Wheeler's recipes

[AngloScot]

First post here so go easy!

I've been thinking about brewing an AG beer out of Wheeler's "Brew European Beers at Home". However, a lot of his recipes in that book seem to lack any finishing hops (just bittering hops added at the start of the boil and irish moss in the last 15 mins). I'm fairly new to brewing but this seems a bit suspicious to me - won't this produce a beer lacking in hop aroma/taste?

Are these recipes flawed or does the book have typos?

Cheers in advance!

[steve_flack]

Not all commercial beers have late hop additions - for example lagers often don't.

That being said (and at the risk of being called a heretic and being burned at the stake ) I think that book is the least convincing of Wheeler's. I don't know if he was trying to make recipes using a limited palette of ingredients that was available when he was writing it, but I really doubt that some of his foreign beer recipes are accurate (for example his Chimay one).

[PieOPah]

I think that book is the least convincing of Wheeler's.

Heretic, burn him at the stake

[JacktheMac]

Not all commercial beers have late hop additions - for example lagers often don't.

That being said (and at the risk of being called a heretic and being burned at the stake ) I think that book is the least convincing of Wheeler's. I don't know if he was trying to make recipes using a limited palette of ingredients that was available when he was writing it, but I really doubt that some of his foreign beer recipes are accurate (for example his Chimay one).

I don't much believe Wheeler's Chimay recipe either, though never having brewed it that is just an opinion. The Chimay clone I was considering brewing (third or fourth on my 'to do' list) include special B, aromatic, caramunich & candy sugar. I wonder if anyone has brewed the Wheeler recipe and an alternative for comparison?

[mysterio]

I brewed the Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest recipe from this book and it turned out excellent.

Certainly there are much better sources on brewing Belgian beers which you should consult if you're brewing something like a Chimay clone; Wheeler does mention it's a guess in BCEBAH. 'Brew Like a Monk' lists the Chimay Red ingredients as pils malt, wheat starch, caramel malt and sugar (information from the brewery I believe). And of course Chimay's actual yeast is the key to reproducing something close.

As for late hop additions, use the recipe as a starting point and your experience to alter it.

[AngloScot]

So, is the consensus that the recipes printed in Wheeler's book are as he intended them (but perhaps flawed on occasion) rather then typos?

[tubby_shaw]

Not all commercial beers have late hop additions - for example lagers often don't.

That being said (and at the risk of being called a heretic and being burned at the stake ) I think that book is the least convincing of Wheeler's. I don't know if he was trying to make recipes using a limited palette of ingredients that was available when he was writing it, but I really doubt that some of his foreign beer recipes are accurate (for example his Chimay one).

What most people seem to miss when reading Wheelers BCEBAH is written on page 2.

Again I have used well-known comercial brand names as a good way of communicating a particular style or flavour of beer, but I must stress that it is quite unlikely that any particular recipe herein will be an exact duplicate of the commercial brewers beer

Some thing similar is written on page 3 of BYORAAH.
Lets be fair, even if we had access to the exact recipes and ingredients that the commercial boys use our brews would still be different due to the effects of our amateur equipment.
Lets stop worrying about exactly copying a certain brew and experiment a bit more, you never know, that way you may stumble accross the best beer recipe ever

[steve_flack]

The Chimay one is so far from any reality of what a Belgian Dubbel recipe is like it's not even representative of a style, let alone a specific beer.

[UserDeleted]

I've done the Bitburger one (Using Extract) and it was very close to the original. During my many email conversations with Graham the one thing he stresses about his books and recipes is that they are derived from information provided by the breweries, and often the brewery recipe would not produce the beer either.

The best of his recipe books is probably BYORAAH, as this information is derived from the Real Ale Lovers Almanac, which was in the 3rd/4th edition (and already well revised and updated) when he worked on the book. The European book was a completely new affair, and I guess would have been updated as new editions came out. Unfortunatly he had a disagreement with CAMRA publishing and decided not to do any more books. From my last communications with him that thing called 'real life' had caught up with him and he wasn't brewing any more.

I would certainly say that the Lager recipes are good, and close, the Belgians, well there are better books, the English ales, probably close.

One thing I will say from a trip round the Budvar, Gambrinus, and Plzen breweries, along with many smaller breweries in the Czech republic is that they most certainly DO use late hops. Large buckets full of green smelly ones with so much resin that your hands are 'squeaky' when you handle them. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!