# Aussie bitter ale



## Andrewbarnes83 (4/4/15)

Hi all,

I was reading the aabc style guidelines and was intrigued by this style. Are there any commercial examples still available? (I'm guessing the modern bitters don't count since they are too light in colour and lagers).


What would you come up with for a recipe for one of these?


Cheers


----------



## dicko (5/4/15)

Unfortunately the marketing gurus removed the word "bitter" from aus beers die to the lack of acceptance with their attempt to get all of us drinking their mega fizzy water style.
I believe Coopers Pale Ale is around 27 ibu which is close but there has already been a style of Australian Pale Ale invented just to cover this beer it seems.


----------



## dicko (5/4/15)

Google brings up.....you guessed it VB. 

An original Aus Bitter would have followed the basic style of an english bitter but with emphasis on Aus ingredients.

I cant think of any commercial bitters currently available but there may be a micro that would do one.


----------



## Bridges (5/4/15)

Just read the guidelines  Page 39 covers the style, the yeast is going to be interesting. "standard Australian ale yeast (originally isolated 1888 at Victoria Brewery in Melbourne)" and "CUB ale yeast or similar. Attenuative English or American strains most suitable. Note: Whitelabs WLP009 Australian Ale yeast (Coopers strain) is unsuitable" 
Yeah american strains are "suitable" but is the standard Australian ale yeast available anywhere?
I imagine that something similar to coopers pale all grain recipe with some added cane sugar would be close to the mark but getting the right yeast would be the challenge.


----------



## manticle (5/4/15)

Sounds like a bunch of made up horseshit to me, like a lot of bjcp/aabc stuff. Any references?
Brunswick bitter from thunder road at a guess.
One of the only widely commercially available ale strains distinctly AU is unsuitable, must have por and phenols from loads of sugar.....
Needs a fair bit of development that one.


----------



## bradsbrew (5/4/15)

I thought this aabc style was "created" around the original VB that was a limited release a few years back?

Actually just re read the guideline. Apparantly it should not refer to the above beer. That was released in 2005- ffs i must be getting old.


----------



## michaeld16 (5/4/15)

I did see an old bottle a while ago it was victoria bitter ale not sure how old the bottle was but its contents were measured in fl oz and there was no alc% mentioned on there so must of had a bit of age to it.found it in a roof I was working in the house had just turned 100 yrs old


----------



## Bribie G (5/4/15)

Apart from a few regionals such as Steindl at Maryborough or Macs at Rockhampton nearly all breweries were amalgamated by the 1950s into 4 main groups that became the current 2 at the time of Alan Bond and that other guy with the huge nose. AFAIK Australian beers were almost entirely lagersthe only surviving ales were Coopers and Tooheys old.
POR was developed in the 1960s so who knows what variety before then.
Australian brewers have always been very secretive about their ingredients. Even as late as the 1980s they refused to reveal the ABVs of their beers as well. This only changed when mid and light beers came in.

As for the yeast I believe that CUB only use Fosters B Strain that's a lager yeast derived from Carlsberg. That's why Wyeast Danish Lager is excellent for most megaswill knock offs.
I agree with Manticle that it's BJCP beer fantasy along the lines of many of their styles.
I keep waiting for some of their styles to read "kept alive by a few Appalacian families during Prohibition and brewed in secret caves , only to be rediscovered by BJCP inspectors who were hunting down mysterious hand blown glass bottles turning up in Harrisburgh"


----------



## Spohaw (5/4/15)

This beer style sounds horrible


----------



## pilgrimspiss (5/4/15)

I'd consider this a current example despite what guidelines say. Don't forget that guidelines are made around beers not the other way round. 

http://www.coopers.com.au/static/media/uploads/cpr12308_cooperstastingnotes_sparkling_2014.pdf

Cheers
Matty.


----------



## Andrewbarnes83 (5/4/15)

Yeah I agree while I enjoy coopers this style does sound harsh with 30 percent cane sugar and that many IBU's of POR so I probably won't be making one any time soon.

I reckon this style seems to be basically a drier (due to higher use of cane sugar adjuncts) best bitter or irish red ale using aussie malts, hops and yeast.

If I were to make one I was thinking something like?

Pale malt 
crystal 5%
some choc or roast barley for colour adjustment
cane sugar 10-15% ( I assume 30% is of gravity points)
POR flowers single 60 min addition to 25-30 ibu
nottingham or some other English strain due to lack of availability of cub ale yeast
mash 67 ish


----------



## dicko (5/4/15)

pilgrimspiss said:


> I'd consider this a current example despite what guidelines say. Don't forget that guidelines are made around beers not the other way round.
> 
> http://www.coopers.com.au/static/media/uploads/cpr12308_cooperstastingnotes_sparkling_2014.pdf
> 
> ...


