St Austell's Tribute

[bigrichlock]

Some good looking seasonal's there, and i should get most if not all of therm in my local pub

Have already tried the bucket of blood a couple of years back and the Tribute Extra, is a cracking pint, Tribute but with real flavor, its been the cause of a few hangovers!

Rich

[chrisr]

I've had Bucket of Blood and Extra, too, at the beer festival. Both nice, but then anything he makes seems to be. I think Extra is a fixed recipe now, but years ago, when it was done as a special for the festival, each year's was different in some way. My favourite was one matured in bourbon casks.

I exchanged some emails with ESF. Basically, it wasn't economic. I specced up a hop rocket type construction, but with 50% more capacity. They said they couldn't do it for anything approaching £120. Obviously, if brewing bigger batches, a bigger hop back might well be needed, but I only brew 25L, so the Blichmann looks the best buy for me, for now, anyway.

[weiht]

Dont think they work well with pellet hops. In fact I think there isn't a hop back system that supports pellets, which is why they use a whirlpool for that?

[chrisr]

No, indeed, the instructions for the Blichmann say 'don't use pellets!' The point in St A's process where the hopback (in place of their special 'hopping tun') would be used, they use leaf hops. I think they use pellets for the initial, bittering hops.

[PeteNMA]

Hi folks

After a lot of reading and re-reading this thread I've finally had a go at this myself. I'm English originally, now living in Maryland USA, so I've got a deep love of Tribute forged over many pints, so being able to make my own would be a huge victory.

My brew day:
7lbs Maris Otter, 2lb 20L Dark Munich (not quite 80:20 but it's what I had to hand)
Mashed with 12 quarts at 152F for 90 minutes, mash out with 1 gallon up to 170F. Drained the tun into the kettle, batch sparged with 4 gallons at 170F.
First wort hopped with 1oz of UK Fuggles (4.8% AA), 90 minute boil total
0.5oz each of Willamette and Styrian Goldings at 10 minutes.
Chilled slightly down to 175F, added another 0.5oz each of Willamette and Styrian Goldings. Whirlpooled and steeped for 30 minutes.
Crash chilled down to 65F and transferred to the fermenter, pitched one rehydrated packet of SafAle S-05.

My OG came out as 1.048 so a little over target but I'm still dialling in my system and efficiency. I've got enough hops to brew this again with the same schedule so if it turns out well I'll be making more in the near future. I'll check back in once fermentation is over and again once it's in bottles and carbonated up.

[seymour]

Hi folks...I'm English originally, now living in Maryland USA, so I've got a deep love of Tribute forged over many pints, so being able to make my own would be a huge victory...

Hello PeteNMA, and welcome to Jim's! We've got members on both sides of the pond actively brewing excellent English ale like this one. Keep us posted on how your turns out!

[PeteNMA]

Well the airlock just started bubbling after I gave the lid a hefty shove in all directions. Seems that the new lid/fermenter combo doesn't seal quite perfectly. Smells good though, currently sitting at 21F according to the fermometer on the bucket. One of the best things about brewing the British styles is that there's no real need for fermentation temp control until summer rolls round.

[chrisr]

For my last attempt at this one, I used some Munich from Weyerman rather than the Munich I had used previously, which I presume, as it didn't say otherwise was from an English maltster. I have to say this brew was the best yet as regards the great malty background Tribute has, and the feeling of body to it. I really think, malt-wise, this brew was spot on. It seemed a fraction darker than previous brews, too. So it would seem the Cornish Gold is the key to getting the malt and body and duplicating the CG is an important bit of the recipe. As bigrichlock has said (re the Proper Job competition) you really need to use exactly the same malt as StA do to get the same brew - but we can't!

Just need to get the hops sorted then... I'll be using bigrichlock's advice as regards the hopping schedule and we'll see how that turns out.

[PeteNMA]

Ran out of patience and peeled the lid off a few times to have a look at what's going on with mine. Yesterday it was still at high krausen, at least 2 inches of bubbles, and that was with FermCap in the boil too. This evening its subsided a lot, but still a layer of thick foam on top. I'm not particularly worried about opening it as I'm pretty sure that the real stuff is open fermented, and that will definitely be a part of the flavour (if minor).

I'm off to Montreal tomorrow evening, but I might throw caution to the wind and think about bottling this next Tuesday. Got to get a new hydrometer first though, just broke mine yesterday.

[seymour]

There's no rush to bottle. It'll continue to benefit from being left on the yeast for weeks even.

[Normski]

I’ve been reading this post for quite a while with interest and finally make a batch.
I managed to find and buy 3 bottles of Real Tribute, I thought I’d keep these to compare.
Last night I tasted the 1st pint of My Tribute. Im very pleasantly surprised how close it is.
Colour, exactly the same.
Head, Mine lasted longer, but is from a keg and is fresh.
Aroma, Real has a little more, but very similar. Probably needs some dry hopping with the last hops.
Taste, Very very close. If im being really critical and honest, mine needs a bit longer conditioning, its only been kegged a week. But im very pleased with the results.

The recipe I used was
-----------------------------
4kg Pale,
I only had 630g Munich, so added 370 g of Caramalt.
100g Torrefied wheat
Mashed @ 67c for 60 mins
Water treatment 5g Gypsum in the mash. 5g in the boil.

Fuggles 50g@60mins
Styrian 15g@15mins
Willamette 15g@15mins
Styrian 15g@80c for 30 mins then cooled
Willamette 15g@80c

Collected 24L@ 1044
Used Gervin/Notty Yeast
-------------------------------
I also have a few bottles of M&S St Austell Cornwall IPA bottle conditioned.
Im saving the yeast with the hope of culturing up to use in a future batch. It may be more original, but to be honest the Notty works well.
Norm

[PeteNMA]

[quote="seymour"]There's no rush to bottle. It'll continue to benefit from being left on the yeast for weeks even.[/quote]

Whilst I agree that technically there's no hurry, I'm almost out of beer! I'll see how long my patience lasts.

That being said, I took a small sample this evening. Still too Fuggle-y/Styrian-y at the moment to be Tribute, but it might benefit from going into bottles in around a week to lock in some of the hop aroma and let the Fuggles calm down a touch.

[PeteNMA]

Well, a check on the brew after acquiring a new hydrometer and I've undershot my FG by a fair old amount, it's now sitting at 1.004! However the flavour has really come together, the Fuggles has dropped back and the late additions and maltiness are coming through. It'll go into bottles tomorrow all being well.

[orlando]

Nearly 5 1/2 years on, is this the oldest running thread of all time? What happened to Beer Belly & Spearmint Rhino, can they ever have imagined this would still be going after the rather simple original post?

[chrisr]

I see this year's competition run by www.brewuk.co.uk is for a Tribute clone. I look forward to the winning recipe! Can bigrichlock make it two in a row?!