# Hook Norton's - Old Hooky



## egolds77 (9/7/09)

While over in the UK with the wife visiting her family I sampled many of their delicious real ales and one in particular that took my fancy was Hook Norton's - Old Hooky, see link 

http://www.hooknortonbrewery.co.uk/acatalo...tled_Beers.html

I have tried to find a recipe but can't. At the time I didn't know enough to dismantle the beer while drinking it to tell what the ingredient might have been to establish a starting point. 

So I was wondering if anyone has tried it while over in the UK and have an idea of grain and hop profile?

:icon_chickcheers:


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## Bribie G (9/7/09)

Trust AHB to get the answer to you fast :lol: 

From Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale (If you can spare thirty bucks order it from Book depository UK)


*HOOK NORTON OLD HOOKY*​A strong Bitter, tawny in colour, A well rounded fruity taste with a balanced bitter finish.

ORIGINAL GRAVITY 1042

_[here's the 23 litre version, Wheeler gives three recipes for each brew, 25, 23 and 19 i.e. corny keg.]_


Pale Malt 3060
Flaked Maize 405
White Sugar 325
Crystal Malt 245
Black Malt 41

Challenger 35g for 90 mins
Fuggles 12g for 10 mins

66 degrees mash 90 mins
boil time 90 mins
ABV 4.5%
IBU 30
EBC 33

Dry hop with a few cones of Goldings.

Note: Wheeler gives little info about malts as they vary from season to season, the poms usually use what we would call medium crystal malt. For base malt Maris Otter would be the go and for a yeast one of the UK style Wyeasts, 1768 is good in rich flavoured ales.

:beerbang:


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## egolds77 (9/7/09)

Thanks BribieG, I can still remember scooping out the foamy head with my spoon on the table while having lunch and eating it like a moose, it was so dense and tasty, like a capacino. 

This definitely will be next on the brewing program now, so excited about it.


Cheers
:icon_chickcheers:


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## Bribie G (9/7/09)

Elton said:


> Thanks BribieG, I can still remember scooping out the foamy head with my spoon on the table while having lunch and eating it like a moose, it was so dense and tasty, like a capacino.
> 
> This definitely will be next on the brewing program now, so excited about it.
> 
> ...



Elton if you are looking for a real creamy head then go for Ringwood yeast (Wyeast). I've done a few brews with maize and you get a rock hard head on them. mmmm. Also to save a dollar, don't get the flaked maize but just some home brand polenta from IGA and boil it up to a goo and add it to the mash. :icon_cheers:


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## egolds77 (9/7/09)

Cheers, 

I just had a shocker using Ringwood. From the replies, I was a little impatient with it starting as it's apparently a slow starter. Unfortunitely in my state of dispare I added some Safale s-04 to save the Wort. Oh well, you live and you learn.

:icon_chickcheers:


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## RdeVjun (9/7/09)

Elton said:


> I just had a shocker using Ringwood. From the replies, I was a little impatient with it starting as it's apparently a slow starter. Unfortunitely in my state of dispare I added some Safale s-04 to save the Wort. Oh well, you live and you learn.


Its getting a bit OT, but relevant to this post. 1768 ESB did the same to me a while back, a shade over two days was beyond my limit so I actually repitched with a Ringwood starter I had handy (how ironic!). My most recent 1768 was headed that way too, but I decided 3 days would be the limit, and lo! and behold, it was up and away just when I was about to go to plan B. Lesson learned- Be patient! And fingers crossed the esters aren't too out of control... Then again...


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## Bribie G (9/7/09)

Yup, just to tie up the last couple of posts, I have found with both Ringwood and 1768 you can reculture them and they just seem to sit there doing nothing for a couple of days. With my last Ringwood I opened the starter flask after three days and (intending to do a hydro check on the wort) I tasted it first and the bloody thing had already fermented out to dryness. Then I noticed that there was a heck more yeast in the flask than the original 'injection' so it had just been breeding up quietly with no huge frothing etc. I pitched it and got a huge krausen by the next evening.


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## hazard (9/7/09)

BribieG said:


> From Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale (If you can spare thirty bucks order it from Book depository UK)



:icon_offtopic: I just bought this very book. An interesting read, but I have a few problems with this, and am hesitant to use the recipes:
1. Are the recipes accurate? I am a bit partial to Fullers ESB, and having previously researched many web sites, have plenty of evidence that grist is 92% malt, 5% maize, 3 % crystal. But Wheeler's recipe has NO maize. Probably causes me to doubt other recipes.
2. He does not quote yeast for any recipe, but I would have thought that this is a key element of any clone - if you want to make Fullers you have to use Fullers yeast (1968) or if you want a Land Lord you need to use Timothy Taylors yeast (1469). Sure you can make nice beer with other yeast, but then it is *not *Fullers or Land Lord.

Any contrary views - is there something else to this book that i've missed?


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## Bribie G (9/7/09)

I hear what you say Hazard and I agree about the lack of detail. I've made a couple of recipes out of the book and they have been excellent, but I have had to pad them out with knowledge of malts and yeasts I have mostly gleaned from this forum. Not rubbishing our Pom brewing cousins but for many of them the only yeasts in the universe are S-04 and Nottingham. It's not that they are stupid, just that Home Brew is lagging a bit behind what it is here, and USA practice as well, for very good reasons (They can walk out of the door and there are a hundred beers available...........) If Graham Wheeler was writing in Australia I'm sure all the extra info about malts and yeasts would be in the book.

In fairness AFAIK Wheeler does haunt the regional breweries and does a bit of espionage. He is a regular on Jim's Beer Kit in the UK and is contactable, may be able to give a bit more info than published in his book.


