22 replies to this topic

[positiveContact]

Not just in YOUR head , i used 12oz in a light brown ale and was a lot of roasty.Since then, i use no more than 4oz in a 5.5 gallon brew.Lots of discussion for one brew,Grind the grains already!

tomorrow is the planned brew day. the yeast starter looked nice and healthy.

[positiveContact]

I didn't mean it as a sub, but a swap. Biscuit, IMO, will give it a bit more British character. Wheat won't do that, but I put a little in a lot of beers for the hell of it sometimes - never would in a British Ale. I think the MO will give plenty of head retention. Since you had Classic English IPA as a goal I suggested the change. I think over the pond back then they would put cane sugar in before Wheat malt. But, I already posted these don't get brewed at my place much. And, time to do some again. I'm getting boring..............

It goes back to how the style came to be. It was cheaper because of taxes to add sugar rather than malt/other grains. Plus the British malts could handle a little sugar and still throw malt at you in the glass. Most of the close - to all - MO beers I've brewed had a nice enough head to shave with. But that would be a waste of beer since I have a beard.

eta, just saw the grain bill, dump the wheat and bump the SR to at least a pound. But hey, it's your beer and looks tasty.

I wanted to respond to this a little more...

I need to look over Daniels book a little more but you are right about using sugar. unfortunately I think the sugar most english breweries use is maltose. I don't have access to that so I'd rather not use too much sucrose in it's place. The other thing I seem to remember is that classic english IPAs didn't use a lot of crystal (which is why it seems like maybe I'm not using that much). The low fg also had something to do with the long trip to india which encouraged further attenuation. since I won't be shipping my beer halfway around the world I figured a low mash temp would get the fg down enough

As for the wheat - not exactly to style but I don't expect it to make a big impact except for head retention. Torrified wheat seems a lot more common but I don't know if that is really true to the original style or not.

Edited by mashleyJwilliams, 28 January 2011 - 10:53 AM.

[positiveContact]

alright - decided to drop the wheat and replaced it with some more maris otter. I'm going to keep it real for this batch.