Recipes
Here are some recipes for a few of the homebrewed beers which I make. Most are original, and if they are based on another published recipe then I say so. Where I've tried to make a beer similar to a commercial example then my starting point has been to check the information given in Roger Protz's book The Real Ale Almanac (5th edition) or the brewer's website and then putting those values into my spreadsheet.
There are three recipe sections - the ones on this page are recipes for the standard beers which I make regularly, often several times a year; then there is another page of recipes for darker, winter beers, porters and strong beers which I like but which I don't make quite so often, and finally there are some recipes which I only make occasionally (often because I have difficulty getting the ingredients) but you might like to try some of them anyway, or use them as the basis for your own experiments.
Unless I say otherwise, the quantities given here are for making 5 Imperial Gallons (23 litres). I use grams and degrees celsius (centigrade) because it's easier for my calculations.
In all of these recipes I've given the weight of the grain and a percentage (by weight) - This is because your system may be more or less efficient than mine. If you try it using the weights that I give and find that the gravity is way different from what it should be, then adjust the amounts to suit, keeping the percentages right.
The amount of mash water in litres is calculated as 2.3 times the weight of the grain for mashing - so if I had 5kg of grain I use 2.3 x 5 = 11.5 litres of mash water.
The hops have a weight and an alpha acid value. If you have hops with a different alpha acid value, you can easily calculate the required amount - for example if my beer is made with 42g of 6% alpha acid, and your hops are 5% alpha acid, then you need 42 x 6 / 5 = 50.4g (I'd round it to the nearest gram).
I generally use vacuum packed hops. They normally come in a gold foil pack and weigh 113g. Once opened they're kept in a dark, sealed plastic box in the refrigerator to keep them fresh.
I've tried experimenting with various hops over the years but now generally stick to just four varieties: Northern Brewer, Cascade, Fuggles and Goldings. I tend not to use the higher alpha acid varieties of hops, simply because of the scale of my brewing and the weights involved. My scales measure to the nearest gram, so if you calculate that you need 50 grams of 5% A/A hops, you could use 25 grams of 10 % A/A instead - but if you add one gram too much, in the first case it will 0.5 IBU too bitter, but in the second case it will turn out to be 1 IBU too bitter. A reasonable quantity of hops are also needed to aid filtering of the trub when you run the wort out of the kettle - I like to have at least 50g of hops in the kettle, which you're unlikely to get using high alpha acid hops, unless you're making a very bitter beer.
I've never had much success with dry-hopping in the cask, the hops tend to block the tap (even if they're in a bag) and the beer seems to get more bitter as the beer goes down. This may be because a 5 gallon barrel lasts me about 2 weeks, whereas a pub would never have a barrel of dry-hopped beer in use for that long. I've tried various alternatives, and I find that adding around 15g at runoff seems to work best if I want to add some hop aroma.
There is more information on how I go about making my beers from start to finish on my techniques page.
Abbotish 2
This is an attempt to make a beer which is something like Greene King Abbot Ale. Amber malt is not easy to come by - I have to either buy it by mail order or make a special order with my homebrew shop - but it's needed in Abbot Ale. Greene King changed the recipe for Abbot Ale back in 1995 and most people seem to think that it was an improvement. I'm in the minority, because although the current version of Abbot is a very pleasant beer, I prefer the original. I only wish I could make something similar.
Specifics
- 30 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 90 minute boil
- 68°C mash
- 11.3 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4560g | (90.5%) |
| Crystal Malt | 227g | (4.5%) |
| Amber Malt | 151g | (3%) |
| Cane Sugar | 101g | (2%) |
| Challenger | 7% A/A | 36g | 90 mins |
| Fuggles | 5.0% A/A | 20g | 10 mins |
American Bitter
This is a nice, easy drinking beer, very pleasant in the summer. I call it 'American Bitter' because it uses American hops - Willamette and Cascade. There are quite a lot of cascade hops added near the end, which give it a nice hop flavour.
Specifics
- 32 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 70 minute boil
- 67.5°C mash
- 11.6 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4834g | (95.5%) |
| Crystal Malt | 228g | (4.5%) |
| Willamette | 4% A/A | 78g | 60 mins |
| Cascade III | 4% A/A | 39g | 2 mins |
Cascades
This is a very pleasant light beer. I call it Cascades because (naturally) it only uses Cascade hops. Commercial brewers most probably wouldn't use what is normally regarded as an aroma hop for bittering, but Cascades are a very versatile hop for the homebrewer and are excellent for bittering as well as aroma.
Specifics
- 25 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 70 minute boil
- 67.5°C mash
- 11.7 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4050g | (79.7%) |
| Munich Malt | 686g | (13.5%) |
| Carapils | 248g | (4.8%) |
| Wheat Malt | 100g | (2%) |
| Cascade | 6.9% A/A | 9g | 75 mins |
| Cascade | 6.9% A/A | 25g | 30 mins |
| Cascade | 6.9% A/A | 17g | 15 mins |
Exwick Gold
Golden colour beers are very popular at the moment (CAMRA have even coined the term 'Golden Ales' to describe them). To me they often tend to lack character, but Exwick Gold is very nice. I doubt if the small amount of wheat malt is noticeable. I've replaced it with the same quantity of flaked wheat or carapils in the past and it's still nice.
