of the English styles: a single-infusion mash, simple hopping regime, standard ale fermentation. The key points to note involve ingredients. Mosley advises: “The roast barley/roast malt balance is important. Roast malt lends a high degree of astringency to the beer so should be controlled, though a little is good for that point. Beware when you go above a ratio of 3:1 barley to malt, though.”
You may have read something about the peculiarities of water and their effect on Dublin’s stouts, and Mosley verifies this point, though perhaps not in the manner you expect: “Liquor quality is vital to stouts to emphasize the malt character; generally soft water should be used with low chloride and sulphate levels.” (Water is a funny and misleading topic in beer. The idea that cities have uniform water profiles is not entirely accurate. Dig a 100-meter well there, and you’re liable to get much harder water than a shallow well a mile or two over here. And in any case, modern breweries almost always treat their water.) So follow Mosley’s advice here, not whatever you may have read elsewhere about hard, alkaline water being ideal for stout.
Peter Mosley
Porterhouse
Ferment with a fairly neutral ale strain, such as Wyeast 1728 or White Labs WLP028. Mosley observes, “We use a flocculent ale yeast strain; we do not look for a tremendous ester profile, as it distracts from the malt character. Many English ale yeasts should suffice.” Ferment cool, around 65 to 66°F (18–19°C), to inhibit ester production.
Bottle or keg, or if you’re feeling adventuresome, keg on nitrogen. It requires a separate draft system, and if you buy one over the Internet, you’ll have to find a place to fill it where you live (federal law prohibits shipping full canisters). Like so many things in homebrewing, the initial investment isn’t cheap. If you regularly brew beers that work well on nitro, though, it can be a worthwhile expense.
Notes: “High temperature reduces the fermentability and increases mouthfeel; also extracts beta-glucan from the barley, again increasing mouthfeel.” Galena hops are not required to bitter. I noticed that a lot of Porterhouse beers use this variety (now quite rare in the United States), and I asked about it. Mosley replied that “our choice of Galena is purely random actually. It has a high bittering potential. No other reason!” So follow your bliss on hops, but shoot for a bittering charge that delivers around 35 IBU.
Mosley’s recipe is offered as a starting place, but he encourages tinkering. “The obvious area to vary is the roast barley to roast malt ratio.” It’s worth stopping for a moment to acknowledge the differences in these grains. Roast or black malt has a sharp, acrid flavor that comes across like char. Brewers use it sparingly (Mosley’s recipe only calls for 1 percent black malt) to add a layer of burnt flavor and deepen a beer’s color.
Roasted barley, by contrast, is more complex and will add more to your beer. Black malt will produce a mocha head, while roasted barley will keep it lighter — important for the visual presentation of an Irish stout. It also gives the stout that characteristic ruby color Mosley describes. In terms of flavor, roast barley gives a more roast-coffee flavor than pure char. Think French roast. Whereas black malt is very dry and astringent, roast barley is sweeter, with nutty, malty notes.
Mosley’s recipe has a ratio of 5.6:1 roast barley to black malt, and he says the ratio should never go above 3:1 in terms of the amount of black malt you’re using. He also notes that “crystal malt is not essential.” If you like a drier stout, you can reduce or eliminate it.
The recipe Mosley provided will make a classic Irish stout — a 4.5% session ale. American homebrewers will no doubt begin to wonder how to scale up that recipe to make a stouter stout. Indeed, you may even be thinking of whipping up a sturdy 7.5% export stout. All well and good, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Mosley: “As strength increases, it is important to remember that the adjuncts should stay the same. Do not vary them all pro rata or you will end up with a beer that is very roasted!” That is to say, if you’re using a fairly roasty recipe for a 4% stout, don’t keep the percentages the same as you scale up.
I spoke with the founding brewer, Darron Welch, at Oregon’s Pelican Brewery about how he does this to make Tsunami Stout — possibly the most-lauded strong Irish stout made in the United States. (It’s won six Great American Beer Festival medals, including two golds.) He agrees that you need to keep the roast down when you’re scaling up the recipe. Tsunami uses dark chocolate, black patent, and roasted barley in roughly equal parts. He doesn’t use crystal malt in Tsunami Stout.
