Tooheys Old Dark Ale

[Blind Dog]

Although the 'its cheaper' argument is perhaps more likely to be the reason, particularly as I've read that it was common place to use large proportions of sugar from the very start of brewing in Australia.

 

[Dave70]

Belgian ales pile the sugaz in big time. Nobodys calling them megaswill.
Imaging rolling with 8% + ales in the six o' clock swill. We could have had our very own 'Gin craze'.

 

[TimT]

There's a lot of old recipes that include some sugar, or are all sugar. I presume it was considered the cheap, easy alternative to doing a mash at home.

American beers (like everything else in their country) often are thinned with the use of sugars or corn syrup. UK beer recipes from the 19th century also seem to have sugar added fairly frequently - I presume it's from the UK tradition that we inherited our own sugar-adding ways.

 

[boingk]

Count me among the Old-drinking masses, too.

Even the Tooheys Dark Ale 1.7kg kits do a reasonable job at replicating it. Not 100% but pretty darn good considering you can throw it into the fermenter with a pack of Coopers BE2 and have something approaching an Old. The included yeast (Maui 514?) even gives a comparable nose to it.

- boingk

 

[pist]

Yep old goes alright, my fall back when there's no decent beer, not even coopers green on tap

 

[huez]

In Northern NSW a lot of older guys at the pub or club drink a "Murray Grey" which is a half and half light beer (Hahn or Cascade) topped up with T.O. from the tap. Couple of guys in Kyogle were drinking them this afternoon.

worked in pubs for 10years, never heard it called a murray grey. i love it though!

 

[stm]

charlie ( mostly Hahn Light with a good dash of TO and I'll leave you to figure why it was named in honour of Charlie Perkins).

Always wondered why it was called a charlie. Not that any current bar staff know what this is until I explain it.

 

[Lincoln2]

Bloody tourists come to Kyogle and steal our beer names.

Bribie, we'll have to organise afew schooners of Old at the golf club. Great venue for a few schooners of old.

Another one here is the Bruiser, named because it's black and blue. Half old and half new.

 

[Bribie G]

Haven't been to the Golf Club yet, the bowlo is pretty spartan...
I'm just about unpacked and set up and meeting neighbours, all of whom have retro names like Doug, Fred, Nev etc. We will definitely quaff of the Old fairly soon.

 

[kalbarluke]

In Northern NSW a lot of older guys at the pub or club drink a "Murray Grey" which is a half and half light beer (Hahn or Cascade) topped up with T.O. from the tap. Couple of guys in Kyogle were drinking them this afternoon.

I've heard of Tooheys Now - half Old and half New. Tried it once. Not awful.

 

[Mikedub]

agree with the love being thrown at this beer, its as complete a beer as it need to be.

 

[leigh712]

Count me among the Old-drinking masses, too.

Even the Tooheys Dark Ale 1.7kg kits do a reasonable job at replicating it. Not 100% but pretty darn good considering you can throw it into the fermenter with a pack of Coopers BE2 and have something approaching an Old. The included yeast (Maui 514?) even gives a comparable nose to it.

- boingk

 

[leigh712]

This is my first thread ;I recently bought 2 cans of tooheys dark ale , was gonna do a toucan with em but reading this thread might do one with a BE 2 . Has anyone else noticed the kit yeast smells like stale peanuts? should I use it or can anyone recommend which coopers yeast to use I have a few on hand , the standard , ipa select & an international ? Also what final volume would get to me about 5.5% . Any advise would be appreciated . Cheers

 

[TheWiggman]

To back up the clone recipes above here are the ingredients courtesy of 'the beautiful truth' -



Ale yeast, super pride and surprisingly some hop extract from USA and/or UK. And of course cane sugar. Next cab off the home brew ranks will be Brewman's recipe I think, still tossing up the yeast.

 

[Bribie G]

A good yeast to use would be Nottingham. If you use the can, a pack of BE2 and half a kilo of raw sugar it should get you pretty close.

WRT Brewman's AG recipe, it turned out really good.

 

[Funk then Funk1]

To back up the clone recipes above here are the ingredients courtesy of 'the beautiful truth' -

Tooheys Old.jpg

Ale yeast, super pride and surprisingly some hop extract from USA and/or UK. And of course cane sugar. Next cab off the home brew ranks will be Brewman's recipe I think, still tossing up the yeast.

"Unique Australian ale yeast"...is this linking back to the "White labs yeast vault" and the "Bronzed brews" Melbourne yeast?

 

[TheWiggman]

Going to brew this Brewman's recipe on page 2 tomorrow. Holy smokes though, >800g of sugaz in a 23l recipe? Hard to believe. In any case, diving ahead. I picked up 1469 West Yorkshire Ale yeast for this one, hopefully will be on-point.

