Morgans English Bitter

[elmo]

Hi all i am a fairly new brewer

i am preparing to make a Morgans bishops english bitter and was wondering if anyone else had made it. and if they added additional malts, enhancers or different yeast, how it turned out. i am hopeful of having an ale that is similiar to a traditional pub ale like boddingtons.

so any advice of feedback will be appreciated. cheers

 

[Bribie G]

I haven't used that particular kit but knowing Morgans it's probably dark and would not come out anything like a Boddingtons. Boddys is a fairly pale beer compared to a lot of pom brews.

If you are looking for a UK style paler pub bitter from a kit, you know what, I would personally use a very bland pale kit such as Coopers Lager as a base (don't worry it isn't really a lager ) then flavour, colour and hop it with English style ingredients and use a UK yeast. You would probably end up with a more UK style bitter than the Morgans IMHO.

Suggest:
Coopers lager or pale ale tin
500g light dried malt extract or 750 for a more robust beer
500g dextrose

300g medium crystal malt steeped in a litre or two of hot water for an hour
strain into a pan and Boil the runnings with 20 g of East Kent Goldings pellets OR 20 g Fuggles flowers for 30 mins

Strain into the fermenter

Add the other ingredients, dissolve in a couple of kettles of boiling water

Top up, cool to below 20 and ferment with a UK ale yeast such as Nottingham.

For a more hoppy bitter, chuck a further 20 g EKG pellets straight into the fermenter after 4 days.

Personally I have never had any luck tweaking Morgans Ale type kits such as Royal Oak because they are so full of colour and hops (and good on them) that they are probably best made just as is (but don't use a kilo of sugar, at least use Brew Enhancer 2 as a minimum). That's why I always prefer one of the lighter Coopers if I need some base goop because they can take a bit of massaging with extra ingredients but if you are too heavy handed with some of the Morgans kits they can turn round and bite you.

Happy Brewing

 

[RdeVjun]

Hi & a ivery warm welcome elmo!

IMO, its a fantastic tin, the Bishop's! I was given one for my very first brew and, well, its hooked me and I am still making variants of it six months later. I've not had many Boddington's though, but from what I recall its much lighter than a bog- standard Bishop's. I just like this one, may not be for everyone, but suits my personal taste and is as easy as.

The last one I made was this:
1.7 kg Morgan's Bishop's English Bitter
0.5 kg Amber Malt Extract
1.0 kg Pale Malt Extract
0.5kg Dextrose (Ok, yeah, I used it. Shoot me then... :unsure: )
2 * 12g Fuggles teabags
Safale S-04 yeast

Throw all the malts into your sanitised fermenter. Steep two Fuggles teabags in a litre or so of boiling water from the kettle, put the kettle on to boil again because as soon as you start the hops, you'll use the fresh one to rinse out the tins (well, the Morgan's Pale tin comes in 1.0kg tins, and you emptied the Bishop's tin, but you'll not use a full 1.5kg tin of Amber, so don't rinse it out of course! That's if you can get these, Morgan's are in the midst of changing their packaging.). Add the steeped hop liquor and teabags to the fermenter along with the malt tin rinsings, top up to 23litres with cold water, add the dextrose. When temp is below about 25deg, pitch. Should get about 1.042 initially, ferments to about 1.012 after a week depending on temperature of course.

For me, this is a fantastic brew even after just a fortnight of bottle conditioning, although of course it will get better if you can leave it longer. I haven't been able to check this against anything much for style, I'd welcome any suggestions for improvement of course.

Oh, even as a kit & kilo of brew enhancer (dex & light dry malt, as per BribieG's proportions) it is quite ok.

I certainly agree with BribieG, my tweaking of the Royal Oak was a dull, completely uninteresting, even vacuous dud! Live & learn...

See how you go, all the best with it and don't forget to report back with your results. :icon_cheers:

 

[Bribie G]

I don't mind the odd kit n bits when supplies are getting low (currently conditioning a Muntons Gold UK brew that a buddy gave me for my birthday last month) and the Bishops sounds interesting because as I sort of hinted in my last post I have never been able to come up with an Aussie kit, particularly Morgans, that I have been successful with in the UK bitters dept.

However here's a brewer who is getting great results from it and the additions sound good without the danger of producing something too bitter, dark or cloying. Nothing wrong with a bit of dex either if it's in style. I'd say give it a go with the additions suggested, and depending on whether you are a hop man or a malt man maybe just try the one bag of fuggles first and see how you get on?

