CHAPTER 1 CASK ALES Cask ale is a presentation, not a style. It is separated out here for special treatment because of the import of that presentation. Although not widely popular in the United States, cask ales still represent the spine of the British brewing tradition. In an English pub you will always find a local bitter on cask, possibly more than one, possibly in differing strengths; it might be accompanied by other styles — a mild, stout, strong ale or even a hoppy, American-style ale. (Scottish pubs have less fealty to cask, and local ales are sometimes served on keg.) What knits these beers together is the way they're prepared and served — alive, with fizz coming from fermentation just concluded, with low levels of carbonation, and at cellar temperatures. Not all beer displays its qualities best in this environment. Cask ales are usually weak by American standards (3 to 5% is typical) and beguilingly simple. That's important, because on cask the flavors of beer are more naked, more accessible. Flavors that would otherwise be washed out by stiffer carbonation and colder temperatures have a chance to blossom. The example offered here is a standard English bitter, but the process would work with a mild, a brown, a porter, or even a lighter, less insistently hopped American-style ale. This is the beer presentation most overlooked by Americans (or sometimes used with inappropriately strong, hoppy styles), which is a real shame. Although cask ales yield their accomplishment more slowly, they are the equal to any beer in the world. Brew up a cask or four and spend time with the results; see if you don't discover their allure, too. Understanding Cask Ales Americans who have only ever tasted English ales from the bottle (especially bottles shipped from the UK and aged for God knows how long) may wonder what all the fuss is about, but the point is these ales were not meant to be served from a bottle. No other beer falls nearly as far from its ideal state as cask ale when bottled, and I wonder why breweries even bother. Proponents often say it's a "living" thing that gets its character from the just-active yeast that settles inside the cask, but this isn't quite right. Any unfiltered beer is "living" in that sense. What actually gives it the character is the beer's freshness and the way it's served. Cask ale is extremely young beer. Traditional breweries package their beer after a few days, even while primary fermentation is still under way. It is sent to pubs, where the fermentation finishes out, carbonating the beer naturally. Very often, breweries add a sachet of whole hops inside the cask. When the publican taps the beer, it is vibrantly fresh, right in the middle of the process of dry hopping. Freshness is key. Pouring it from the cask — or pulling it via an engine — is also critical. The fresh beer is only lightly carbonated. When you're dealing with beers that largely fall below 5% ABV — and are sometimes just 3% — low carbonation helps create the sense of thicker body. Low carbonation and somewhat warmer temperatures encourage the flavors to emerge. This is particularly true with the flavorful base malts, which taste lush and full at the pub but fall away in the bottle. Serving these beers on cask is like creating a flavor magnifier. The malts, hops, and yeast all express themselves, but the beer is light and moreish, so you can sit back and drink two or three full pints without feeling tipsy or bloated. Even in Britain, cask ale is underappreciated — the fault of familiarity, probably — but a good cask bitter is one of the most impressive beers in the world. Brewing a Cask Ale For American homebrewers, brewing a cask ale is a snap. Traditional breweries like Greene King are imprecise (by modern standards) and simple — very much like home breweries. They employ single-infusion mashes, have straightforward boils and ferments, and are even packaged in a way that is, at least conceptually, wholly familiar to the homebrewer. The thing to keep your eye on is the malt-hop balance and, particularly, on the importance of flavorful base malts. These are incredibly simple beers, but simplicity can be a trap. To hang flavor on such slender scaffolding, you have to begin with a classic English malt. Americans generally have access to Maris Otter, a winter variety, but there are so many other options. Optic, Tipple, Concerto (spring varieties) and Pearl and Halcyon (winter) are just a few examples of the different barleys used to make malt. We don't get all of these in the United States, but we do get more than Maris Otter, so consider experimenting. In Britain brewers have their own preferences, choosing barleys with flavors that will harmonize with the brewery's yeast and favored hops. In a good cask ale, malt flavors should not only be evident but distinctive. A corollary to the focus on malt is a de-emphasis (from the American perspective) of hops. Even bitter, a style that depends on hop assertiveness, is not very bitter. In this case "balance" means that the hops should be of roughly the same intensity as the combined flavors contributed by malt and yeast and no more. It's hard for Americans to stay their hands when they reach for the hop sack, but if you try, you'll be rewarded when you pour your third pint and realize why that balance is prized in Britain. CASK ALE CRAIG BENNETT GREENE KING MALT BILL * 6 pounds English pale malt (87%) * 9 ounces medium crystal malt (8%) * 5 ounces invert sugar (5%) SINGLE-INFUSION MASH * 147°F (64°C) for 60 minutesRead an Excerpt
* Sparge at 169°F (76°C)
60-MINUTE BOIL
* 0.5 ounce First Gold, 60 minutes (8.0% AA, contribution of 15 IBU)
* 0.5 ounce Challenger, 60 minutes (8.0% AA, contribution of 15 IBU)
* 2 ounces East Kent Goldings, end of boil (5.0% AA, contribution of 4 IBU)
FERMENTATION AND CONDITIONING
Ferment with an English ale strain at 66 to 70°F (16–21°C). Cool to 46°F (8°C) for 24 to 48 hours.