[Mixing the barley] gives the beer both the dry roasty edge of a dry stout but balances it with coffee notes and dark chocolate character. Shoot for 10 to 11% of total extract coming from the three roasted grains.
— Darron Welch, Pelican Brewery
Otherwise, the recipe can stay much the same as outlined by Mosley. “Standard clean-fermenting ale yeast at moderate temperatures works best, letting the malts and grains be the star. Bittering hops should be something like Magnum or Northern Brewer, varieties that give a clean, neutral bitterness without harshness or other distracting flavors. I would not recommend C-type hops for this style of beer. If you do use C-hops, you’ll end up with more of an American-style stout — a lovely thing in its own right, but not really a classic export stout.”
One important difference is mash temperature. Extra body is good for low-ABV stouts, but stronger ones should be dry. “These beers are so much more balanced and drinkable if they are well attenuated,” Welch says. “We start at 17 Plato and finish at 3.5 Plato. To achieve this, we mash at a fairly low conversion temperature, about 140°F [60°C].”
Finally, although some stronger Irish stouts are noted for their acidity, Welch discourages it. “I do not spend any time worrying about souring Tsunami Stout, despite what old homebrew books have to say. Here at Pelican we have produced some one-off stouts using acidulated malt and I was never very happy with the results. I would avoid all mash souring, wort souring, acidulated malts, etc. Keep it straight ahead — this is a straight-ahead style.”
In London, porters evolved into stouts, and stouts evolved into a category in which just about everything was considered fair game — milk and cream, oatmeal, even meat — until at some point some brewer somewhere decided to brew with oysters. The idea strikes one as objectionable on its face, but breweries such as Porterhouse started reviving the tradition a decade or two ago. Oyster stouts are, against all expectations, fairly tasty. They aren’t fishy (bivalvey?) but rather slightly briny; a stout with an ineffable mineral edge. (Mosley: “The flavor is subtle and tends to be described as ‘marine’ or ‘iodine.’ ”) Most people can’t put their finger on the oyster’s contribution but find these stouts richer and more interesting than a regular plain. Indeed, Porterhouse’s Oyster Stout may soon become the brewery’s best-selling stout.
They’re pretty easy to make (if expensive). “We add the oysters, out of their shells, at the very end of the boiling process along with hops and copper finings.” You want fresh, raw oysters, and a dozen ought to do. At Upright Brewing the oysters come packed in brine, which the brewery also throws in (like Porterhouse, they add the oysters at the end of boil). Some breweries have “dry-hopped” their oyster stouts with the shells, but this seems like an act of poetry, not science.
Have you noticed that British beer styles are very often just adjectives turned into proper nouns: bitter, mild, brown? Add “old” to the list. But what does “old” in this context mean — old as in historic, or old as in aged? Yes.
Old ales are a variety of strong ales, and they have been made for a very long time in Britain. Their lineage goes back to the arrival of hops on the island, which made it possible to make stronger beers and mature them without making a tun of vinegar. A generic category of beers (you’ll find them referred to as “old,” “stock,” or “stale” in historic texts), they were stiffly hopped and put into casks to ripen. There, native wild yeasts turned them dry and gave them sherrylike flavors. Eventually, breweries began to understand the microbiology of beer and eliminated wild yeast from their facilities, and old ales became weaker and sweeter — like the modern standard-bearer, Theakston’s Old Peculier. A few breweries, such as Benskins, Gales, and Greene King, kept making the aged wild versions, but their numbers have dwindled to just Greene King today (though Fuller’s bought Gales and is purportedly going to resume making Gales Prize Old Ale in London).
For the homebrewer the most interesting versions of old ales are the ones that both hint at antiquity and are also aged with wild yeast. One of the few styles that are hard to find commercially, they deliver quite a bit of “wow” factor with their rich, malty body; robust strength; and layer of fruit and dryness that comes from the Brettanomyces. They are one of the few styles that continue to evolve and improve in the bottle, making them ideal cellar beers — another reason they’re great for the homebrewer.
