Homebrewing real ale

All About Beer takes a close look at real ale.

by Randy Mosher

While commercial brewers often have to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their product arrives at the customersâ lips in the blissful state of "real" ale-ness, homebrewers have to put in a great deal of effort to bungle things up in this regard.

For how can you not brew real ale at home? Serious contortions are required to make an ale unreal. Shelf life and bad management, the bane of commercial brewers, really donât affect our vertically integrated little beer factories. We brew it, we ferment it, we serve it, without having to turn it over to the knuckle- dragging distributors or heartless retailers. We pamper our brews like the newborn babes they are, if anything, drinking them far too young. You know, "The homebrew is ready when youâve opened the last bottle."

Filtration and pasteurization are primarily what make ale unreal, and while conceivable for the homebrewer, they are difficult and largely unnecessary. A more relevant question to ask is how to get an authentic British-tasting ale at home. While "realness" is a key component, there is much more to it.

Authentic ale

First, letâs look at the characteristics of British-style ales: low carbonation; unfiltered for full taste and body; pronounced nutlike malt character, sometimes with a touch of woodiness; a good, tight head, with a smooth creamy texture; brilliant clarity; plenty of English hop character with no astringency. Cool, not cold, serving temperatures are also important, and enhance many of the other features.

Most of these present no real challenge to the homebrewer. Prime lightly, perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 of your normal priming. Allow plenty of time for settling, and your beer will be plenty clear; isinglass or gelatin finings will speed up the process. For the most part, brewers filter their beer only to speed up a process that would occur naturally if they could afford to wait.

As far as malt, I am afraid that the American product simply isnât up to the task. If you want that subtle, nutlike character that seems to be a hallmark of fine English ale, you must use British malt. The snobs prefer Marris Otter, but excellent beers may also be made from Pipkin and Halcyon, two varieties better suited to modern agriculture, thus a little less expensive. Belgian Pale malt also offers acceptable malt character.

Recipes using primarily American malt will benefit from a little more crystal malt, and perhaps a dash of Munich, as well as a protein rest at 122 degrees F to reduce the amount of chill haze. British malts, by comparison, are very low in protein and do not require this step. You may also find that ales from American malt need to brewed to a higher gravity to achieve the same taste intensity.

For extract brewers, a mini-mash is essential. Use the cleanest-tasting extract you can find, and do a side mash with some genuine English pale ale malt and a little crystal. You might want to throw in some Munich malt for added roundness, and half pound of wheat malt for an improved head. Mash this all at 155 degrees F for an hour before draining and sparging, and your beer will be vastly improved over what you can do with extract alone.

It is absolutely essential to use English (or English-type) hops. This is one of the most important components of taste for these beers. Such varieties as Fuggles and Goldings have a bright, spicy aroma quite different from Continental hops. East Kent Goldings have always been regarded as the premier aroma hop, traditionally reserved for pale ale, with Fuggles being a lower-caste hop relegated to darker beers.

The choice for bittering hops is not so crucial, but my inclination is to use flavorful varieties all the way through. To me, the two pence you might save by using high-alpha hops arenât worth the potential for harshness. We are now seeing more English varieties on the homebrew market. Northdown, Challenger and First Gold are all worth experimenting with.

Hop rates are variable, but the name of the beer is bitter. So rates up to 45 IBU or so arenât outside the envelope. If you arenât so much of a hophead, rest assured that more evenly balanced beers are just as acceptable.

For pale, bitter beers, proper water chemistry is critical to avoid harsh, raspy hop character. Alkaline, carbonate water must be treated by boiling and decanting off the precipitate, first adding a small amount of calcium chloride or gypsum. This applies equally to extract and mashed beers. The proper quantities can be figured out, but for most typical situations, a couple of teaspoons will suffice.

If you really want master the art of pale ale, I urge you to explore the water treatment issue in all its excruciating detail. The good news is you only need to do the calculations once.

Creaminess has many sources. Eschewing filtration helps, as do serving methods such as sparklers on hand pumps. A dash of wheat, in malt, flaked or torrefied form, will boost head formation and retention. Five to 10 percent is the usual range. Flaked barley or oats will also do the trick.

Yeast character is extremely important. More than a flavor of its own, a particular strain of yeast will accentuate one of more aspect of a beer, putting the spotlight on malt or hops, adding a dash of wood, fruit, spice, nuts or other character. Use pedigreed brewing yeast rather than the dried varieties. The liquid yeasts available, while not trumpeting their origins, offer clues in their names, i.e., "London ESB" = Fullers, a London brewer famous for its ESB. A good retailer should be able to clue you in.

Serving gadgets and gizmos

Once the real ale is fermented, we come to the controversial subject of serving it. Bottling is perfectly acceptable, but in England bottles are usually reserved for beers of higher than ordinary strength. As I mentioned before, light priming will give you more of a "draught" texture, but real draft beer is the way to go if you can manage it.

Any of the popular homebrew draft setups, from Party Pigs to Cornelius kegs, work perfectly well. Purists insist that carbonation be developed by a final fermentation in the serving container, and again, a light priming is in order. With our unfiltered, unpasteurized beers, it is possible to cheat and just rack it into a corny and turn on the gas. After a week or so, it becomes extremely difficult to notice any difference.

The most authentic taste will come from containers that are vented to the air as they are served. The introduced oxygen softens the beer somewhat; real ale experts in Britain are often able to tell how many days an ale has been on draft.

For parties, this technique works well, although the beer is usually gone before this effect is noticeable. This is an unsuitable arrangement, however, for beer to be kept for more than a few days. A blanket of low pressure (1 to 4 psi) of carbon dioxide can be used to prevent air-breathing bacteria, like acetobacteria, from making vinegar out of your fine brew.

Hand pumps are glorious, but they are bulky and very expensive. Old reliable gravity works well on kegs you plan on draining in one session. Just lay them on their sides with the bottom end elevated, and the "out" valve down, and hook up a serving hose. You also need to vent the keg by either loosening the gas fitting or hooking up a gas disconnect with no hose attached. If you want to serve only a part of the beer in this manner, connect the gas line to a regulator set at the lowest possible setting, just a pound or two of pressure.

All manner of gadgets and gizmos can be used to recreate the effects of sparklers and hand pumps. A sparkler sprays the beer into the glass, releasing much of the gas as it does, giving you a lovely waterfall of foam like a well-poured Guinness.

Such devices can consist of nothing more than a capped tube with a number of tiny holes drilled in the end, attached to your tap. The cleverest device I have seen in use is a cheap plastic syringe. Just fill the syringe with beer that has already been poured, then squirt it rapidly back into the glass. You get a rush of gas and some of the lovely sheeting action.

Iâm including no recipes here. To do so would be to play favorites among the dry, bitter ales of the South, the softer, malty ales of the North, and the hundreds of variants in between. In this world, each brewer must find his or her own ales, and I encourage you to get out there and do just that.