What are your Top 3 AKs?

That sounds like an interesting recipe above. I have copied it and put it in my recipe file. Can't really anticipate at all what the resultant beer would taste like. Pretty stoked to make this.

 

Top 3 AKs?
Well, the 47, the 74, and the 101.

 

I don't have a top three, only a number one:

Kalashnikov

 

Here is the link to the thread in hb forum

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/group-brew-ak-comments-volunteers.196598/

 

I always get a kick out of how much these older names confuse people. It's probably just because I'm a brewer, but looking over a couple recipes on Ron's blog, it's immediately obvious that these are just pretty standard lighter pale ales, bitters, whatever you want to call them. We have to remember that beer style names are marketing devices and continuously evolve over time, much more than the beers themselves.

 

No way, I say Pliny is better!

 

I didn't make the beer, interpret the style or otherwise name the beer. Just pointing out a US offering that in the brewery's interpretation is an AK. somebody call the style police. i've had a lot of beer that claims to be one thing but is probably really something else (a la every fucking beer being labeled an [insert descriptor here] IPA of some sort).

 

There's only one...

Alaska

 

Though there was only one AK, AK47

 

yea I know. But its a crazy combo of a incorrect description of what a mild is. and what a Ak is. Not attacking you, just the beer. No other way to do it, since the bros are not interested in correcting the beer styles problems.

 

one is a gun and one is a name for some damn fine weed.
at least the ones I seen....

 

Understood. That's why I said it was a "nod to a Mild." It also uses wild yeast and lactobacillus, so definitely not a mild of any sort.

 

Heh, I read this and immediately thought, "so...a session IPA?"

Then a few seconds later....

Perhaps now I understand your inspiration for this thread. Is this your indirect way of saying, "session IPAs existed long before the recent popularity of these beers in America"? After having multiple All Day IPAs did you think, "Hmm, reminds me of an AK?"

 

If I were a betting man, new-style, because it seemed to be off in some significant respect.

This! Very helpful summary, very tight, and I know a lot more now about what we are talking about. Not really familiar with all the terms - parti-gyled in particular - but otherwise, I'm largely keeping up. Thank you.

 

I reckon

Snake River did a reasonable amount of research before they settled on using AK for their Dark Mild but I don't doubt that they could never have foreseen the complexity given what I've read in this thread.

 

So from what I understand an AK isn't really a definitive style, but rather a arbitrarily defined beer with characteristics similar to milds, bitters, and pale ales?

 

This response made my brain hurt less. This was helpful, thank you sir.

 

I probably won't articulate this very well, but parti-gyle is basically where you get two different beers out of one batch of milled grains. The first runnings are your stronger wort, when you sparge you get a lower gravity wort. So you could blend all this wort together to make one beer, or you could parti-gyle and make one stronger beer and one weaker abv beer out of one batch of grains.

 

That helps. I've heard of this process, but just didn't know the technical term.

 

I would assume that they didn't. In my experience, most professional brewers are pretty ignorant of brewing history and styles and just tend to pull names out of their asses for the most part. Maybe they saw AK on an old beer sign or something and knowing nothing about the actual beer, thought "That would be a cool name for a mild, right?" This is why the world of beer is so convoluted and contradictory. Brewers simply don't care enough to be consistent in anything.

 

here in the states we will no longer be able to enjoy our AKs after the recent ban....wait. wrong AK.

 

Thanks for the history lesson! I appreciate this thread.

 

From Mr. Pattinson:

"AK is another of those things I obsess about. Let's make this clear right at the start: it isn't Light Mild. AK is one of the types of Light Bitter Beer that appeared in the final decades of the 19th century. As drinkers began to demand lighter, less-alcoholic beers, brewers developped a new class of beers .

A standard Pale Ale of the 1880's had an OG in the range of 1060º to 1065º. If you brewed it properly, it took several months to be ready for sale. AK was 1045º to 1050º and was tapped within a couple of weeks. It was at the forefront of the new class of Running Bitters. After 1880, brewers had a clear incentive to turn their beers around quicker. The new system introduced that year taxed beer based on the gravity of the wort before fermentation. Brewers settled up with the excise at the end of ever y month. Which meant that the tax would have been paid on a fully-matured Pale Ale months before the beer could be sold.

In 1900, AK was as common a beer name as IPA, especially in the South. Cheaper than full-strength PA, it was often one a brewery's best-selling beers. Only one remains: McMullen's AK. I can remember just one other being around in my drinking life, Hole's (later Courage) AK, brewed in Newark. So where did they all go?

They were the victim of falling gravities after 1914, similar to Porter. Breweries had a habit of retaining the name of their most prestigious Bitter, usually PA, as they cut gravities and culled their beer range. AK, being the bottom of the Bitter pile, was often the first to be cut.

I'd love to see AK make a comeback, though I doubt it ever will. At least commercially. There's no reason why you home brewers can't bring it back to life at home." -bold added.

 

I would have been more concerned if they attached the AK moniker to a Stout, and their commercial description of the AK Mild DID show that they checked it out and didn't pull it out of their asses.

I agree though, consistency with given styles is a major concern in the US. Stop throwing butt loads of hops into every style! Maybe, there wouldn't be a hop shortage to deal with.

 

this one seems to actually have a lot of hops thrown in it, though. All of Ron and Kris's recipes are at least 1:1 BU:GU, and one had 57 IBU in a 1:041 beer! Though the dry-hop amounts were kind of low.

 

The 47 is dangerous and simple, nimble yet reliable, and obviously available somewhere. In England these are the beers that I love. I will not utter the S word, but drinking a bunch and talking without becoming stupid, is an English specialty.

 

I checked my review, here's what I said back in 2010 but I have had it since. Not a lot of hoppiness to my palate:

I had this on tap last night at the local Old Chicago.

It poured a clear dark amber brown with a small head of foam and had some decent lacing.

The smell had some notes of biscuit, light caramel malt, and a slight hint of some hop bitterness.

The taste had a nice biscuit malt flavour, not overly done, with caramel malt sweetness and very light bitterness in the background. A very nice flavourful Dark Mild..I had 4 20oz pints(served in the Guinness glasses); I wanted to get a pitcher after the first one but the server said..pitchers are only for domestics! LOL!!

Light bodied but not too light, it had a medium light amount of carbonation which worked well.

Drinkability? 3.9%abv, baby! Tasty and very easy to drink. I'll be drinking more until it is gone.

 

For those who care, as a result of this thread, Martyn Cornell revised his AK blog entry here:
https://zythophile.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/second-thoughts-on-the-mysterious-origins-of-ak/

(Looks like this thread actually had way more impact than the average thread here - not bad with all things considered.)