When Alex Ganum founded Upright in 2009, he was inspired by the farmhouse beers of Belgium and France. The brewery’s standard line was a series of saison-ish beers, each named for a strength in the Belgian degree system, Four through Seven. But it wasn’t saisons to which he was devoted so much as the farmhouse approach; Ganum’s process is instinctive and improvisational. Once when he was mashing in a batch of beer, I asked how wet he liked his mash to be. I assumed he’d give me a ratio of water to grain, but instead he said, “I go by feel.” In the years since Upright launched, Ganum’s brewery has developed a wonderful pilsner that has become a favorite of local restaurants, as well as a line of delicate barrel-aged beers, many made with fruit or spices.
Farmhouse ales are far from his only love, however. In fact, the first beer made at Upright — batch #1 — was their remarkable old ale, Billy the Mountain. Ganum has a love of English brewing, and early on he brewed an oyster stout and an English IPA as well. But among his English ales the real triumph is Billy the Mountain, the most interesting and accomplished old ale I’ve ever encountered. Upright ages a portion for three years on Brettanomyces, and then blends the aged stock back in with a portion of fresh beer. Bottled still, the wild yeast rouses itself and gobbles up fresh wort, carbonating the beer in the bottle.
Originally from Michigan, Ganum began his brewing career with a stint as an intern at Ommegang. Before that he attended culinary school, which gives a clue to his approach to brewing. He builds his beers from a sensory map in his head, using different ingredients and processes to add textures and subtleties to each recipe. He eventually went to work as an assistant to Dan Pedersen, an innovative brewer working extensively with Belgian styles at BJ’s in Portland.
When Ganum opened Upright, he envisioned making beers “inspired by historical records and the dedicated few who have kept traditions alive.” His approach remains the same, and his beers have a timeless quality, incorporating local ingredients, open fermentation, barrel aging, and his hands-on approach.
People come to old ale unexpectedly, if at all. Ganum first discovered old ales when he was at culinary school. He and a close friend went to Higgins, a legendary Portland institution that pioneered not only farm-to-table cuisine but also pairing beer and food. “It was a big deal, as experiences that nice were uncommon for us, so we planned to go on a sleepy Tuesday and relish the night over a few hours, asking the server to take her time because we wanted to enjoy a beer with each course and some in between as well. To cap the evening, I chose a vintage Gales Prize Old Ale, and that still, thick, bizarre beauty remains in my fondest memories today, 13 years later.” He continued to buy them, finding some flat and dry, others richer and livelier; his interest grew, leading eventually to Billy the Mountain.
What makes old ales so interesting is how the density of the base beer interacts with the Brettanomyces; to my palate there has always been a sensory relationship with beers like those made by Liefmans and Verhaeghe (less so Rodenbach), with a rich sweetness of malt balanced by a steely blade of leather and acid. All of those beers are made in something of a similar fashion, with wood aging at the center. In the European cellars huge oaken vats not only serve as a resting place for ale, but their thick staves develop an ecosystem for microorganisms that successively inoculate each batch.
The last regularly brewed old ale is made by Greene King, which blends a very strong wood-aged beer with fresh, weaker stock to make Olde Suffolk (Strong Suffolk in the UK). That beer, at just 6% ABV, has been sanded down to suit modern tastes. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive beer, with a touch of iron and balsamic from the vatted beer, brightened with soft, fruitier notes of the young beer blend.
Brewer John Bexon (now retired) described the aging beer as we stood next to the vats in the cellars underneath Greene King in Bury St Edmunds. “What we’ve got here are hundred-barrel vats that contain 12% ABV Five X, probably about 90 bitters, and they’ll sit in there for two years. There’s a microflora embedded in the grain of the oak that inoculates and perpetuates maturation. It’s very low pH, and the resultant flavor is more or less like slightly sour sherry two years on.”
There’s not a lot of trickery to old ale. It does take time and attention and the curiosity to appreciate a “thick, bizarre” beer.
