Audlem Unusual – back to basics

When we started making beer one of the first beers we tried to replicate was Theakston’s Old Peculier because it is, in my opinion, one of the best beers in the world (no probably!).

In looking for a Cheshire placename reference we came up with the rib-tickling name Audlem Unusual. Or just “Audlem” to its friends.

We’ve brewed this recipe every year (this is the eighth time), but in 2014 and 2015 we tweaked the recipe. In 2014 it was heavily Christmas spiced. In 2015 it was vanilla and oak. This year we have decided it’s time to go back to basics and just brew a damn good ale, fermented well with clean and not muddled flavours.

So that was last night’s brew day and it is currently in the beer fridge at 16C starting fermentation. I always like to ferment English ales cool to start with then ramp up the temperature after a couple of days. If you start them warm (say 20C) the yeast just goes crackers and you end up with a nice enough beer but it is confused by all sorts of fruity flavours. A cool, restrained start helps to avoid this.

There is just one thing that I am not happy about with this recipe. When I visited the Theakston’s brewery with my mates Ian, John and Chris back in February the lady in the visitor centre pointed out the cherry flavours in Old Peculier. In all the years I had been drinking OP I must confess I had never singled out that flavour, but sure enough there it was. Coupled with that, if you hold a pint of OP up to the light there is a distinct red hue to the beer.

Audlem Unusual doesn’t have that. I wish it did. I’d like to find out what we’re missing. Recipe improvement suggestions welcome!

Audlem Unusual

Grain bill
Maris Otter       5240g 91.5%
Crystal 45         285g   5%
Chocolate malt 200g   3.5%

Hop schedule
Fuggles  3.9%AA  45g  60min  16IBU
Goldings 4.8%AA  25g  60min  10IBU
WGV       5.5%AA  20g  10min  3IBU

Water treatment: None
Yeast: 1 sachet Safale S-04.
Batch size: 23l
Mash temp: 68C
Mash time: 60 min
Boil time: 60 min
OG: 1.058
IBU: 29 (Rager)
Target FG: 1.015

Brewing Podcasts

I listen to a lot of podcasts. They keep me sane in my hours on the M6. A number of them are brewing podcasts and today I just discovered a fantastic new one: Experimental Homebrewing by Drew Beechum and Denny Conn. I’ve just listened to Episode 1, and the style, structure and delivery of the podcast is very mature given that it’s brand new. Most podcasts are a little “ropey” for their first episode, but not this one. It was clear and well delivered. And it’s pretty detailed homebrewing stuff – not just the basics or woolly answers.

Anyway, enough on that podcast. Since this got me thinking about brewing podcasts I thought I’d list out all the brewing podcasts I listen to, just for your interest. If brewing and podcasts are your thing, then see if any of them are new to you. And if there are any great brewing podcasts I am not aware of, please leave a comment.

All but one of these podcasts is US-based, which shows the extent of the homebrewing hobby across the pond. (Or podcasting. Or both.) I wish there were more here in the UK. Maybe I should start one? No, maybe not – I have enough difficulty finding time to write this blog!

Brew Strong

Brewing With Style

The Sour Hour

Basic Brewing Radio

The Beertalkers  This isn’t actually a brewing podcast. It’s a podcast about beer, but it’s the only one in this list with a UK focus, so worth a mention anyway. Unfortunately it has been disappointingly quiet for the last few months.

Experimental Homebrewing  I had to laugh in episode 1 where one of the presenters (can’t remember if it was Denny or Drew) was saying how much he hates Fuggles hops. He said “if I want my beer to taste of dirt there are much cheaper ways of doing it than using Fuggles”! Heresy!

Nasty American Hops

With the longer days and warmer weather (at the moment anyway!) I wanted to make a lighter, more hoppy beer instead of the many dark and heavy brews we have made recently. We’ve got a lot of US hops in the freezer that could really do with being used up – especially some packs of Citra that were sent in error when I made an online purchase a while back.

So despite Andy thinking they are “nasty American hops” we set about making an American Amber that will be called Alderley Amber. (Andy still subscribes to the view expressed by The Farmer’s Magazine in 1863: “The hops from Canada and the United States still exhibit the disagreeable flavour which renders them quite unsuitable for fine qualities of ales.” But he’s very good in that he’ll help make a beer even though he refuses to drink it!)

Alderley Amber is 66 IBUs, and loaded with Citra, Chinook and Columbus hops. It’s fermenting at the moment, and the beer fridge smells great!

The recipe, like so many we make, is based on a recipe in Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer.

Alderley Amber

Grain bill

Maris Otter  4675g 79.3%

Light Crystal Malt  382g  6.5%

Munich Malt  382g  6.5%

Biscuit Malt  192g  3.3%

Dark Crystal Malt  192g  3.3%

Pale Chocolate Malt  72g  1.2%

Hop schedule

60 minutes:

Citra  15%AA  38g  54 IBU

10 minutes:

Citra  15%AA  10g  5.2 IBU

Chinook  14%AA  5g  2.7 IBU

Columbus  14.8%AA  8g  4.5 IBU

Flame out:

Citra  15%AA  15g 

Chinook  14%AA  6g 

Columbus  14.8%AA  18g 

Dry hops:

Citra  25g   5 days

Columbus  25g   5 days

Water treatment: 10g gypsum in 32 litres

Yeast: 1 sachet Safale US-05

Batch size: 23l

Mash temp: 67C

Mash time: 60 min

Boil time: 60 min

OG: 1.055

IBU: 66 (Rager)

Colour: 12 Lovibond, 15.8 SRM, 31 EBC

Target FG: 1.015

Target ABV: 5.3%

Fermentation Temperature: 18C 

Sandbach Grand Cru

Back in November 2014 we decided to move our homebrewing to the next level and make a sour beer. This has been quietly fermenting under our stairs since then. Yes, fermenting a sour beer can take a year or more. After an initial fermentation by yeast, which makes alcohol, the remaining sugars (generally the complex ones that the yeast cannot metabolise) are consumed by bacteria which produces the sour flavours – lactic acid, some acetic acid and other byproducts that give interesting flavours.

The recipe we used was based on Rodenbach Grand Cru, so naturally the Cheshire Peaks version will be Sandbach Grand Cru. (If you don’t know where Sandbach is, follow this link).

We tasted the beer a week or two back – sure enough we have a complex sour flavour reminiscent of Rodenbach and with not too much acetic acid (vinegar) flavour. Too much oxygen during fermentation leads to excess acetic acid production which spoils the beer. I’m very pleased we managed to avoid that on our first sour brew.

This Saturday we racked and bottled one third of the beer. We also racked another third into a fermenter and added 1kg of apricot puree. The last third remains in the carboy. When the apricot version is finished and bottled we’ll rack the last third and add cherries. Voilà! Three beers from one!

The cherry beer will hopefully be reminiscent of the discontinued Rodenbach Alexander and will of course be called Sandbach Alexander. (We’re open to suggestions for the name of the apricot version!)

We’re already planning how we can re-use our bacteria for a second sour beer: probably a sour porter.

Lilac Blond review

We raided Andy’s lilac tree back in May 2014 and brewed what we thought was a pretty unusual (nay, maybe ground-breaking) beer: a blond ale flavoured heavily with lilac flowers. This we gave the imaginative name “lilac blond”.

It’s been sitting in bottles since then. We’ve sampled one from time to time. Initially it was most odd – the “green” flavour of the lilac flower stalks came strongly through. (Despite the fact that we had been at pains to strip most of them out and only use the flowers).

However over the last six months it has settled down, the flavours have merged and the “green stalky” flavour has eased off. So recently I labelled the bottles and they were released for consumption.

I gave my mate Charlie at work a bottle and he sent me a very positive review. With his permission I am sharing it here.

Quick note on the Lilac Blonde - I shared it with my mum (she's a huge beer fan) and my girlfriend (again, massive beer lover). They both said it was the best beer they had over Easter. No mean feat, given that we also drunk multiple brews from Thornbridge, Ilkley, Oakham, AMA and St. Bernardus!

General consensus put it above Jaipur X, St. Bernardus 10, Karmeliet Tripel, St. Austell Big Job, AMA Blond and Kernel Mosiac.

Lovely floral notes and blackberries on the finish.

Overall, total belter.

Labelling Evening

Labelling beer bottles is boring. Making beer is far more fun (despite it being two thirds cleaning!).

But recently we’ve been getting low on bottled beer to give to interested friends to try, and I don’t like giving people unlabelled bottles. So tonight was labelling night.

I’ve been able to make it much less time-consuming by changing to a rectangular label(previously we had a lovely shaped label, but every one had to be cut out by hand). I’ve also found a better way to feed the labels through my printer which saved me a load of time as well.

So tonight sixty six bottles got labelled.

Just need to make some more now…

Cheshire India Porter

Andy and I both particularly like The Kernel Brewery’s Export India Porter. It’s a forthright little beer – deeply dark, with roasty coffee flavours but also hugely bitter with assertive hop flavours and aromas. You might think such strong hop flavour and aroma wouldn’t work with the dark malts, but it does. They complement rather than compete.
I bought a “bookazine” called The Complete Homebrew Handbook ages ago. Read it. Enjoyed it. Put it on the shelf. Only recently did I stumble upon the Export India Porter recipe in it. So we had to give it a try.
I have to admit I was astonished how much US hops were in the recipe. There’s 152g in there, if you include the dry hops. And they’re high alpha hops too (ie very bitter). Andy usually hates hops like that. But he’s a good sport and agreed to give it a go anyway since he likes the Kernel original.
We weren’t disappointed. I think this is a pretty good version of the original. Not a beer where you would drink more than one, but certainly a great one to have in store. Having said that, with all those hops flavours in there it probably should be drunk fairly soon before they fade.
I made one adjustment to the recipe because of what I had available, using amber malt rather than brown malt. I also note that the original Kernel beer states the hops as Columbus, Chinook and Motueka. The recipe used Magnum rather than Motueka and I went along with that.
One last point: the Columbus and Chinook hops we used were pellets rather than compressed whole hops. Usually I buy vacuum packed whole hops from either Morris Hanbury or The Malt Miller. But my local homebrew store is now stocking a range of pellets from Bulldog. I have to say I’ve been pretty impressed. They are easy to use (no hacking the cake of hops apart with a knife), pretty cheap and don’t fill your boil kettle with masses of vegetable matter which makes running off a bit easier. Hop pellets seem to be the only option in the USA. Looks like they are coming over here too.

Export India Porter

Grain bill
Maris Otter  4111g  72.7%
Amber Malt  500g  8.8%
Chocolate Malt  373g  6.6%
Munich Malt  373g  6.6%
Black Malt  150g  2.7%
Crystal 70  150g  2.7%

Hop schedule
Magnum  17.3%AA  14g  60min  23IBU
Chinook  13%AA  4g  15min  2.5IBU
Columbus  13%AA  4g  15min  2.5IBU
Chinook  13%AA  16g  10min  7.2IBU
Columbus  13%AA  8g  10min  3.6IBU
Chinook  13%AA  39g  5min  9.6IBU
Columbus  13%AA  17g  5min  4.2IBU
Chinook  30g  dry hop  5 days
Columbus  20g  dry hop  5 days

Water treatment: None
Yeast: 1 sachet Safale US-05, 1/2 sachet Safale S-04.
Batch size: 23l
Mash temp: 67C
Mash time: 60 min
Boil time: 60 min
OG: 1.061
IBU: 52.6 (Rager)
Colour: 30 Lovibond, 40 SRM, 79 EBC
Target FG: 1.013



Target ABV: 6.5%

Six Month Catch Up (Part 2)

Last time I posted I was trying to catch up with the brews we’ve made since my last blog posts. Without further ado…

Gyle 83 Vanilla Oak Unusual

We have a recipe that we call Audlem Unusual, which is very similar to Old Peculier – a particularly favourite beer. We usually brew this beer to be ready for Christmas. So we did this brew on 12th October and it fact we still have a little left in the barrel and it is drinking very well.
But this year we wanted to put a little twist on it, so we added oak chips and two vanilla pods. It was a subtle addition, but I think it was very nice for a change.
We used 30g of medium toast french oak chips, which were added to 200ml of boiling water (to give them a little sanitation). This was then cooled and added to the beer 4 days into fermentation. The vanilla pods were split and the seeds removed, then the seeds and pods were added to the fermenter at the same time.

Gyle 84 Milk Stout

Milk Stout is an unusual beer style because it is sweetened with milk sugar (lactose). This gives it a sweet flavour to complement the dark, rich full-roasted flavours of the stout. Lovely!
So why is milk sugar added, rather than ordinary sugar? Well ordinary sugar is fermentable by yeast, so will just give you a stronger dry beer. Lactose is not fermentable so you can rely on it staying in the beer to give sweetness.
As with many of our beers, I used the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer. I have had such success with the recipes in this book. There’s only one recipe per style, but that still gives you 80 recipes to try and every one I have done has come out extremely well. The recipes are formulated for brewing with malt extract, but for every one there’s an all-grain option with is easy enough to use to convert the recipe. If you make all-grain beer (or extract) you should have a copy of this book.
Oh, and of course the milk stout came out great too. It was another one we brewed for Christmas, so that and the Vanilla Oak Unusual gave plenty of dark ale variety.

Gyle 85 Export India Porter

This was such a great brew I think it warrants a post all of its own (and probably the recipe too). Watch this space…