Brew your own British ale

[AJ_Rowley]

Just received this book today in the hope of getting a recipe to do for my very first ag brew. Great read I must say but one thing that strikes me as a bit odd is alot of the recipes use white sugar.

I was just wondering if those you who have followed these recipes dobyou follow them to the letter or would you substitute the sugar for dme?

Also as I live in ireland most of the beers in the book I wouldnt see much of so would any of you have a recommendation as to which to give a go first. I was thinking london pride but open to suggestions.

Sorry for a bit long winded post
Cheers
AJ

 

[GeeK]

I don't have this book. I dont use white sugar, ever. However, when in London, I always like a pint or twain of Pride.

Go for it!

Does it have a recipe for another good Fullers beer - Chiswick bitter, by any chance? A nice session beer.

 

[PD]

adjust your Pale Malt and don't bother with sugar.

Pick any recipe you like from the book you will not be disappointed

 

[AJ_Rowley]

It has fullers discovery, esb and London porter.

 

[JimmyB78]

I added the sugar in the 2 i did that required it, both turned out pretty good.

PD - do you just replace the sugar with the same amount of Pale malt?

 

[rpt]

The proportion of sugar in the recipes is fairly low so using sucrose shouldn't be an issue. I'd be tempted to substitute dextrose or adjust the malt, rather than use DME as that's expensive. Many breweries use sugar so I don't think we should dismiss it as wrong.

 

[Dave1970]

I'm generally against the idea of using sugar, I want my ALL GRAIN beer to be just that....... BUT when I did Rich & Dave's Speckled Hen Challenge the recipe called for golden syrup. The nature of the challenge meant I had to use it. No regrets at all, the beer came out great, a very good clone.

I'd say that if you want to brew really accurate clones then stick to Wheeler's recipe & use the sugar. If on the other hand you want a great beer that is close to whatever you were cloning but a bit more full bodied then increase your pale malt to compensate.

You don't just replace the sugar with the same weight of pale malt, the sugar will give a much higher gravity. Your best bet is to download some recipe software (Brewmate's free) and play around with the effect of removing the sugar and adding malt. Brewmate tells me that 1kg of sugar in 23 litres would give a gravity of 1.017 whereas 1 kg of pale malt would only give 1.010. This is because you'll never convert & extract all the sugars from the malt. Also the malt will yield some non-fermentable sugars resulting in a higher final gravity but more flavour.

 

[graysalchemy]

I'm doing my clone of Fullers ESB based on Wheelers version but made northern with Wheat Malt. It is a great beer and my house bitter. :thumb: :thumb:

My version of the book has no sugar in it :wha: Just up the pale malt to compensate using your brewing software.

 

[calumscott]

+1 for upping the pale.

and +1 for GW's recipes - they make great beer, full stop.

I think it either says in the book or it's been quoted online that the sugar is to cover any discrepancy between the formulation offered by the brewery and the actual ABV of the commercial beer. Breweries probably do use a bit of sugar to account for natural variations in grain, malting, mashing etc. such that they can always turn out the same OG, exactly, time after time.

But we're not constrained by wholesale buyers, the revenue or anyone else, we can simply accept the variations and just use malt - who cares if we're a decimal point or two out in the final ABV? :thumb:

 

[Newtons Shed]

The thing with sugar and the reason why it has such a bad reputation is from the years where home brewing supplies were some what lacking and not what it is today, so the cheaper fermenting came from high proportion of suger likewise the kit beers especially the one can kits have suger added to them to reduce the cost of production than the hiomebrew be required to add even more sugar to this. GW says that provided the total amount of fermentables coming from suger doesn't exceed 10% of the total grain bill then it's fine compared to say 1.5kg kit with 1kg of sugar added is like 66% of fermentables is suger. As someone else has said GW also says in the notes that the small amount of suger has been added to get the abv to match you could omit it, add more grain to compensate or add it.

Re golden syrup is an expensive type of inverted suger. Inverted suger is broken down into glucose and fructose by splitting sucrose (household suger) into these two components, the advantage of using inverted suger, again according to GW is otherwise the yeast has to use another emzyne to break down the sucrose, which leeds to dispoportainate hang over compared to the actual gravity of the beer.

 

[RobWalker]

Its worth noting that some styles require sugar, like Castlemaine XXXX uses a fair amount of white sugar, for example - some british beers also use brown sugar to impart a slight molasses flavour. Unless it's absolutley required for the style, another +1 here for subbing it out! There is almost nothing good about white sugar in beer. :thumb:

 

[graysalchemy]

I sometimes use it in high gravity beers where you want to reduce any cloying sweetness that would be imparted from to much grain, but to be honest lower mash temp sorts it and reduced use of crystal malt.

like Castlemaine XXXX uses a fair amount of white sugar,

I rest my case M'lord :lol: :lol:

Oh and Rob can you please refrain from using offensive language. :lol: :lol:

 

[RobWalker]

i never said I like it or condone brewing it :lol:

 

[graysalchemy]

still swearing :lol:

 

[PD]

I'm using some dark sugars in my next few brews.....son ( a baker ) picked up 25 kg of the stuff for 25p from work !

Lots of buns being made as well...... :party:

 

[AJ_Rowley]

Thanks for all the great advice guys makes the rransition to ag that little bit less daunting knowing there is always someone here to help. :smile:

 

[graysalchemy]

Someone will always help you that is what we are here for. :thumb: :thumb: