Old Ale - First Attempt

[hwall95]

Hey guys,

If all goes to plan and nothing pops up (Like the last few weeks - Silly Uni work), I shall be brewing an Old Ale on the weekend that I wish to store for Christmas for a little beer competition I'm having with some mates of mine. I posted around a month ago asking what type of yeast would be suitable, however now my concern is with the spec. grains (Only been brewing for 3 months).

From my research (Designing Great Beers, range of books and many forum threads), I've found that Old Ale's gains its complex flavour from a mix of grains and the aging itself (Hop flavour should be minimal). So I've decided to for the flavour I decided to aim to mix caramel, dried fruit, and a toasty biscuit taste. And from that (Since I'm extract brewer), I've chosen Carared, Special B and Victory (Briess) (Also someone else seems to be brewing something similar, however I haven't heard back from them yet). However, my main concern is the amount of each grain as I'm unfamiliar to the Special B and Victory. So far I planned to give them equal amounts, however my concern was that Special B may dominate as I hear it's pretty big in flavour. So if anyone could give any advice on whether the following grain use is good or bad, that would be greatly helpful.

Est OG: 1.086
Est FG: 1.018
Est Colour: 41
Est IBU: 58

Ingredients:

• 5 kg. Light Dry Malt Extract (1kg for hop boil)
• 70g of Challenger at 45 min
• 0.3kg of Brown Sugar
• 0.05kg Choc Malt
• 0.3kg Carared
• 0.3kg Victory
• 0.3kg Special B
• 3 Nottingham packets

My main aim of the batch is to make a nice hearty, complex old ale that has a little bit of heat, but no evident alcohol taste (As I find it unpleasant in beer). Also the high IBU is to account for the drop in bitterness over the aging period and to prevent a sweet beer from the grain use.

Cheers,
Harry

 

[hoppy2B]

Hi Harry,

I would drop the Special B as it adds a lot of caramel which isn't a great thing to have in the amount you mention it above. I recommend you substitute 100 grams of Dark Crystal + 200 grams of Medium Crystal + 50 grams of Caraaroma.

Victory looks alright. Perhaps you could halve it or knock it down to 200 grams? Its always better not to overdue an ingredient as less if often more. You could do a small ferment with say 1 can of Coopers original lager and a couple hundred grams of Victory made up to 10 litres to see how it turns out. You have a fair bit of time so don't rush it. I've not used the Victory but am now considering it for my next Porter thanks to your post. I also might go for a small amount of Rye for complexity.

The other thing I recommend is that you put in 300 grams of Carafa Special 1.

I made a Porter back in November and bottled it on the second of January and it is drinking nicely now. It had 160 grams of Pride Of Ringwood as a 10 minute addition. Pride Of Ringwood is somewhat herbal when fresh but ages to a nice woody flavour. Gives it an oak like flavour. Works well for me. I'd say you could even chuck in 200 grams of the stuff as you are using Notto, which will strip a lot of hop flavour out of it.

Last of all, if you don't have temp control it will be best fermented in winter. Notto is a great yeast fermented at lower temps. 6 or 7 months should give plenty of time to age your beer.

 

[mje1980]

I did an old ale that won a local show best of show that had 8% cara aroma, which is reasonably dark, and while the first few months I didn't like it, after 6 months, it had smoothed out very nicely, and was a very good beer. Dried fruit and rummy. It was 8% as well! which I think adds to complexity.

So4 might be better IMHO.

 

[hwall95]

Hi Harry,

I would drop the Special B as it adds a lot of caramel which isn't a great thing to have in the amount you mention it above. I recommend you substitute 100 grams of Dark Crystal + 200 grams of Medium Crystal + 50 grams of Caraaroma.

Victory looks alright. Perhaps you could halve it or knock it down to 200 grams? Its always better not to overdue an ingredient as less if often more. You could do a small ferment with say 1 can of Coopers original lager and a couple hundred grams of Victory made up to 10 litres to see how it turns out. You have a fair bit of time so don't rush it. I've not used the Victory but am now considering it for my next Porter thanks to your post. I also might go for a small amount of Rye for complexity.

The other thing I recommend is that you put in 300 grams of Carafa Special 1.

I made a Porter back in November and bottled it on the second of January and it is drinking nicely now. It had 160 grams of Pride Of Ringwood as a 10 minute addition. Pride Of Ringwood is somewhat herbal when fresh but ages to a nice woody flavour. Gives it an oak like flavour. Works well for me. I'd say you could even chuck in 200 grams of the stuff as you are using Notto, which will strip a lot of hop flavour out of it.

Last of all, if you don't have temp control it will be best fermented in winter. Notto is a great yeast fermented at lower temps. 6 or 7 months should give plenty of time to age your beer.

Hey Hoppy,

I played around with beersmith with the grains although though I'm a little worried about the carafa spec 1 as 300g turns the beer black.. Personally I would prefer coppery-brown colour, so I ended up with the following:

• 100g of Carafa Spec 1
• 150g of Caraaroma
• 200g Medium Crystal
• 200g Victory

I decided to drop the dark crystal as from my understanding (Please correct me if I'm wrong), caraaroma is a dark crystal so should provide something similar to dark crystal (Maybe a more Belgian flavour by the sound of it). With regard to hops, I was trying to use English Hops since Old Ale is from England (Pay my homage). I did change to hop addition to 90g and dropped to 25 min addition to hopefully add some of the fruity flavour to the background, although not relying it sticking around to long. However also considering something like Northdown or Phoenxi as they're similar to Fuggles/EKG I'm told yet have a higher AA, so I could boil shorter and still get a suitable IBU.

By the way thanks for the note about the lager, will have to give it ago something; nice toasty malty lager sounds great for an afternoon beer.

I did an old ale that won a local show best of show that had 8% cara aroma, which is reasonably dark, and while the first few months I didn't like it, after 6 months, it had smoothed out very nicely, and was a very good beer. Dried fruit and rummy. It was 8% as well! which I think adds to complexity.

So4 might be better IMHO.

Personally, I would prefer a non-dark beer, however might try the 8% caraaroma next year and the So4 and see how it turns out. Kinda worried about the So4 as I've heard mixed reviews about it, especially with higher gravity brews.

Cheers for the advice guys.

 

[manticle]

Make a UK beer with UK malt and Uk hops and UK yeast.

Age it well - it will darken up and gain complexity. Don't use PoR.

Simpsons crystal, challenger or EKG and some victory or biscuit. Ferment out and put it away till the christmas after next in the dark and cold/cool.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Cararoma is awsome in Old & Porter

 

[manticle]

Couple of ideas here including an extract recipe.

I can take Terry Foster with a grain of salt but there's some OK info and ideas

http://byo.com/stories/item/1201-old-ales

 

[dent]

I find Old Ales suffer a lot from oxidation for whatever reason. Perhaps the lack of dark malts, I don't have the same trouble with imperial stouts. It really makes an otherwise good beer pretty undrinkable. So do your best to avoid it.

 

[hoppy2B]

The Porter I made in November had 100 grams of dark crysal, 200 grams of medium crystal and 300 grams of Carafa 1 and it wasn't black. I'd call it a brown with a bit of a red tinge to it.

I had a bit of a think and research on a few sites to maybe plan another Porter or Nut Brown and came to the conclusion that Special B and Caraaroma are probably very similar in that they will add mostly caramel. Dark crystal will give you nice toffee flavours as well as some caramel and sweetness.

Another thought I had as well was to use WB06. I have a packet of it in the fridge. Might work well as a Belgian with all these dark malts. I just used Coopers Bottle yeast when I made my Porter.

Good luck with yours Harry, hope it works out well for you. Thanks for a couple of ideas including the Victory malt.

Nothing wrong with POR Manticle, it works well in dark beers. But I do see where you're coming from. I do love the Golding in malty brews.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

cararoma....raison and plumb.

If your going to do a Porter....Caraaroma.

 

[mr_wibble]

cararoma....raison and plumb.

If your going to do a Porter....Caraaroma.

What sort of percentage are you suggesting ?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

No more than 10%. But it depends if your making brown or robust porter. Also add some choc to it as well up to 4%

 

[hoppy2B]

Choc should be the same as Carafa pretty much, as far as I'm aware.

Not arguing that Caraaroma isn't useful, just think its a bit one dimensional. Carared is basically the same in that it would be just caramel but a bit weaker. You can not go past a bit of dark crystal for the amount and quality of flavour it adds, even if its just 50 grams, definitely worth considering.

The Victory is a nice addition and something I plan on using next as I would like to do a couple more Porter or Brown type beers in the next couple of weeks before the cold weather sets in. I want to give the WB06 and another yeast that produces banana esters a run.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Choc & Carafa are basically the same

Cararoma is basically a dark xtal.

 

[hoppy2B]

In my experience Caraaroma lacks the sharpness and toffee notes of dark crystal.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Which is prob why its called cararoma and not dark xtal

 

[hwall95]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the info and advice; I really appreciate it. I shall come up with the final recipe tomorrow and post the recipe and hopefully re-post in 8 months time if I remember.

Cheers guys

 

[Steve]

When your up for it give Tonys Bulls Tail Porter a go (in the recipe section, or it used to be?). Excellent drop. Tried it many a time.

I did a very good Kent Old Brown Ale (KOBA) clone quite a few years back

5kg Ale Malt
300gms Cararoma
25gms Roast Malt

to 25 IBUs, Cluster at 60 and then POR at 30 mins. (I did use fuggles for a few of the first experiments at 0 mins but decided it didn't need it)

Nottingham ale.

Couldn't pick it apart from the real thing.

Cheese
Steve

 

[hoppy2B]

I just had a look back at Harry's original post and I think he covered it pretty well with his comments.

 

[hwall95]

I brewed a recipe very similar to Hoppy2b's today, but with the added addition of 250g of Victory half boil and topped to 23L.

Overall it was a long brew day as the fermentor taps wouldn't seal the 60L properly so I ended wasting an hour trying to fix - so much for getting uni work finished.. In the end I used a 30L, however without a blowoff tube I'm fairly sure it will blow over.. In the end I should of been more prepared.

Also OG ended up being 1.098, which was 12 points above the predicted, so good thing if used 3 packets of Nottingham.

Cooled it to 20 degrees, aerated with a drill and pitched rehydrated yeast. It currently sitting in my beer fridge at a nice 16 degrees and I shall turn it up to 18 in a few days to help it finish out completely.

Hey Steve,

Will have to give it a go when I move to all grain, sounds like a great beer!

Cheers,
Harry