recommendations from Dave Lines book

[kevthebootboy]

alright fellas?
ive got my hands on dave lines book, 'brewing beers like those you buy', was wondering if anyones got brewed and ejoyed any of the recipes?

taa ducks,kev

[boingy]

My faves out of that book are Pedigree and Wadworths 6X. In fact I'm currently about halfway through a cornie of the Pedigree. I dropped the Barley Syrup and replaced it with 500 grams of Pale and then I added another 500 grams of Pale to compensate for my efficiency (so 4kg pale in total).

DL recipes tends to assume very high efficiencies so it's best to boost the malts by about 20% otherwise you may struggle to get the suggested OG.
It's also a fairly common opinion that DL's hop levels are too high and I've often seen suggestions that you cut the hops by 20%.
Based on the DL recipes I have brewed (which is quite a few!) I don't agree with this but it would be worth checking the potential IBUs for any recipe you choose.

[softlad]

Ive brewed his Draft Bass which is really good. I dropped all hops by 20% but would only drop the 90min hops by 20% next time. I also increased grain by 20% which gave me an OG slightly above planned but not much.

[jubby]

Ruddles County is very good. I reduced the hops by 20% and it was still too bitter. I did not have any brewing software at the time, but i have since plugged the recipe into Beer Alchemy which came up with 55 EBU. The Real Ale Almanac shows it as 45 EBU so i have reduced the hops further for my next batch.

Edit, I got my book in the 80's. Not sure if later editions are the same.

[cooldad]

have done the sam smiths old brewery bitter very good, adnams best was ok to start with ,bottled it and tried it after a couple of months and now is really good. As jubby says, I also reduced the hop shedule for both as they would have been over bitter according to beersmith.

[boingy]

I've been pondering this for a while and may have the answer. In DL's day (and indeed when I was mostly brewing DL recipes), the standard boiler was a Bruheat/Electrim type which could only realistically boil about 15 litres if you wanted to avoid boilover. Hence most of the DL recipes I brewed were with a SG-heavy wort that got diluted to FV strength after the boil so the hop utilisation was much lower than that of a full volume boil. I think this may explain the "over-hopped" thing, especially when combined with the fact that the quality and freshness of hops was probably not so good back then (vacuum packed? ho ho. you were lucky if they were green!).

[kevthebootboy]

nice one ,thanks fellas, looking at the recipes, i thought the grain bill and the OG didnt really add up, ill have a look at the suggested recipes and see what i can do, ive just moved house so my next brew day has been put back a couple of weeks, so plenty of time for planning!