Still using the incorrect yeast but I do agree.
Unfortunateley there is no beer recommendation in the guideline.


----------



## fletcher (5/4/15)

i've made a really lovely hybrid aussie/english bitter that i'd like to think fits the style. if not, i could care less and it fits what i enjoy.

maris otter
crystal
dark crystal
wheat
victory
to 1.044
POR at 60 mins to 32 ibu
i vary up the yeast depending on preference. i've done it with windsor, wlp013 and wlp009 (wlp013 was the favourite).

if you wanted to get anal about it, make it aussie only malt substitutes.


----------



## Blind Dog (6/4/15)

Can't say I get the point of a style where there isn't a single commercial example.


----------



## TheWiggman (6/4/15)

What about Emu Bitter? When in WA last year I bought a slab. 4% ABV, very lager-like and had the typical metallic taste of lighter mass produced beers. 
Actually has 'Bitter Ale' written on the label.


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

So it's basically a coopers sparkling ale with different yeast with sugar added ?


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

Pretty sure emu bitter is a lager

Ordered some burton union yeast and I'll grab some POR hops then I'll give this a go


----------



## Blind Dog (6/4/15)

Spohaw said:


> Ordered some burton union yeast and I'll grab some POR hops then I'll give this a go


Why?


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

For fun , I haven't used POR or that yeast yet

Probably be a waste of grains hops yeast and time but .......

Might end up doing an Australian pale ale / IPA instead , at least it's a bit more open to using different hops 

Wanted to try brew a style that had the word Australian in it really


----------



## Blind Dog (6/4/15)

If that's your intent, Fletchers recipe looks like a good starting point even if you sub Aussie grains for the MO. I make something similar although I tend to use Hops other than PoR (version with Sylva was pretty tasty). Don't see why PoR wouldn't work. My aim was something English bitteresque, but capable of being drunk cold

Won't be anything like the style guidelines though; which is a good thing IMO


----------



## pilgrimspiss (6/4/15)

Personally, I reckon you could use most of the HPA hops.

Those flavours have been bred and grown here in Australia and aren't available anywhere else. 

Its not just PoR anymore. A pale ale using Summer, Topaz or Vic Secret for bittering and Aroma is a pretty bloody tasty beer!! Having such high Alpha Acids available also makes them economic for bittering and also quite a powerful bitter at that. 

Cheers
Matty.


----------



## pilgrimspiss (6/4/15)

I don't know where the liking of a straight bitter came from (probably my old man) but I actually really enjoyed the last time (which was also the first and only time) that I had coopers sparkling ale. I'm usually a hop head or German styled drinker. 

It is pretty much what is says, and it IS bitter. But it was hot, I'd been working, I poured ice cold into a glass, man did they go down! Put a six pack away easily. 

NO aroma, just straight bitterness, crisp finish, quite dry, light maltiness, pretty highly carbed BUT......I did enjoy it.

Cheers
Matty.


----------



## indica86 (6/4/15)

pilgrimspiss said:


> A pale ale using Summer, Topaz or Vic Secret for bittering and Aroma is a pretty bloody tasty beer!! Having such high Alpha Acids available also makes them economic for bittering and also quite a powerful bitter at that.


Summer would not be economical.


----------



## pilgrimspiss (6/4/15)

indica86 said:


> Summer would not be economical.


At 5.6-6.4 % AA you would be correct indica86. Adds a nice simple aroma to a pale ale though.


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

I was planning on using just summer in place of POR in an Australian bitter or pale ale ..... Maybe with a few grams of galaxy with it

So far the recipe is like this

*Grain Bill*
----------------
3.500 kg Pale Ale Malt (63.64%)
1.000 kg Wheat Malt (18.18%)
0.500 kg Unmalted Wheat (9.09%)
0.300 kg Crystal 15 (5.45%)
0.200 kg Dextrose (3.64%)

*Hop Bill*
----------------
5.0 g Galaxy Pellet (13.4% Alpha) @ 40 Minutes (Boil) (0.2 g/L)
50.0 g Summer Pellet (5.3% Alpha) @ 40 Minutes (Boil) (2.2 g/L)

with MJ Burton Union yeast


----------



## jphowman (6/4/15)

I've brewed this recipe. It is one of the sample recipes that comes with beersmith. It's really quite good, it turned me on to how good POR can be.

http://www.beersmith.com/Recipes2/recipe_71.htm

Personally I like the idea of a bitter ale that is brewed to suit a hot climate and enjoyed this enough to make it a house beer if I ever run out of new styles. My next attempt will swap the sugar for ~15% flaked rice, get rid of the Munich (too rich), and reduce the late hops to improve quaffability.

