Watney's red barrel clone (The horror)

[savagefan]

Howdy brewers, my family moved us to Canada when I was 15, growing up over there (Debben)I used to steal dad's beer when i had the chance, i went back in 79 and enjoyed the beers very much (Even Tesco bitter) whoever was making that stuff for them. Anyway I make my own beer these days and am trying to get that flavour but can't seem to nail it. I brew all grain, using commercial and home-grown Fuggles and Kentish Goldings the beers come out nice but don't have the taste I want. Is there a technique or adjuncts a guy can use to nail this down. I wonder if it is the water here or the malt. Do you guys make beer that tastes like an English mild or Bitter that tastes like pub draught? If so could you please post recipes/techniques etc? I'm getting so desperate I may just have to come o'er there and drink the place dry. Don't say I didn't warn ye. Cheers!

 

[An Ankoù]

See if you can get a secondhand copy of Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy, Amateur Winemaker Publications Ltd, 1978 (There are later editions, but I haven't seen them). They have recipes for some truly horrendous beers.

 

[Oneflewover]

What yeast are you using? More important than either hops or malt in getting an English bitter to sing. And what about the water profile?

 

[Clint]

Have look on here for FOXBAT BITTER. It's a good English style bitter that has "that" taste.

 

[terrym]

I brew all grain, using commercial and home-grown Fuggles and Kentish Goldings the beers come out nice but don't have the taste I want.

Why not tell us what recipes you follow and how you brew, then members can advise you how they do or don't do things differently.
And just as commercial draught beers were variable in quality and taste back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, that is still the case today in the UK, even amongst the so-called craft beers, and beers produced by micro breweries and the bug 'uns too. My point being there is no one typical beer over here, never has been.
But if you want to go back a few years for commecial recipes in addition to David Lines book, Graham Wheeler's 'Brew Your Own British Real Ale' book is also worth a view.

 

[Cwrw666]

Back in those days most commercial beer was basically the minimum pale malt they could get away with plus various invert sugars plus caramel to turn them a bit brownish. They were p**s weak and most notable for the hangovers they produced.
I remember them with horror.

 

[MyQul]

The Barclay Perkins blog is THE resource for historic recipes. Here's Red Barrel

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/Red Barrel

What you're looking for in taste will probably come from the yeast. The yeast in Bitters is a huge driver for this style. At a guess the red barrel may have used one of the whitbread strains as the whitbread strains (A & B) are a historic strain and were used by a wide variety of breweries The blog info says it's taken from the Whitbread gravity book, so my guess may be correct. I use the Gales strain, which is a whitbread strain, myself for my bitters and it definatley gives a 'classic Bitter flavour '. You can buy them from the yeast labs. Have a look here for what strain you need http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast.htm

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi MyQul
I agree with all your advice in the post above, but I think your assertion that the inclusion of Watney's beers in the Whitbread Gravity Book increases the likelihood that they used one of Whitbread's yeasts may well be incorrect ... the Whitbread Gravity Book was a record of the beers of Whitbread's competitors, not Whitbread's beers, i.e. it was market analysis data (or "industrial espionage", if you'd rather ) ... Ron mentions this over in that piece (link) about beer clarity/quality in the 1920s, which has, in passing, some positive comments about Watney's beers (which you don't often find nowadays, and conveniently brings my point of pedantry back into scope of the OP's thread (sort of) )

Hi Clive

FOXBAT BITTER

... I've seen you mention that recipe a few times now, but can't find a definitive recipe. Just lots of posts saying things like "this is based on FoxBats bitter recipe". Any chance of a pointer at the one you mean?

Cheers, PhilB

 

[Clint]

Not home ATM so my take on it I can't post as my brew journal not here. You could try Foxbats brew day thread..

 

[dan125]

Is there a technique or adjuncts a guy can use to nail this down.

I found that water profile makes quite a difference with bitters, and if you haven't already tinkered with the water may be worh thinking about. IMO they need a decently high mineral content water to avoid being bland, are you using soft water?

