Brewday @ Roosters Brewery - Angry Yank Pale Ale - 28Feb2011

[bosium]

As some of you may know, my beer 'Angry Yank Pale Ale' unexpectedly and unbelievedly won the award for the champion beer of the CBA National Homebrew Competition at Skipton last year and as a prize, Roosters kindly offered me the opportunity to brew the recipe commercially. I was invited to come up and help brew one of the batches with them, so I made the long drive up from Essex to Harrogate on Sunday with the view to start bright and early on Monday morning.

The owners, Sean and Alison Franklin, were incredibly kind and hospitable to me and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to spend a day brewing at an award-winning brewery in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside. I had the pleasure of tasting some of Sean's beers - they are all shades of pale gold with beautiful, complex hoppy aromas and perfect balance. Make no mistake, this isn't your average micro - every one of the beers I tasted were perfectly turned out and conditioned, made from only the finest ingredients.

The brewhouse itself is (I believe) an American brewhouse, with the capacity of 40 hl per brew and it's a slick mass of stainless steel. With four big stainless, glycol controlled fermentation vessels, this allows them to turn over approximately 160hl of beer per week. They also have a smaller, (I think 20 US Gallon) experimental plant - basically a single-tier 3-vessel digitally-controlled brew sculpture and temperature-controlled conical fermenter, which they use to test-brew new and interesting recipes. It's any homebrewer's dream system - all stainless and pump driven with programmable RIMS mash control and counter-flow cooling, running on electronically controlled propane burners.

The recipe used for the brews is a slightly modified version of the one I posted in the Recipes forum, simplified a little (in my opinion to its benefit) and brewed to a strength of 1.048 / 5% ABV. The beer itself is being featured as one of the beers in JD Wetherspoon's Spring Real Ale Festival and as such, Roosters are brewing 10x 40 hl batches of it in order to supply the order to JDW. I believe the beer should be available to sample JDW pubs from the 23rd of March until the 10th of April, served on cask.

I took a few pictures, and with Sean and Alison's permission have posted them for those of you who are interested.

The brewery, main brewhouse and experimental plant (on the left)




Grist, in bags and in the Grain Hopper



Mash and Sparge




Boil



Hops, loaded into the Hopback and late into the boil





40HL of AYPA wort in fermenter prior to pitching


Casks of Angry Yank from a previous brew

[GrowlingDogBeer]

Fantastic stuff, must be great knowing that much of your beer is about to be enjoyed by the masses, all thats needed now is to find a decent Wetherspoons pub locally to go and sample some in.

[filet o fish]

am green with envy. sounds absolutely mega.

will definately look out and try an pint in a sponns.

[kebabman]

Many congratulations, you must post a picture of yourself holding a pint of AYPA in front of the pump clip!
I think loads of us will be rushing to brew this beer after tasting it in 'spoons. Do you know what the slight simplification to your original grist is please?

[Scotty]

nice one bosium! Out of curiosity, what happens to your recipe now? Does it belong to you for which you recieve a 'royalty payment' of such or do Roosters own it now?

[mysterio]

A proud moment I bet and that looks like great fun! How widely distributed will the beer be, will it make it north of the border for example?

[bosium]

Thanks gents! I'm very stoked how it's all turned out - I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the drinking, as it were. I'll be looking for a decent local JDW too so I can try a pint myself.

@kebabman:
84% Pale Malt (GP, MO or a blend)
8% Munich Malt (British)
2% Melanoiden Malt
4% Caramunich I
2% Dark Crystal

My original recipe calls for pretty much equal hop additions at 15m, 5m and a dry hop but these were replaced commercially by a 10 minute addition and a large hop-back addition. There is no initial bittering charge, all the bitterness is derived from these two additions. I think the beer benefits from an additional dry hop but this was deemed impractical by Roosters. They also used their house yeast instead of Nottingham.

@ Scotty Mc:
To be honest I don't rightly know - I never signed it over to them so I guess it's still mine. It's very unlike any of Roosters' other offerings so I don't think they'd brew it again unless there was some serious demand for it. I certainly don't get any royalties or any kickbacks of any kind beyond the experience of actually brewing it with them and having it served in pubs.

@Mysterio:
Cheers! I don't really know for sure how far it will be distributed - whether it's only England or the rest of the UK too. I guess it's all down to JDW - I'm not sure if all 50 of their beers featured in the beer festival will be available right across the UK, or whether they will choose a selection for each different region. I hope some makes it north of the border, for sure. Tbh you could brew a better, stronger version yourself and then you could dry hop it too.

[mysterio]

Sounds like the dry hopping was the signature of the beer, shame they didn't go with it.

[bosium]

I agree, it's sad but I do understand their reasons. The beer should still have a great hop aroma from the huge hopback addition, although it'll be a slightly different character I guess.

[kebabman]

Many thanks for the info.
Four malts and a hop schedule that I have never used before is certainly going to make for a really interesting brew.
Cheers!

[196osh]

Looks like a fantastic day!

[WishboneBrewery]

Cracking stuff I just Tweeted this too.
will have to keep an eye out at spoons for it.

[BitterTed]

Well done!

[Horden Hillbilly]

Nice one!

[fisherman]

Brilliant, What a hero