I used wyeast 1728 Edinburgh yeast since it is apparently similar to us05 but with slightly more character.


----------



## indica86 (6/4/15)

Spohaw said:


> with MJ Burton Union yeast


Try the British Ale yeast if you have not yet. It's great and may well suit this style.


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

indica86 said:


> Try the British Ale yeast if you have not yet. It's great and may well suit this style.


Placed a yeast order yesterday and got the burton yeast , so I'm kind of locked into that yeast

Ill try the British ale yeast after the burton


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

What's the difference between the two ? 
Thought burton yeast was a British yeast


----------



## Bribie G (6/4/15)

Burton Union, i.e. Bass yeasts are the oldest "modern" yeasts, dating from the 18th century and would no doubt be the foundation of Australian Ale yeasts. They would have arrived here in huge quantities in bottle conditoned ales and casked IPAs.


----------



## indica86 (6/4/15)

Bass yeasts? Are there treble yeasts to balance this?

Seriously though... how do you you know this and where can I educate myself?


----------



## TheWiggman (6/4/15)

I currently have on tap an Aussie 'bitter ale' which was 95% JW pils, 5% JW light crystal using M10 Workhorse yeast. PoR for bitter, lots of late cluster, and my oh my did it make out to be a pub-style beer. In the bottle it's great, but it finished too high and ended up being a full bodied midstrength out of the keg.
I had some non-hop fans around today and one commented that even though it was a midstrength, it's better than the typical mainstream varieties.

I would definitely do it again the same. In my opinion what made it was - 

Combo of pride and cluster
Low ferment temp using yeast with little character
It could be done with sugaz but I like it how it is. Preferred to finish around 1.010 to my tastes.
In my opinion (repeat opinion) using an English ale yeast would give it too much English character. Moving away from PoR and using something like Galaxy would push it into pale ale territory. I know there are a lot of PoR haters out there but used properly I really enjoy it. Cluster more so. I think you really need PoR in there to make it what it is, and I don't think there's much - if anything - out there that can sub it.


----------



## jyo (6/4/15)

TheWiggman said:


> What about Emu Bitter? When in WA last year I bought a slab. 4% ABV, very lager-like and had the typical metallic taste of lighter mass produced beers.
> Actually has 'Bitter Ale' written on the label.


15 or so years ago, E.B. was a pretty decent swiller. Now I know my tastes have changed, but the last time I had one it was pretty damned bland. It does say Bitter Ale on the label, whether or not this is just a tip of the hat to the old recipe and they are now using a lager yeast, I'm not sure.

I reckon the the WY British Ale II fermented cool at 17' to keep the esters low would be a great choice for the 'style'.


----------



## manticle (6/4/15)

Cluster is used in xxxx and plays very well with por but is a US hop.


----------



## manticle (6/4/15)

According to that amazingly reliable website wikipedia, emu bitter is an ale. Might be the only widely commercially available example of this made up style if it is truly so.


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

Pretty sure EB is a lager


----------



## manticle (6/4/15)

Maybe it is but on what is your confidence based? Inside knowledge? Incredible palate? Intuition? Tarot readings?


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

Tarot

The cards never lie 

Haha


----------



## manticle (6/4/15)

It's true.
I could have had a severe library fine had I not consulted my deck and realised the books were overdue.

That king of cups is a useful chap.


----------



## Spohaw (6/4/15)

Haha 

Bet you a six pack it's a lager ...?

I consulted the cards again and I'm feeling confident haha


----------



## Gnomebrewer (7/4/15)

Andrewbarnes83 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I was reading the aabc style guidelines and was intrigued by this style. Are there any commercial examples still available? (I'm guessing the modern bitters don't count since they are too light in colour and lagers).
> 
> ...


Boags XXX ale. I think it's still an ale rather than lager - definitely has some yeast fruitiness.


----------



## Bribie G (2/4/16)

Interesting that it's about a year since this thread started. Back then the problems with discussing "Australian Bitter" were that not much was known about the grains and yeast and character of such a beast.
Anyway we all know that as soon as industrial refrigeration became available at the beginning of the 20th century, brewers switched to lagers and only a couple of examples survived. Plus we have no knowledge of what hops were used before Pride of Ringwood.

All wrong (I've already beaten myself up a few times over posts I made to this effect) :lol:

All that has been swept away by the publication of the brilliant "Bronzed Brews" by Peter Symons who did masses of original research into brewing history in Australia.
For starters, until the 1950s and presumably beyond, most draught beers in pubs were still ales. Filtered, chilled and carbonated, but ales nonetheless.
He explained that as breweries redeveloped their plant after the Second World War, more and more beers kept the same names but went to lager.