If you’re making one of the classic old ales with Brettanomyces (modern versions are just a type of strong ale), the trick is to restrain the yeast’s effect so it doesn’t overwhelm the rich malt body. Greene King and Upright do this by blending portions of aged beer with fresh beer. Greene King makes two different beers, but Upright uses all the same base beer for Billy the Mountain.
“We simply blend in one of the three-year-old casks and immediately refill it with the blend, so there is actually a bit of really old beer going back into the cask for a batch three more years out.” He blends at a 3:1 ratio, young to aged stock, and bottles without priming, counting on the active Brettanomyces to carbonate the beer. “Bottle conditioning should be at least a month, if not longer.” After that, he notes that “it changes drastically over the first year” as those yeasts get going. Like Orval, beers made like this are many beers in one.
Ganum recommends just adding Brettanomyces at bottling, but it’s also a good opportunity to blend lots if you’ve got multiple carboys in process.
Alex Ganum
Upright Brewing
Ferment with an English strain that produces a nice ester profile and soft finish — Ganum recommends Wyeast 1318/1928 or White Labs WLP026/WLP023. It’s fine to ferment in the mid-60s, Ganum says, “as the gravity will encourage plenty of ester formation.”
Kegging is fine if you’re not adding Brettanomyces (see Next Steps). Only bottle-condition, without priming, if you do use the Brett.
Notes: Ganum is not picky about the hops and suggests Mt. Hood and Fuggles as alternatives. “The hop character we shoot for is not intrusive or pungent, just a nice grassy or herbal flavor that blends in. Having something with a bit of floral character is nice as a contrasting note to the intense malts.” He has used a variety of different crystal malts, leaning toward English varieties. The Briess Ashburne mild is a slightly darker base malt that will contribute a toastier, English character to the beer.
There’s something about old ales that provoke fanciful names. Curmudgeon, Old Tom, Peleg, Fisticuffs, and The Rev. James are just a few of the delightful names breweries have attached to their old ales. Theakston’s Old Peculier, probably the world’s most famous old ale, is another good example. Language nerds will note that the beer’s name is spelled oddly — Peculier, not Peculiar. If you look closely, you’ll see that the label has a funny little logo that reads, “the Seal of the Official of the Peculier of Masham.” A peculier, it happens, is an obsolete ecclesiastical court — and also a great name for an old ale.
Upright’s Billy the Mountain, another odd name, comes from a Frank Zappa song. (Ganum, much inspired by music, named his brewery after the upright bass.) The song, which takes anywhere from half an hour to an hour to play, involves the tale of a mountain that, flush with riches earned while posing for postcards, goes on a series of adventures involving the draft, red-baiting, and Las Vegas. Another excellent choice of name for an old ale.
The most important element in an old ale — arguably the element that makes it an old ale — is the effect of wood-borne Brettanomyces. For the homebrewer, replicating this is more challenging. When commercial breweries age a beer in a liquor or wine barrel, three things happen. First, barrels arrive at breweries “wet”; that is, the staves are soaked with wine or liquor, and this leaches into the beer during aging, inflecting the beer with its flavors. Second, the beer may pick up some wood flavors — tannins, vanilla, and so on — though since the barrels are used, these notes are generally subtle.
Finally, and most important, wooden barrels are oxygen permeable, and they feed the action of aerobic microorganisms such as Brettanomyces. It’s this last effect that makes English old ales so distinctive. Barrels are sensitive to environmental changes, humidity, and temperature, and each one will contribute its unique flavors to a beer as the environment and yeasts interact.
The easiest approach to get wild yeast is to just pitch it straight. Ganum recommends Brettanomyces clausenii (Wyeast 5151PC or White Labs WLP645), a gentler strain that has the added benefit of having come from English stock ales. “Don’t add too much Brett,” he advises, “especially if you intend to age the beer long, or it will simply end up out of balance.” (A single pack/bottle of yeast is fine, but don’t create a starter.) Ganum also suggests aging the beer on oak chips or oak spirals to add that characteristic wood-aged flavor. These come in both American and French oak and in a variety of “toasts” (the amount of heat applied to cure the wood).
