Brewdog

[Eadweard]

I've just noticed that Brewdog have put details of the hops, malt and Og in their beers on their website: http://www.brewdog.com/beer.php

Nice one lads!

[delboy]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, brewdog make beers that are right up my street, i think in the future i'll try cloning some of them, that info will be invaluable.

Was actually drinking some of their beers last night, the lager is great (reminds me that I must get some munich malt back into the stocks).
No way would i have guessed the hardcore IPA i was drinking last night was 150 IBU its so damn smooth, those guys really now what they are up to.

[steve_flack]

They are getting some pretty impressive attenuation rates - I wonder what yeast they use.

Time to get some more Motueka in....

[Eadweard]

Well with all their shinny cylindo-conicals it must be a bottom fermenter. Nottingham maybe?

[steve_flack]

Not necessarily although it would help harvesting. Presumably they crash cool and pretty much any yeast sinks to the bottom when you do that.

[mysterio]

They said on a recent Brewing Network episode they got it from a Brewery in Sheffield, they say it's pretty clean and attenuates well. Could well be Nottingham or something similar. They gave a recipe for their 'How to Disappear Completely' beer, a 3.5% 'Imperial Mild'

[delboy]

I was doing a side by side of my ge innis pale ale (goose island clone) and brewdogs IPA (not the hardcore), one thing that stood out to me was the residual sweetness in the brewdog IPA, mine was a fair bit drier (i'd used us-05).
To my mind it seems that homebrew (mine at least) comes into two forms, 1) malty with residual sweetness or 2) hoppy but drier, i attribute this to the yeasts at are disposal ie US-05/nottingham hoppy but higher attenuation, S04/windsor etc lower attenuation but muted hop flavours.

The brewdog IPA though had residual sweetness and lots of hop flavour something that i struggle to acheive to be honest (i've noticed this same residual sweetness in lots of commercial stuff). As a commercial brewert they are able to crash cool and filter the yeast out, in a homebrew set up i have to wait until the yeast has finished its job and falls down.

Is it possible that the commercials like brewdog are using an attenuative hop enhancing yeast like nottingham but are dropping and filtering it out of suspension to retain some of that residual sweetness.

I probably haven't conveyed what im thinking all that well, maybe somebody will be able to grasp what i mean though.

On a side note though, the missus preferred my ge innis over the brewdog IPA

[flytact]

I understand exactly what you're saying delboy. Not sure how the crash cool/filter would work with a moderate home brewing setup. On occasion I have been able to get residual sweetness with hop flavour. Not with a dried yeast however. And usually with a first wort hop addition.

As per the original topic, I've also read some good things about this brewer and the recipes don't look too exotic. Maybe the stout for a winter sipper?

[DarloDave]

Anybody got anything in the way of recipes?

[196osh]

I know what yeast they use.

Not sure if I should say though....

[196osh]

I also know the FG of their beers........

[mysterio]

Spill it, 196

[tomU]

Is it possible that the commercials like brewdog are using an attenuative hop enhancing yeast like nottingham but are dropping and filtering it out of suspension to retain some of that residual sweetness.

If they only bottled that could well be the case, but as they also sell their beer in cask form I think its unlikely - you don't/can't pasteurise cask beer, and if you rack to casks before fermentation is all but complete you get popping casks...

I know this is very obvious, but if you want more residual sweetness in your beer have you tried mashing at higher temps?

[Garth]

Del, they could be achieving this by getting to a certain FG, not the lowest the yeast will go, then turning on the chillers and halting fermentation and not letting the yeast finish so to speak.

If they used Nottingham, or US-05 this would leave the beer hoppy, but not too dry

[196osh]

Hopefully I wont catch any hassel about this.

They use US-05 for all of their beers apart from The Physics and Trashy Blonde, where they use a house english ale yeast and for the new belgian stone collaberation beer they are using some sort of belgian liquid yeast didnt get to find out which one but they are making a batch of Punk IPA, using belgian yeast and dry hoping with chinnook, which tasted awsome out of the FV.

All of their beers pretty much finish at 1010. The Hardcore finishes at something like 1016, but I only got to see a partially fermented batch but the rest of the FV's were being cooled so that the yeast drops out so had the FG's on them. I never got to try any but the paradox finishes at something like 1010-1014, which I thought was really low for an RIS. But aparently it has plenty of body never got to try any though

Garth you are correct with what you said, they get to the FG and then chill them.

The Lager yeast they use is Saflager W34/70.