Pride of Ringwood wasn't available until the 1960s but brewing logs are very clear about hops used prior to that, mainly Kent Goldings, Fuggles, some Golden Cluster bred from US strains, and a number of Tasmanian hops such as "Tasmanian Straights" and some Euro imports.

Hopefully we will get access to a typical ale yeast of the era, Melbourne 1 Ale Yeast from Whitelabs.

From brewing logs Symons gives us the ability to have a pretty good stab at the malts and sugars used (Even CUB have a problem recreating old recipes such as Bulimba but have a good shot at it usually, so it's not just home brewers)

Putting it all together with his new information I feel that a rewrite of the BJCP section on Australian Bitter is well due. It's style 8.1 in this PDF.

Here's a couple of sentences that don't seem to ring true:

_A distinctive peppery, herbaceous note from Pride of Ringwood hops should be noticed_
Nope, that's an anachronism if we are looking at a style that was predominantly pre-60s.

_Originated independently of English Bitter, and remained a bottled style exclusively._
No, most of it was draught as explained in Symons.




(street frontage of the Orient Hotel, Newcastle)

_Modern Bitter remains by far Australia’s biggest selling packaged beer style, and following draught release in 1992, market leader Victoria Bitter now accounts for one quarter of total Australian beer sales._
By that time, ales were just about extinct so VB was a lager. Personally I don't feel it has any place in this particular BJCP entry.

The overall description of the style is pretty accurate, low hop aroma, use of sugar, refreshing bitterness etc. However I think the guidelines could be rewritten to take account of the information now available to us. I don't know who wrote the guide that presumably was submitted to a committee at BJCP, maybe they frequent this forum?

In his last chapter Symons stresses that we shouldn't try to strait-jacket these old brews into modern "styles" , however in this unique case I think the style guide should be polished up.
Old almost extinct brews have been very successfully resurrected, a great example being Porter. So it's worth looking into the exact history of what beers we are trying to recreate here, and exhibit in comps.


----------



## Blind Dog (3/4/16)

Your pdf link, links to your post (at least it does on my iPad)

Whilst I think that recreating brews from the past is interesting, if they can't give a current commercial example, how can it be a style? It's just a historical footnote. I have enough problems that a single commercial example can be a style'. Having a style for a beer that doesn't exist is just weird and pretty stupid. 

Oddly enough, there doesn't appear to be a style where VB as currently brewed is listed as an example (I only checked the obvious styles though, so might have missed it)


----------



## RdeVjun (3/4/16)

This is one of the pdf versions of the current national guidelines (AABC, based on BJCP 2008) and the green death rates a mention, but necessarily as an relevant example.
"Commercial Examples: The major Bitter Ale brand names have survived but the modern versions are all lagers and the term “Ale” has been dropped from labelling (eg. Victoria Bitter, Melbourne Bitter, Castlemaine XXXX Bitter, Toohey’s Red Bitter, West End Bitter, Emu Bitter, Cascade Bitter, Boags Strongarm Bitter)."

I agree with Bribie, I get a sense that the contemporary Australian 'Bitter' bears little relationship to its predecessors, while the current guidelines seem to have been formulated at least in part around modern beers and even the marketing influences, not necessarily the factual evidence that has been unearthed by Symons and elsewhere.

I don't think that a beer's commercial presence should indicate anything more than some commercial interest feels a particular recipe is worth monetising. I may use a particular commercial beer as a style example, but not a benchmark.

The latest BJCP 2015 edition, which presumably AABC style guidelines will be updated from and is AFAIK accepted internationally as the beer style bible, sadly doesn't bode well for anything other than 12B. Australian Sparkling Ale.


----------



## manticle (3/4/16)

Bribie G said:


> Interesting that it's about a year since this thread started. Back then the problems with discussing "Australian Bitter" were that not much was known about the grains and yeast and character of such a beast.
> Anyway we all know that as soon as industrial refrigeration became available at the beginning of the 20th century, brewers switched to lagers and only a couple of examples survived. Plus we have no knowledge of what hops were used before Pride of Ringwood.
> 
> All wrong (I've already beaten myself up a few times over posts I made to this effect) :lol:
> ...


I would take it up with reps from aabc first but also make suggestions to someone like Kristen England from BJCP. If the historical evidence is there, they should hopefully take note.


----------



## JDW81 (3/4/16)

Bribie G said:


> Standard Bitter.jpg
> (street frontage of the Orient Hotel, Newcastle)


OT:

I used to live just around the corner from the Orient on corlette street. Twas my local for many a year. 

That tile sign brings back many a happy memory.

Thanks for the reminder Bribie.

JD


----------