There are three types of oak products on the market: chips, beans/cubes, and spirals, and all work well. The thing to know is that the amount of flavor they impart is proportional to their surface area. Oak chips have the greatest surface area and require the least amount of time. No matter which product you use, you’ll want to taste the beer periodically to assess the wood-flavor level. Rack after primary fermentation, and add the oak — an ounce should be fine. (Many people worry about sanitizing the wood, but by the time you add them, you’ll have plenty of alcohol to do the sanitizing for you.) Give it a week if you’re using chips, and then monitor every few days until you’ve reached your desired level. It could take a few weeks depending on the type and amount of oak you’ve used.
Oh, one more thing. People go through a lot of effort soaking their wood chips in bourbon to get the effect the pros do with distillery barrels. Don’t bother. If you want a dash of bourbon, just add the bourbon straight — it’s a whole lot easier to adjust for flavor and doesn’t take days or weeks of prep.
Not every barrel is the same. Some are made of American oak, others of European species. Some are “toasted” by fire, others burned to create a layer of char. When professional breweries reuse barrels, they’re usually trying to infuse their beer with wine or liquor. But when distillers and vintners use barrels, they’re interested in what the wood itself contributes — and if you buy oak chips, spirals, or a new barrel, that’s what you’ll be getting as well.
Wine barrels are toasted rather than burned, in a range running from light to heavy. The toasting process breaks down lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose (wood sugar) into simpler substances. Lignin breaks down into vanillin — the source of oak’s calling-card flavor. At higher temperatures it breaks down into volatile phenols such as guaiacol, which gives a smoky flavor. When heated, hemicellulose releases sugars and creates those toasty notes. Heat can also destroy compounds, which happens to tannins — another signature quality of wood — when too much is applied. Generally speaking, these are the qualities that emerge from different toasting levels:
Light. Earthy and mild; increased tannins
Medium. Rounder and sweet, with gentle spice, toast, and vanilla/butterscotch
Medium Plus. More intense vanilla, chocolate, brown sugar
Heavy. Smoky, roasted flavors such as coffee, black pepper, diminished tannin
Different species of oak also contain different levels of key compounds. American oak contains more potent flavor and aroma compounds and fewer tannins, while French oak has the reverse. (It’s amusing to see Europeans gently disparage American oak when they say French oak is more “elegant” or “noble.”) American oak is heavy on the vanilla, while French oak suggests sweet spice flavors such as cinnamon and allspice. You may also encounter Hungarian oak, which is the same species as French oak, and it falls midway between the intensity and balance of American and French oak.
For a long time, the only option you had for barrel-aging beer was doing it in a standard wine or bourbon barrel — a challenge (to say the least) for the average homebrewer. Companies have begun to make smaller barrels available for the homebrew market, however, in volumes as small as 5 gallons. They’re even reasonably affordable (less than $200 at the time this book was written). There is a downside, though. The effect of a barrel on beer is directly proportionate to its size. The greater the surface area-to-volume ratio, the more wood character and oxygen the beer will be exposed to.
American breweries haven’t had a chance to experiment with bigger vessels very much, but Belgians are well aware of this issue. When I toured Rodenbach, brewer Rudi Ghequire told a story about how the brewery kept building larger and larger wooden tuns (called foeders) until in the 1930s they built several 650-hectoliter giants — that’s 554 barrels, or 17,000 gallons. “They discovered that the beer maturation was not going so fast as in vats of 180 hectoliters.” He went on to describe this relationship. “The reason is very simple: the maturation speed depends on the average of the inner side surface and [volume].” Bigger vats also have thicker oaken staves, and this further retards the amount of oxygen that gets to the beer. Or put another way, the smaller the barrel, the thinner and more permeable the staves — and consequently, the more oxygen that seeps in.
For slow-maturing beer going through a Brettanomyces fermentation, speed is not a virtue. A lot of the character comes from ester production — it’s what gives Rodenbach its characteristic flavors — and that takes time. Regarding his own (smaller) foeders, the lambic maker Frank Boon told me, “The finest tastes, [the finest] esters are built slowly. It takes time: time, time, time. It’s a time-consuming way of making beer.” Exposing wild ale to too much oxygen will send it running straight to the dry, leathery state, and this may give the beer a harsh edge.