 

[kunfaced]

could re cultured coopers yeast be a good choice?

 

[Bribie G]

I always go Nottingham for Tooheys Old attempts.
1469 will give a very nice ale, but a couple of points:

It does best with Yorkshire "style" water reasonably hard off limestone - I usually chuck in a bit of Calcium Chloride.
Aussie ales tend to be made on softer water with some sulphates.

 

[TheWiggman]

I'm using RO water and went for the 'balanced dark' profile on Bru'n water. 3.5g of Epsom and Gypsum, 1.8g calcium chloride. So sulphate around 90ppm and chloride low at 30ppm.

 

[Bribie G]

Should turn out smooth and lethal.

On the sugar issue, there's a big section in the book "Bronzed Brews" that gives a fascinating insight.

Several issues seem to have been going on simultaneously. For starters the malts available tended to produce hazes etc if not "diluted" with sugars. The locals preferred the so called "malt/sugar" beers as they found European style all-malt lagers to be too dry and hard to drink (my six o'clock swill comment I made earlier) and ... a bit of an eye opener that I should have realised a long time ago .. with industrial and commercial equipment being far more expensive in the Colonies as opposed to the UK where most manufacturing still took place, the use of sugar enabled bigger brew lengths to be produced by smaller plant.

So there was a bit of everything going on, and I guess Australians have just got used to malt/sugar beer megaswill as being the way beer should taste.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Although Coopers where the opposite

 

[Bribie G]

I can't find the reference but I believe Sparkling Ale had 10% sugar until recent times, and according to an old brewer at the Kensington brewery they used wheat flour as well. All malt nowadays of course.

 

[TheWiggman]

There's an e-mail from a Coopers rep in one of the recipe databases stating they still use up to 5% sugar in Sparkling depending on the malt qualities but it's otherwise an AG bill and nothing like the 30%+ in the mainstream beers.
Incidentally I was talking to my grandfather a few moths ago of 78 years, who emigrated from England at age 24. He has a pretty solid interest in my home brew and beer in general, and remarked how it would have been magic if he could have made decent beer in those days because bottle shops and the like didn't exist. He was a linesman in Sydney. Beers came in 3 varieties - New, Carlton and Tooths. Pubs would typically serve one variety. Takeaway beers only ever came in longnecks and were rarely actually available, and they could only be bought at a pub. If you got word there was takeaway beer at your local then you'd gather your shillings, catch a taxi on the spot and rush down before they sold out. They'd limit 2 per customer. Pretty fascinating contrast to today's ever-shrinking bottles and growing availability.
On topic, brew went well hitting 1.043 and looks lighter than I would expect. Will be interesting to see in the glass.

 

[TheWiggman]

Nearing what I thought was the end of fermentation with 1469 and it's still letting out the odd bubble at 1.007 so drier and boozier than expected even with a 68°C mash. Fermented at 17°C to try to keep the esters down but there's still some evident to taste. I bumped it up to 19°C after it got to 1.012 and the yeast went bezerk filling the whole headspace. Thick layer of cream on top, not what I'm used to but I was warned.
That choc malt is really coming through, and I can see how you really need the proprietary malt to clone this beer properly.

 

[TheWiggman]

No pics but I had my first sample of this out of the bottle over the weekend.
Stellar.
Genuinely, honestly tastes like Old. Without a shadow of a doubt the closest clone recipe I've made and I'm still struggling to understand how it can taste like that with so much sugar in the recipe. I'm thinking I might even up the sugar for my next Aussie lager. Came in at 4.7% instead of the traditional 4.4% but is still a fine drop. I'll post a pic next to a glass of the real thing and see how it compares. For now, it'll happily tide me over on my very own tap.

Many thanks to Steve Brewman_ for the recipe.

 

[Bribie G]

Tidal Pete, RdeVjun and I did a XXX Tooheys historical old yesterday from Bronzed Brews.
Includes 1.32 kg of mixed raw and white sugaz.
1048 OG

FRIGHTENING

 

[Bridges]

Tidal Pete, RdeVjun and I did a XXX Tooheys historical old yesterday from Bronzed Brews.
Includes 1.32 kg of mixed raw and white sugaz.
1048 OG

FRIGHTENING

Cool, what yeast are you going to throw at it. (Still waiting on Melbourne 1, fingers crossed) Looking forward to hearing what it tastes like.

 

[Bribie G]

In the absence of Melbourne 1, probably MJ Burton Union, started in one fermenter then after about 36 hours, dropped into my SS Brewbucket with a blow off tube.