Actually when I read your first post, Elmo, I suddenly remembered I was nearly out of 750ml PET bottles so I zoomed up the street to the local Bribie HBS. They stock a huge range of Morgans so I thought "I'll have a squiz at the can and see what colour it portrays and what the description is ". Forgot it's Saturday afternoon and they close at lunch time :huh:

 

[RdeVjun]

Cheers BribieG, glad my latest recipe doesn't poke you in the eye or anything. I reckon the 2nd hops is probably getting OTT too for a hopped can, but its drinkable. But they are just teabags afterall, pakaged in august 2006, no less, so not outrageous.
Now, I thought I'd seen the tin's specs on some website (not on their own), but do you think I could find it??? And I had a root through all the cans, labels & shite I have here, if it was on the one label I found, then I might've chopped it off when I tidied up the edge, but I thought I would've noticed.
Oh, yeah, and too right, that'd be completely anal- keeping labels off tins FGS! Flame and slag away to your heart's content you lot... h34r: I am invincible! I actually use the _back_ of the label to record brew details, before it gets entered into a spreadsheet. And then I usually toss it. So there...

Anyroads, without any actual objective data to be found, there's not a lot I have in my limited brewing vocabulary to describe the final product, in most cases there's a dirty head with a reasonably fine foam, a fairly dark, redish hue, not really amber, fairly bitter, loads of depth and regardless of what I do to it there's a nice unmistakable hops/malt mix (caramel + port/sherry in the really strong ones, slightly pine forest + my fuggles) and it goes like hotcakes around here. At the moment I have an enormous tapdripping/headclogging cold, so can't really sample one for an accurate description (can't taste a thing) and I really haven't been exposed to all that many comparitive English Bitters. Tetley's, a few Boddington's, that's about it. I had Tetley's here in tins, so I'm guessing it was the Smoothflow or Mild, this is certainly darker, richer and hoppier than that, Boddington's there in the old country ages ago, really haveno the best recollection, but remember it fairly light in colour but quite drinkable for commercial. Oh, had a Belhaven Best a few weeks ago, not really a patch on my own, brown, a bit burnt caramel, slightly wheaty even, maybe the pasteurisation process that does that. Dinnae like it. Anyway, this would be getting a bit academic and too offtopic for a hot saturday afternoon.

Cop a load of the pic attached, sorry quality isn't fabulous. Hope you like...

 

[elmo]

awsome thanks for the advice i think will try your morgans recipe when i brew :beer:

 

[RdeVjun]

awsome thanks for the advice i think will try your morgans recipe when i brew :beer:

Cheers elmo, I don't think you'll be disappointed. It could be dark and rich compared to what you might've really been looking for, but by all means for starting off you can do a hell of a lot worse.
It can get a bit pricey though, so order online if you can, otherwise, off to the LHBS it is, usually with the added expense. Mind you, I've just started to order online with a site sponsor, but they don't stock the blue tin. Damn. Or the unhopped tins. Double damn.
But, with me having started to move from kits to extract & steep, this is one that I always come back for as it is quite reliable and really easy. Say, if anyone has any ideas on how to make it as an extract or steep, I'd be glad to hear. Not doing partial or AG yet, but its not too far away (probably when KR's bonus shows up in a few weeks! It'll be happy days... and I'll be keeping the wheels of the economy turning while getting pissed. How good is this??!! ).

Ob disclaimer- Yes, eagle- eyed readers may note that my recipe uses all Morgan's ingredients. (Me? I'm usually cross- eyed!) Anyway, no- I don't have shares or any interest in the firm, its just the local HBS conveniently has all of them (for now at least...) plus they usually come the right amounts and I try to have my recipes use whole packs/tins to keep spoilage/waste of unused ingredients to a minimum if I can, not to mention some hygiene issues popping up with keeping once- pastuerised or sterilised containers sanitary. Oh, and I've tried a few of the recipes on the Morgan's website (link), most of them are 100% Morgan's ingredients too, and quite frankly, they've been nothing to write home about. YMMV... (There, that's balanced the post... )

Oh, elmo, there's an extract Boddington's recipe on their website too- sorry, I should've mentioned it earlier. I wanted to try it some time soon, it looks like it might be worth a whirl as well, but like I say, some of the Morgan's recipes have been duds (Everard's Amber, Guiness). By that, I mean they weren't really what I was after- drinkable but fairly uninteresting and I've had better K&Ks. My guess is that if I tweaked the amounts without being so scabby or coarse with quantities (as per above), I might get a better results.