If you want to commit a barrel to wild yeast (and remember: once you inoculate beer in wood with Brettanomyces, you have a Brett barrel forevermore), using it to make old ale is a great solution. Since you’ll be blending only a portion of the barrel-aged beer into the final batch, the Brett will continue to evolve when added to the fresh beer. Begin tasting the barrel-aged beer at about six months and monitor it for flavor. It may be ready then or in a few months. It definitely won’t need to go the full three years that Ganum’s wild batch of Billy the Mountain does.
Once you feel the barrel-aged beer has a nice balance of flavors, blend it to a finished product of 25 percent barrel-aged and 75 percent fresh beer. Bottle without priming and wait at least a month before sampling. Once you have a Brett barrel in the house, you can use it to inoculate other wild ales in a variety of methods. (See Brewing Wild.)
Scottish ales may be the most misunderstood — and misrepresented — styles among American drinkers and brewers. Several myths continue to cling to the Scottish tradition like lacing to a glass, and they prove even more difficult to wash off. This is unfortunate, because the reality of Scottish brewing is more interesting than the myth — and the beers are tastier than Americans often believe.
What are those myths? That Scottish ales are smoky and syrupy, to begin with. Americans also repeat reports that Scottish ales lack hops because of their rarity, not because of brewer choice. And many people repeat the notion that Scottish ales are or were boiled for extreme periods (this is actually a supporting belief for the central smoky-and-syrupy myth). In reality, most Scottish ales are satiny and extremely well balanced; malty, yes, but never syrupy.
Above all else, Scottish ales are meant to be drunk rather than fussed over, so whether they are very light or skull-splitting heavyweights, approachability and balance are placed at a premium. Finally, and importantly, no Scottish ale brewed in Scotland tastes of smoke — unless, perhaps, it was aged in a cask of Islay whisky. With their balance, malty sophistication, and smooth, moreish bodies, you could make an argument that, from a sensory perspective, anyway, their closest kin are the lagers of Bavaria, particularly bocks. Bocks? Yes, and isn’t that interesting?
The brewery at Traquair (truh KWAIR) House, an estate dating back 900 years in the Scottish Borders south of Edinburgh, is one of the most interesting in the beer kingdom. The commercial history of beer in the UK is comparatively recent; it was for centuries primarily a domestic activity, and even after the emergence of commercial brewing, an estate, not a corner brewery, is where you would find the very best ales. Traquair is one of the extremely rare examples of one of these old estate breweries, though fortunately the owners now sell some of their precious production to those outside the gates.
The current resident of the home, Catherine Maxwell Stuart, 21st Lady of Traquair, relayed to me the “modern” era of brewing history, which dates back to 1694. Stray records tell the story. By 1738 the brewery was situated in the former coach house. They know this, she writes, “as there is a receipt for the purchase of the copper.” The brewery itself was shelved in the early 1800s and sat for another century and a half or so until the 20th Laird of Traquair, Peter Maxwell Stuart, discovered it and decided to start brewing again in 1964. Lady Maxwell Stuart recalls, “The brewery had simply become a family junk room and forgotten about entirely. What was unique about Traquair was that all of the equipment and vessels still remained in place, down to the stirring paddles and old oak fermentation tuns.”
Remarkably, Laird Peter basically just hooked up the old equipment — which, though probably quite an impressive kit for its day, was by then four decades older than the United States — and started brewing again. There’s a wonderful short film from 1975 archived at the National Library of Scotland that shows Maxwell Stuart mashing in. Hot liquor pours down a wooden trough into the mash tun, which Maxwell Stuart stirs with an original mashing fork. You can even see the laird and his daughter, the current lady, using large perforated spoons to speed cooling, which of course took place in a coolship.
In 1994 Traquair installed a modern brewery (the old one is still in place, called to duty for special beers), but brewers continue to ferment in open oak tuns. Peter Maxwell Stuart began with the original vessels he discovered, but over time, as the old staves wore out, they’ve been replaced by newer oak tuns. These fermentation vessels, along with local spring water, are what Catherine Maxwell Stuart credits with giving Traquair House ales their distinctiveness. No doubt that’s true. But the story is no less important; in a country where nearly every working brewery had shut down by the 1990s (only six remained), Traquair House provides a unique connection to the country’s amazing brewing history.
Ian Cameron started working at Traquair 35 years ago, first as a groundsman. Not too much later, he began assisting Peter Maxwell Stuart in the brewery and was appointed head brewer in 1987. Frank Smith’s story is similar, though more recent. He began working at Traquair 25 years ago. (Twenty-five years is “recent” in a place that counts in centuries, not years.) After Cameron’s retirement in 2016, Smith took over as head brewer.
When you walk into a Scottish pub today, the beers you find on tap are not a huge departure from those found in pubs to the south, but the Scottish tradition offers many points of departure from the English. We think of Scotland as a remote, cloistered land, but in fact, it has long been every bit as worldly as England. Scotland is where the idea of capitalism was born (Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife), and the country has long been connected to the world through shipping lanes. In 1860 French scientist Louis Figuier called Scottish beer “the strongest and best beer made in Great Britain. It is distinguished from all other domestic beers in its alcohol content, beautiful amber tint, and balsamic taste.”
Beer is one of the many products shipped out of its ports, and the flagship style in the nineteenth century was a beer called Edinburgh Ale; it bore some resemblance to England’s Burton Ale, but as Figuier’s quote suggests, it was considered more refined and sumptuous (although it clearly bore a nineteenth-century kiss of wild yeast). For the most part, this tradition of strong ales vanished after the world wars, but Traquair offers a glimpse back. Like the Edinburgh Ales that were being brewed when the brewery was mothballed two hundred years ago, modern Traquair House Ale is strong, amber-colored, and malt accented.
In 1860 French scientist Louis Figuier called Scottish beer “the strongest and best beer made in Great Britain. It is distinguished from all other domestic beers in its alcohol content, beautiful amber tint, and balsamic taste.”
In that wonderful archival footage from 1975, the laird is asked to describe his ale. “It’s a very strong, highly flavored beer about two and a half times the strength of ordinary beer,” he begins. “It’s slightly sweet. It’s got a malty flavor, which is absolutely unique in the brewery world.” With a recipe adapted from one of Traquair’s historical formulations, Traquair House Ale is probably a decent evocation of those nineteenth-century ales.
In general, the keys to understanding Scottish ales — and their differences from English ales — lie in malt and yeast. These beers are defined by malt. Even very light session ales will have a pronounced malt flavor. All beers, from the weakest to the strongest, have a kind of silkiness that comes from the malt; in lighter beers it adds mouthfeel, but in alcoholic beers it undermines the cloying heaviness that strong low-hop beers sometimes have. The malts will contribute flavor and aroma as well — and they are the central focus of the palate.
Hops don’t interfere much with the presentation of malt, but neither does the yeast — another point of departure from English ales. Esters are not prized, and Scottish ales are clean and neutral, almost like lagers. Yeast character is so de-emphasized that when I visited Belhaven, Head Brewer George Howell told me, “Nobody knows precisely where [the] yeast came from.” In fact, it was common for the Edinburgh breweries to share strains, and Belhaven regularly sourced theirs from Tennent’s or Scottish & Newcastle.
For reasons lost to memory, the first American craft brewers thought Scottish ales should be smoky. One might hazard a guess that they were conflating beer and whisky, but whatever the thinking, early brewers tended to fold a bit of smoky distiller’s malt into their grist. It was so common that the American Scotch ale has become its own style, codified in such places as the BJCP guidelines (“perceived as earthy or smoky”) and Brewers Association style guidelines (“Though there is little evidence suggesting that traditionally made Scottish Ale exhibited peat smoke character, the current marketplace offers many examples with peat or smoke character present at low to medium levels”).
It’s true that the horse has left the barn — American Scotch ale has become its own style, and the smokiness perpetuates itself. But for our purposes, it’s important to recognize that this is a purely American invention.