PACKAGE
Cask condition (see Cask Conditioning at Home). If you want to make a standard English bitter and bottle it, increase the gravity to 11° P (1.044).
* Expected OG: 9.5° P/1.038
* Expected TG: 2.2° P/1.009
* Expected ABV: 3.8%
* Expected bitterness: 30–35 IBU
Notes: Bennett suggests a malt bill of 92 percent pale and 8 percent crystal for all-malt bitters, with an option to substitute up to 10 percent of the grist with sugar. Add the Goldings "at end of boil, in copper, whirlpool, or hop back."
NEXT STEPS
Bennett's recipe creates a classic bitter, similar to a slightly souped-up version of Greene King IPA. It will deliver the balance and drinkability you want from a cask ale, but there are almost innumerable permutations. Not only can you tinker with the basics of a bitter recipe — changing the grist ratios slightly, using all-malt grists, or using different hops, base malt, or yeast — but you can create a stronger bitter, mild, brown, or porter to be served on cask (examples of which follow). Cask ales are simple to make, but they require real craft and attention to dial in. Beers such as Timothy Taylor Landlord, Fuller's London Pride, or Greene King IPA didn't happen by accident but were instead refined over years.
CHAPTER 2
STRONG BITTERS
Strong ales were until recently not at all common in the UK. On a 10-day brewery tour in 2011, I got so used to 3.8% beers that when I encountered a "strong" ale in Yorkshire on about day 7 — it was all of 5% — I caught myself murmuring to the barkeep, "Wow, that is strong." In other words, strength is relative. Regular bitters start out around 3.5%, and by the time they're a percentage higher, they creep into a middle netherworld. Strong bitters fall in the 5 to 6% range and are not especially common. This confuses some Americans, who equate bitter and in some cases all of English beer with ESB — and here we need to do some unpacking.
There is no ESB "style" in Britain. Breweries try to signal to their customers when they're making stronger-than-usual versions with names like "best," "special," "strong," or "premium." In London one brewery styled their strong bitter "Extra Special." Fuller's ESB was (and is) such a good beer that it came to represent not only strong bitter in the minds of Americans but all bitters.
I can't actually blame my countrymen. If you haven't had a bottle recently, track one down. Fuller's ESB is a surprisingly powerful beer (and therefore a poor candidate to represent a common English bitter), with a boatload of hops and quite a decent alcohol punch (5.9% in the bottle). Its stats suggest something closer to the American lineage, but on the palate it's purely British. A toffeeish malt base is accented by marmalade hops fading into pepper and a twist of lemon, all wrapped up in lovely, fruity esters. If it is not the quintessential bitter, it may well be the quintessential strong bitter.
Understanding Strong Bitters
Given how much strong bitters (ESBs, as Americans think of them) superficially resemble IPAs, it's surprising how different they are — and the differences are instructive. Modern American IPAs are built to highlight hops. Yeast and water play almost no role, and malt, to the extent breweries want its presence known, contributes only a dollop of sweetening caramel. Strong bitters rely on a balance of all these elements. The malts may contain a note of caramel or toffee, but the rich base malts have more aromas and tastes to create textures of flavor — you might get hazelnut or toffee or biscuit and the scent of warm bread.
It's typical for English strong bitters to begin with stiff, minerally water, and this in turn helps the hops, which are less assertive than in IPAs, pop. Finally, English breweries use ester-producing yeasts that fill out the palette of flavors with distinctive fruitiness that comes from house strains.
In the world of English brewing, strong bitters are a decided minority — their smaller kin are much, much more common in pubs around the island. That niche status allows brewers a little leeway in accentuating one element over another — Adnams Broadside is a velvety, sweet version, while Wells Bombardier is a rich, fruity ale. Others focus on nuts or hops, or highlight their flavors with a strong mineral profile. Homebrewers may be tempted to drive a strong bitter in the direction of an American IPA, but by finding one of these other elements to highlight, you'll produce a wonderful beer that impresses on its own merits.
