The Imported-Beer Hoax

yes sir..my very first good English beer was bass ale on cask in 1971. I was love to home brew it as close as I can. as my water is damn close to burton water. I tried all in ron's book
the home brewers guide to vintage beers btw, none are quite there

also tried this 1
http://www.beersmith.com/Recipes2/recipe_177.htm

 

Something you can read (and maybe you have already): http://www.anheuser-busch.com/s/uploads/Bass-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Cheers!

 

yea I seen that, its bs. its not the same beer to me

I will check here closer:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search?q=bass+pale+ale+recipe

 

Yup, I guessed that could be the case.

Cheers!

 

of course as many has said who can remember a beer you had back in 1971 anyway?

 

Something I posted in the past (with an update):

I was traveling a lot to London back in the early to mid 90’s for business. I fell in love with cask ales and my absolute favorite was Bass cask ale at the Crown & Sceptre Pub (I learned later when I became a homebrewer that proper cellaring is important to cask ales). I would come home to the US and drink Bass Ale in bottles and go ‘yuck’. It certainly wasn’t the same beer!

My first homebrew was a Muntons kit beer called “Traditional Bitter” and that beer turned out great! It was much, much better than bottled Bass Ale. I have been homebrewing Bitter Ales ever since; my last batch of Bitter Ale was my May 2015 batch.

Nothing like a freshly brewed Bitter Ale.

Cheers!

 

aye, love my mild pale ale...

 

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2012/06/maturing-bass-pale-ale.html

no direct recipes sadly.

 

Don't forget the east coast! Sip of Sunshine? Two Roads.

 

It's complicated, because both the malting barley varieties and the hop varieties have changed a great deal in the last 200 years. The famed Maris Otter malt (which I dearly love) that supposedly defines english ales has only been around since 1966. Golding and Fuggle hops have changed a lot, and they differ a great deal based on where their grown (and Bass used them from all over England).

That being said, it's a relatively simple beer. Burtonize your water. Use all 2-row malt (Maris Otter if you can get it) with just enough caramel 60L to hit 12-14 Lovibond. Your target IBU is about 24-25. I would use a clean bittering hop (Pilgrim is a nice one) at start of boil, and goldings at end of boil. You can dry hop it with Goldings also - hell you could use only goldings if you wanted (and at times they did) but you'd get a pretty earthy/leathery aroma. I like to dry hop it with EKGs and something else with a little bit of American punch but you really don't want to go off the deep end with too much citrus or tropical fruit or it's no longer Bass. I'm still working out the perfect dry hop combination for it. Some folks have used Willamette in Bass clones with good success, others have used Fuggles. The dry hopping rate is pretty low - 0.5 to 0.75 lbs. per barrel - we don't want to turn it into an IPA.

For the yeast strain, I would look at Wyeast 1318 or Wyeast 1968. Neither is an exact match for the actual Bass strain, but they're both close and will make an excellent beer.

 

IF you want to go for the draught bass that Marstons brews here, they use a fair percentage of maltose syrup in their draught Bass ( 10%), hops are challenger for bittering and Northdown for flavour/dry hop aroma, brew it to 4.4% abv . Use Halcyon if you can get it for base malt, dark crystal malt about 5%. If you want a closer yeast then Brewlabs in the UK would probably be able to sort you out

 

Bottles in the UK often aren't the same beer.

British brewers bump up the ABV a couple of points and maybe hop a little higher to allow for bottle conditioning, for both domestic and export.

Even if you're lucky enough to find a bottle stateside in good shape, it's still not the pint you'd get in a pub in Britain.

(I'm sure you know all this, JH, but some BAs don't seem to.)

 

I used to like a nice can of Becks now and again..less so the bottles. Back in the day they were still made in Germany.
Not the best, but a nice slightly hoppy lager.
Tasted a bottle not long ago..made here in the USA..dreadful..maybe its the water but it was just not the same.

 

How high would you target the SO4 level @Peter_Wolfe? The 250-300 ppm range works well in home brewed IPAs. The reports from Burton can be much higher depending on the well location.

 

Thanks So much, let us know when you get your product project back out and we will try it out.

 

Agreed. Germans still make the best hefeweizens and weizenbocks; Belgians still make better BSDAs, tripels, and sours. I'm sure there are some other examples that I'm leaving out.

 

We probably agree, but I'm going to hedge my words a little more. I didn't necessarily think American or European versions of certain styles are better, because that's simply a matter of personal taste, but there are some unique tasting European beers/brands without a comparable American version.

 

Yeah, some .

 

I targeted 500 ppm. The reference I was using (Brewing, second edition, Michael J. Lewis and Tom Young) listed the Burton-on-Trent water at 638 ppm sulfates.

 

Peter, wouldn’t the wells used by the breweries be a more appropriate point of reference vs. the river water?

In an article in the Jan/Feb 2014 issue of Zymurgy Martin Brungard discussed the brewing water of the breweries of Burton upon Trent. In Table 1 he listed the water profiles of three historic wells. The sulfate levels of those historic wells were:

· Allsopp Shallow: 364 mg/L

· Worthington Shallow: 329 mg/L

· Worthington Deep: 985 mg/L

He also provided sulfate levels for current wells:

· Coors Deep: 347 mg/L

· Coors Shallow: 208 mg/L

· Marston Deep: 312 mg/L

· Marston Shallow: 822 mg/L

Martin also provided a suggested water profile in Table 3 which listed a sulfate level of 300 mg/L.

Cheers!