 

[foxbat]

Hi MyQul
I agree with all your advice in the post above, but I think your assertion that the inclusion of Watney's beers in the Whitbread Gravity Book increases the likelihood that they used one of Whitbread's yeasts may well be incorrect ... the Whitbread Gravity Book was a record of the beers of Whitbread's competitors, not Whitbread's beers, i.e. it was market analysis data (or "industrial espionage", if you'd rather ) ... Ron mentions this over in that piece (link) about beer clarity/quality in the 1920s, which has, in passing, some positive comments about Watney's beers (which you don't often find nowadays, and conveniently brings my point of pedantry back into scope of the OP's thread (sort of) )

Hi Clive
... I've seen you mention that recipe a few times now, but can't find a definitive recipe. Just lots of posts saying things like "this is based on FoxBats bitter recipe". Any chance of a pointer at the one you mean?

Cheers, PhilB

I think it's this one:

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/mainline-bitter-a-traditional-dark-english-bitter.73786/

I'll be brewing it again myself in a few weeks as I haven't done it for a while and my father's visiting and he really doesn't like Citrus flavour hops.

 

[MyQul]

Hi MyQul
I agree with all your advice in the post above, but I think your assertion that the inclusion of Watney's beers in the Whitbread Gravity Book increases the likelihood that they used one of Whitbread's yeasts may well be incorrect ... the Whitbread Gravity Book was a record of the beers of Whitbread's competitors, not Whitbread's beers, i.e. it was market analysis data (or "industrial espionage", if you'd rather ) ... Ron mentions this over in that piece (link) about beer clarity/quality in the 1920s, which has, in passing, some positive comments about Watney's beers (which you don't often find nowadays, and conveniently brings my point of pedantry back into scope of the OP's thread (sort of) )

Hi Clive
... I've seen you mention that recipe a few times now, but can't find a definitive recipe. Just lots of posts saying things like "this is based on FoxBats bitter recipe". Any chance of a pointer at the one you mean?

Cheers, PhilB

Tbh, it was more than a wild guess than an assertion. Interesting that the gravity book was a bit of industial espionage. :hat:

 

[savagefan]

Thanks for the replies you have given me much to read. I have been using Beersmith 3 software and following recipes posted there. Using 2 row pale malt with about 10% 60 lovibond caramel in the grain bill no adjuncts as yet but am open to ideas. Yeast so far WLP 002 and WLP 023 in a constant 65F . Our water in Calgary is considered hard (high Calcium content) and I have barked out my share of kidney stones to back this up. I'm using a Robobrew and quite like the convenience but am not married to this method either.

 

[An Ankoù]

All of these beers used some invert sugar to save malt and give the beer less body. Red Barre; uses about 2.5% of total sugars according to 2 recipes I've found. You can use ordinary table sugar (sucrose) as the boil, and if not the boil, the yeast will fo the inverting.

 

[RichardM]

Howdy brewers, my family moved us to Canada when I was 15, growing up over there (Debben)I used to steal dad's beer when i had the chance, i went back in 79 and enjoyed the beers very much (Even Tesco bitter) whoever was making that stuff for them. Anyway I make my own beer these days and am trying to get that flavour but can't seem to nail it. I brew all grain, using commercial and home-grown Fuggles and Kentish Goldings the beers come out nice but don't have the taste I want. Is there a technique or adjuncts a guy can use to nail this down. I wonder if it is the water here or the malt. Do you guys make beer that tastes like an English mild or Bitter that tastes like pub draught? If so could you please post recipes/techniques etc? I'm getting so desperate I may just have to come o'er there and drink the place dry. Don't say I didn't warn ye. Cheers!

Drinking Tesco bitter was what got me started on home brewing. I thought "I have to be able to make better beer than this at a comparable price" and I was right.

 

[savagefan]

RichardM, that just goes to show you how god-awful the industrial swill is here. I think the taste I'm looking for could be described as a bit like overly-stewed tea, definitely a sharp tang to it.