Specifics
- 36 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 90 minute boil
- 67°C mash
- 11 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4720g | (94.1%) |
| Wheat Malt | 50g | (0.9%) |
| Dextrose monohydrate (Glucose Powder) | 250g | (5%) |
| Northern Brewer | 7.5% A/A | 36g | 90 mins |
| Cascade | 4.4% A/A | 44g | 10 mins |
Glenny Bitter
This is a lovely bitter, loosely based on the ingredients given for Wychwood Best Bitter (no longer in production) in Roger Protz's book The Real Ale Almanac (3rd edition). I call it Glenny because Wychwood Brewery used to be called Glenny Brewery.
Specifics
- 32 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 90 minute boil
- 67.5°C mash
- 11.4 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4740g | (96%) |
| Crystal Malt | 185g | (3.75%) |
| Chocolate Malt | 12g | (0.25%) |
| Progress | 6% A/A | 16g | 90 mins |
| Northern Brewer | 9.6% A/A | 18g | 90 mins |
| Goldings | 5% A/A | 20g | 10 mins |
Hobgoblin 3
This is a similar beer to Wychwood's Hobgoblin. Very tasty.
Specifics
- 28 IBU
- 1048 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 100 minute boil
- 67°C mash
- 11.6 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4948g | (98%) |
| Chocolate Malt | 101g | (2%) |
| Progress | 6% A/A | 42g | 90 mins |
| Styrian Goldings | 5% A/A | 16g | 5 mins |
Light Ale
This beer is actually based on a lager recipe in Charlie Papazian's excellent book, 'The Home Brewer's Companion'. I don't often drink lagers and I've never wanted to make one, but the basis of the recipe seemed to be what I wanted to produce so I altered the hops to suit what I'd got and used my normal top fermenting yeast, and what turned out was a delicious light ale. Charlie's recipe is called 'Schwedagon Gold', and it's for a Münchner light beer.
Specifics
- 22 IBU
- 1046 OG
- 4.7% ABV
- 75 minute mash
- 75 minute boil
- 68°C mash
- 11.2 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4279g | (88%) |
| Crystal Malt | 146g | (3%) |
| Carapils | 146g | (3%) |
| Munich Malt | 292g | (6%) |
| Northern Brewer | 8% A/A | 13g | 75 mins |
| Cascade | 4.8% A/A | 20g | 30 mins |
| Cascade | 4.8% A/A | 20g | 15 mins |
| Cascade | 4.8% A/A | 10g | At run off |
Malty Brew
This brown ale recipe evolved simply because I had a lot of Belgian Special B malt which I wanted to use up! It's got a nice, malty taste with a slightly dry finish and has now become a regular brew. Northern Brewer hops are currently (2008) hard to come by, and I've replaced them with Northdown in more recent versions. Note that there is a 15 minute boil before the first batch of hops are added.
Specifics
- 25 IBU
- 1050 OG
- 5.1% ABV
- 75 minute mash
- 75 minute boil
- 67°C mash
- 11.4 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4962g | (93.7%) |
| Chocolate Malt | 32g | (0.6%) |
| Belgian Special B | 164g | (3.1%) |
| Biscuit Malt | 138g | (2.6%) |
| Northern Brewer | 8.5% A/A | 20g | 60 mins |
| Cascade | 6.9% A/A | 20g | 20 mins |
MSB
My local homebrew shop recently started stocking flaked maize again, and as this is an essential ingredient in Fuller's ESB I thought I'd have a go at producing something similar. At 5.5% ABV, ESB is a bit too strong for regular drinking for me - my favourite Fuller's drink is a 50/50 blend of Fullers ESB and London Pride. When I lived in London many years ago this used to be called 'mixed' and a good barman would always pull a generous half pint of ESB and then top it up with the Pride!
A quick search on the internet found an article about Fuller's Special Edition ESB in which Fuller's head brewer said "we kept the original ESB recipe: 91.5% pale ale malt, 3.5% crystal malt and 5% flaked maize" and said that the normal ESB is 34[IBU] so this information gave me the basis of a weaker version of ESB, which I call MSB (moderately special bitter).
Specifics
- 31 IBU
- 1050 OG
- 5% ABV
- 75 minute mash
- 90 minute boil
- 68°C mash
- 12.1 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4806g | (91.5%) |
| Crystal Malt | 184g | (3.5%) |
| Flaked Maize | 536g | (5%) |
| Fuggles | 5% A/A | 52g | 90 mins |
| Goldings | 5.5% A/A | 15g | 15 mins |
Special 44
This is a recipe from my eternal quest for a beer that is similar to Young's Special. The 44 indicates that it was my 44th brew of it! It doesn't help that Youngs have changed the recipe themselves at least twice since I started, including reducing the strength (as well as moving the brewery to Bedford) so that I've forgotten what I'm trying to make actually tastes like, but I rather like this version.
If you want to try this yourself but have different alpha acid values for the hops, the bitterness units provided by the initial Goldings and Fuggles are meant to be the same, but I wouldn't worry too much. I once made this using all Cascade hops in place of the Fuggles and Goldings and it was still very nice. Don't be afraid to experiment.
Specifics
- 31 IBU
- 1045 OG
- 75 minute mash
- 75 minute boil
- 67°C mash
- 10.1 litres mash water
| Pale Malt | 4201g | (90.5%) |
| Crystal Malt | 139g | (3%) |
| Flaked Barley | 70g | (1.5%) |
| Cane Sugar | 232g | (5%) |
| Goldings | 4.2% A/A | 30g | 75 mins |
| Fuggles | 4.5% A/A | 28g | 75 mins |
| Fuggles | 4.5% A/A | 20g | 10 mins |