August competition - British Pales, Bitters & Milds

[brewhaha]

@strange-steve & @Jakeyboi get bravest feedback award as although both their beers ended up with off flavours, they were both OK with having their feedback posted on the thread.

I've summarised each beer briefly:

strange-steve

70/- Scotch ale

3.1%


The aroma and flavour had a strong medicinal / plastic character so it was immediately apparent that something had gone awry with this one. A shame as there was a malt sweetness trying to get through in the flavour. A bit murky in appearance and the mouthfeel was a overly light but it is low ABV and the beer very young.

Jakeyboi

English IPA

5.2%


A bit of context to this one. It was brewed in December 2017 so had had a long time conditioning. The clearest beer we poured (I could read my notes through it!) but unfortunately it had badly oxidised and had a strong aroma and flavour of green apples (acetaldehyde) that masked anything that was originally there in this beer.

 

[brewhaha]

Thanks again to all the competitors and I hope I get the chance to judge another of these.

 

[dan125]

Now @dan125

Ordinary bitter
ABV not stated - I reckon about 4%?

Aroma - 7

A nice bready malt aroma but not much else. I think this might have been a bit cold.


Appearance - 2

Hazy and seems very light for an ordinary bitter - light golden colour.

Head on pouring that settles down to a ring around the edge of the glass.


Flavour - 13

The bready malt comes through in the flavour as well.

It’s a nicely balanced beer with the bitterness nicely offsetting the sweet malt.

It tastes more like a continental lager thought (like a Czech pilsner) rather than an ordinary bitter.


Mouthfeel - 3

Medium body and carbonation is higher on the tongue than visually.


Overall - 7

This was a nice beer and I could imagine having it on a warm summer’s evening but I just didn’t think it hit the style you were aiming for. I’m intrigued by what your grist was and what yeast you were using as it’s a very clean beer and maybe a more English yeast would have pushed it more to style.


32/50

Thanks for the feedback @brewhaha - pretty much what I thought of the beer
It was 3.8%, fermented with the Imperial Juice strain (supposedly English) at 19C, but under a little pressure in the fermentasaurus, and did come out cleaner than I was expecting.
I wanted to keep this recipe simple and went with:
47% Chevallier
47% Crisp MO
6% Fawcett pale crystal
+ 30g Blackstrap molasses for colour ajustment, but woefully mis-guessed the EBC of it, hence the very pale colour
25 IBUs Challenger @ 90mins
10 IBUs Challenger @ 30mins

I'm pleased you thought the balance was good as this was my main concern with V1 of this recipe.

 

[brewhaha]

Finally got prize beer #3. This has been my go to pint in Norwich / Norfolk over the years so I hope the bottled version does it justice!

Wolf Brewery's Golden Jackal is a hoppy session English pale so I think it's a fitting final prize beer for August's category.

Hope you enjoy these @Dads_Ale, keen to hear your thoughts either way.

They should be in the post to you either Monday or Tuesday.

 

[Jakeyboi]

Thanks for the feedback. Shame u got a bad one as I tried one before sending it and it was pretty good!

 

[Dads_Ale]

Prize arrived yesterday, a big thanks to @brewhaha for some excellent looking beers. I will report back on them.

 

[ACBEV]

@Dads_Ale I see your a fan of Watneys beer - Red Barrel no less... By all accounts a splendid beer...

Ron Pattison has a section in his blog "How to brew Watneys Red Barrel"...
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/Red Barrel
I've lumped together other Watneys blog posts too.