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## DennisKing (10/7/09)

BribieG said:


> I hear what you say Hazard and I agree about the lack of detail. I've made a couple of recipes out of the book and they have been excellent, but I have had to pad them out with knowledge of malts and yeasts I have mostly gleaned from this forum. Not rubbishing our Pom brewing cousins but for many of them the only yeasts in the universe are S-04 and Nottingham. It's not that they are stupid, just that Home Brew is lagging a bit behind what it is here, and USA practice as well, for very good reasons (They can walk out of the door and there are a hundred beers available...........) If Graham Wheeler was writing in Australia I'm sure all the extra info about malts and yeasts would be in the book.
> 
> In fairness AFAIK Wheeler does haunt the regional breweries and does a bit of espionage. He is a regular on Jim's Beer Kit in the UK and is contactable, may be able to give a bit more info than published in his book.


All very true, he is a very helpful member on Jims. His recipes may seem basic but some of the best British beers are basic. I`ve made this clone using Whitelabs British yeast. It was not that far off the original. Yes I can and do drink decent beers in pubs but you can beat walking into your own garage and pour a pint of draught beer.


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## RdeVjun (10/7/09)

DennisKing said:


> Yes I can and do drink decent beers in pubs but you can't beat walking into your own garage and pour a pint of draught beer.


There, fixed that for you! 
:icon_cheers:


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## gap (10/7/09)

hazard said:


> :icon_offtopic: I just bought this very book. An interesting read, but I have a few problems with this, and am hesitant to use the recipes:
> 1. Are the recipes accurate? I am a bit partial to Fullers ESB, and having previously researched many web sites, have plenty of evidence that grist is 92% malt, 5% maize, 3 % crystal. But Wheeler's recipe has NO maize. Probably causes me to doubt other recipes.
> 2. He does not quote yeast for any recipe, but I would have thought that this is a key element of any clone - if you want to make Fullers you have to use Fullers yeast (1968) or if you want a Land Lord you need to use Timothy Taylors yeast (1469). Sure you can make nice beer with other yeast, but then it is *not *Fullers or Land Lord.
> 
> Any contrary views - is there something else to this book that i've missed?




Re 1) I have an article where Michael Jackson talks with the Head Brewer at Fullers and they no longer use maize in their beers. They substitute the maize with crystal. So the recipe is correct for the current Fullers brews.

2) You have to be a bit realistic here. How many recipes are in the book? How many of he Breweries with recipes in the book, have an equivalent Wyeast or White Labs yeast available.

Brewers should have enough initiative to find the available yeast , if it is in existence, or experiment to find a suitable one.

Also it is not a clone book. You could follow the Fullers recipe to the letter and still end up with a HOME BREW which smells, looks and tastes different to a bottle of Fullers London Pride etc.


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## hazard (10/7/09)

gap said:


> Re 1) I have an article where Michael Jackson talks with the Head Brewer at Fullers and they no longer use maize in their beers. They substitute the maize with crystal. So the recipe is correct for the current Fullers brews.
> 
> 2) You have to be a bit realistic here. How many recipes are in the book? How many of he Breweries with recipes in the book, have an equivalent Wyeast or White Labs yeast available.
> 
> Brewers should have enough initiative to find the available yeast , if it is in existence, or experiment to find a suitable one.



Experiment? I brew every 4 or 5 weeks. I try to make soimething different each time I brew, and certainly don't want to get into an experiement where I brew (say) Hobgoblin for 5 or 6 months in a row, with different yeasts, to see which is the best. Call me lazy, but when I make a hobgoblin, I want to get it right first time and then next month I will make something completely different .... so to get to the point, what is the best yeast for this beer? There is a hobgoblin recipe on the net attributed to a pommie brewer called Orfy which seems to get good press on a number of forums. Only issue I have with it is that it calls for Nottingham yeast, I am sure there is a better liquid yeast for this. For our ale experts, what yeast do you recommend for a hobgoblin clone?

Interesting about the Michael Jackson info, I haven't heard that before, I wonder when the change was made, given Jacko died a few years ago i guess this is old news, and its likely that I've never even drunk the Fullers-with-maize. I made a clone with maize recently (and 1968 yeast) and its good, but not quite the same.

Hazard


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## DennisKing (11/7/09)

RdeVjun said:


> There, fixed that for you!
> :icon_cheers:


Cheers thats better


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## hazard (23/7/09)

gap said:


> Re 1) I have an article where Michael Jackson talks with the Head Brewer at Fullers and they no longer use maize in their beers. They substitute the maize with crystal. So the recipe is correct for the current Fullers brews.



THis is interesting, because the Head Brewer at Fullers 

http://rarebeerclub.beveragebistro.com/rbcbeer_12.html

clearly states that ESB is 91.5% pale malt, 5% maize, 3.5% crystal. 

Michael Jackson also interviews the Head Brewer on this link, who doesn't say anything about leaving out maize. Do you have a link to another article?

Hazard


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## Bribie G (23/7/09)

The maize makes sense. The reason that adjuncts such as maize were introduced into British ales late 19th century was that the new fangled artificial fertilisers were producing heavier barley yields but higher in protein, resulting in persistent hazes in many beers (along the lines that USA brewers were experiencing with their six row barley) and I suppose the adjuncts remained, as flavouring additions, in the process long after they were actually required following the development of modern low protein barleys for malting. 

I doubt if flaked maize is much cheaper for the breweries than malt and in fact I read recently that due to the world rice 'crisis' it's now costing USA brewers like Bud more to brew with rice than to go all malt (with the hoi polloi probably complaining about the strange taste of such a beer <_< )

I put maize in some brews for its fresh bread twang and smoothness, and a kilo of polenta for about $3 is on a par with the cost of the base malt. :icon_cheers:


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