In my correspondence with Catherine Maxwell Stuart — who acted as the go-between with brewers Ian Cameron and Frank Smith — she introduced the recipe and formulation with this comment: “I should firstly say that we consider it impossible to replicate our ales on a homebrew scale because of two important factors: the pure spring water, which is unusually soft here, and, of course, the fermentation in oak vessels, which give the ales their unique complexity of flavor and characteristics.”
It’s a bit difficult to assess the attributes of soft water in a finished beer, but the oak? Yes, it plays a central role in Traquair’s ales. House Ale has one of the most unusual palates I’ve encountered in a British beer. The writer Roger Protz describes it as an “amontillado sherry character,” and I think he’s right. Fermenting a beer on wood, especially just for four or five days as Traquair does, should not have a profound effect. Yet somehow it does. I have searched my palate for evidence that there are wild yeasts involved, but aside from a lighter body than I would expect in such a big beer, it’s not there.
Perhaps oxygen has something to do with it? The sherrylike note does suggest the play of oxygen, but it would seem to be in the wood far too briefly to actually pull much through the staves. The wood in Traquair offers a perfect case of unexplainable “house character.” How to replicate this? Well, you could try open fermentation (described in chapter 8), and, if you were feeling experimental, add some wood chips during primary.
Whatever that house character is, the beer — like all Scottish ales — gets the rest of its flavor punch from the malts. Scottish ales build the entire operation on their tawny malts, and much of what seems to come from other influences is heavily filtered through this malty lens. This is especially true in Traquair, which builds melanoidins through its long boil, building up the rich, malty flavors that support those sherry notes. It’s critical to use UK malts here, though they need not be Scottish. Floor malts will add a nice flavor of authenticity if you can find them.
The historian Ron Pattinson has challenged the conventional wisdom that Scottish brewers subjected their beers to long boils; looking through nineteenth-century Scottish brew logs, he found that they were actually shorter than contemporary English ales — often just an hour. Traquair does use a long boil — two hours. What’s more, they add hops at the beginning of the boil, which stiffens the bitterness. This effect is not dramatic in Traquair because the low-alpha East Kent Goldings are very mild, but it is possible to detect a tiny bit of spikiness. If you substitute higher-alpha hops in your beer, you might consider adding them at 90 minutes.
Finally, it’s important to use a fairly neutral yeast. This is one of the hallmarks of Scottish brewing. Unlike their brewing neighbors to the south, the Scots don’t favor fruity strains. What’s more, they ferment cool to inhibit ester production. The differences between lighter Scottish and English ales are hard to perceive, but this is an important element.
Ian Cameron
Traquair House
Bottle-condition or keg.
Notes: Traquair water is very soft, but most Scottish water is hard. You’ll obviously get a different profile depending on your water preference. Note that if you conduct a 2-hour boil, you’ll lose greater volume than you would in a 60- or 90-minute boil. Primary fermentation for Traquair takes 4 to 5 days, but if you ferment cool, yours may take longer. In addition to fermenting on wood, Traquair basically uses open fermentation (covering the wooden tuns with a loosely fitting wooden lid), which would be appropriate here; Caledonian and others ferment in open containers.
There should be no smoke in your traditional Scottish ale, but spice — that’s another matter. Based on archaeological digs at Fife and on the Orkney Islands, it’s likely people were brewing beer in Scotland 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. Since these Neolithic brewers were very far from the nearest hop bine, they spiced their beer with other herbs, particularly heather. This tradition continued on with the Picts, whose heather beer was so famous it entered folklore. Heather ale continued on well after hops arrived and only died out in the mid-nineteenth century.
Heather is the most famous Scottish brewing spice, but it is far from the only one — bog myrtle and meadowsweet are other classic examples. Traquair recalls this history by using coriander in their Jacobite Ale. That beer is made much the same way as House Ale, described above, but with just a tiny bit more roasted barley (2.5 percent) and a gravity of 1.078 / 19° P. To re-create Jacobite Ale, add an ounce of coriander with the second hop infusion. If you want to recall the long history of Scottish brewing, substitute heather. It’s a subtle herb and hard to overdo, so add up to 5 ounces with the second hop infusion.