Brewing a Strong Bitter
Much as with the regular bitter, there are no special tricks to brewing strong bitters. They go through single-infusion mashes and typical hopping schedules (though many breweries use hop backs after the boil). This is one of the few styles for which you might want to consider treating your water. Many breweries fully Burtonize their water, but that might be overkill. Burton water, depending on the well from which it's drawn, may have tons of minerals (magnesium, sodium, calcium, bicarbonate, sulfate, and chloride). I'd recommend starting with just a modest gypsum (calcium sulfate) addition — say, a tablespoon per batch.
STRONG BITTER
JOHN KEELING AND GEORGINA YOUNG
FULLER'S
MALT BILL
* 10.75 pounds English pale malt (96%)
* 0.4 pound wheat malt (4%)
SINGLE-INFUSION MASH
* 149°F (65°C) for 50 minutes
* Recirculate through the grain bed for the final 10 minutes until wort is clear.
60-MINUTE BOIL
* 1 ounce Target, 60 minutes (11.0% AA, contribution of 32 IBU)
* 0.25 ounce East Kent Goldings, 60 minutes (5.0% AA, contribution of 4 IBU)
ADD FOR LAST 5 MINUTES:
* 0.5 ounce East Kent Goldings (5.0% AA, contribution of 2 IBU)
* 0.25 ounce Northdown (8.5% AA, contribution of 2 IBU)
* 0.25 ounce Challenger (7.0% AA, contribution of 1 IBU)
* 1 ounce Target at the start of fermentation
* 0.5 ounce East Kent Goldings for dry hopping (see notes)
FERMENTATION AND CONDITIONING
Ferment with Wyeast 1968 or White Labs WLP002 at 65°F (18°C). Transfer to secondary after 1 week, and let condition for an additional 2 weeks.
PACKAGE
Bottle or cask conditioning are ideal (see Cask Conditioning at Home). If kegging, carbonate mildly, and chill only to 50°F (10°C).
* Expected OG: 14° P/1.058
* Expected TG: 3.5° P/1.014
* Expected ABV: 5.8%
* Expected bitterness: 35–40 IBU
Notes: Fuller's prefers Tipple and Concerto, varieties of spring barley with high nitrogen content. English base malts are hard for homebrewers to source, so use any variety your local store stocks. For dry hopping, use whole-leaf Goldings if available, and add only during conditioning.
NEXT STEPS
Two elements to consider tweaking are hops and yeast. Traditional English breweries still observe the bittering/aroma distinction between hop varieties. (You'll note that Fuller's still uses Target, an 11 percent alpha acid hop, to bitter.) You can experiment. Most of the hops will display different qualities depending on when they're added during (or after) the boil. This is no more evident than in the classic English hop, East Kent Goldings, which can seem comfortingly homey and fruity in one beer but bracingly spicy and floral (as lavender is) in another. Most of the hops that derive from English stock seem to have this mutability, so they're fun to play with.
CHAPTER 3
MILD ALES
Understanding British beer begins in the cozy warmth of the local pub. Mild ale is one of those rare styles of beers to fully display its delights only after two or three pints — preferably in the company of people you enjoy. For centuries the pub has been the focal point of British drinking, and the beer served there was made to be drunk in sessions lasting hours. Today those sessions are fueled by cask bitter or light lagers, but in the middle of the last century, seven of ten pints served were mild ale, a creamy, usually dark ale of very modest strength.
Originally, the word "mild" meant sweet young beer, not yet tinged by the drying effects of wild yeast. It wasn't a style but a category of beer, and milds might have been light or dark, weak or strong. In their modern form milds have evolved into something like a style, though they may still be light or dark (most are the latter). They are unfailingly light of alcohol now, typically at or below 3.5%. Most have little hop character to speak of, and some are sweetish and full bodied. Others might make up for the lack of hops with a layer of bitter, coffeelike roasted malts. Whatever the formulation, milds are built to be drunk in bulk, to taste as pleasant on the first sip as on the fourth pint, a trick that isn't as easy as it sounds.
Understanding Mild Ales
Americans have a hard time appreciating mild ale, a style rarely brewed stateside. They are in many ways the polar opposite of the strong, intense ales that most American beer geeks love, and in order to properly appreciate them, you have to abandon the IPA mind-set. Mild ales are gentle to the point of innocuousness and in the wrong hands become insipid. Their essence is complexity through subtlety, and in the right hands — and with some attention — you'll be impressed by how layered and delicious they are. If you approach a mild looking for shafts of intensity, you'll always walk away disappointed. For those willing to listen carefully, however, milds offer flavors that whisper rather than shout, and good ones feature surprisingly complex layers of flavor.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Secrets of Master Brewers"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Jeff Alworth.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
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