Clouded Yellow ish Beer

[phatboytall]

My wife's favourite beer is St Austell Clouded yellow, it’s a lovely beer, light, sweetish, not much bittering, hints of a belgian duvel about it but no where near as distinctive.
St Austell give great details on what goes into their beers, so i'm using that as my base
http://www.staustellbrewery.co.uk/beers ... beers.html
It doesn't mention Vanilla in the above link, but it does elsewhere on the site, and you can definitely taste it in the beer.
Pretty new to creating recipes so thoughts greatly appreciated!

23l Target Gravity 1.044 (slighty under the 4.8abv of the beer)
Malt
4000g Lager Malt
400g Wheat malt

Hops
20g Willamette 60mins
20g Willamette 0mins (steep for 10mins hot, then 10mins whilst cooling)

Additions (added at middle of boil)
10g Coriander crushed seeds
5g Crushed cloves
2 Vanilla pods

Yeast - going to try and capture some from the bottle, failing that I reckon S0-4, as I don’t think it’s a Belgian style yeast, not peppery enough to my mind.

Thoughts? Anyone tried this or something similar before?

[Barley Water]

Well I don't know anything about the beer you are modeling your effort after but I do have some experience with vanilla. You need to be extremely careful with it because it can very easily overpower any other flavor in the beer. Several years ago, I had the bright idea that I would add vanilla and cinnomon to a Northern German Alt bier. Being the cautious lad that I am, I experiemented with a small amount of beer and scaled up the dosage (I used vanilla extract by the way). Needless to say, I ended up adding a bit too much and I swear the beer tasted like apple pie (in fact that effort still gets mentioned in the club I am a member of when discussing epic screwups). Another time, I decided I would make an oatmeal cookie beer. Basicly it was a brown ale with oats, cinnomon and a bit of vanilla. Guess what? It also tasted like apple pie. Now, I like apple pie but I don't know that I am all that crazy about it in liquid form so I have never dared go there since. Just something to think about though, you could try oaking the beer and you will get just a faint flavor of vanilla. I have done that and it worked out pretty well in a English pale ale (a Firestone Walker type beer).

[dave-o]

Natural vanilla pods add a pleasant and subtle vanilla note, in my experience.

2-3 pods in a 5 gallon brew.

[phatboytall]

Brewed this last week, will post back how it tastes.

I had to use S-04 from a time perspective, but i have had it confirmed that the yeast in the bottle is the brewery used yeast.

Perfect capture point for future clones etc...

"Subject: Clouded Yellow
Dear Mr Murphy

About the clouded yellow , yes we use the same yeast for fermentation and for our bottle condition
Yes is standard St Austell yeast
I'm happy that you enjoy our products if you have more question, please let me know

Kind regards,

Paola Leather
Technical Brewer "

[Chris Tel]

Dear Mr Murphy,
How did the clouded yellow turn out after all. Intrigued to find out as I would also liek to give this a go!
Cheers
Chris

[phatboytall]

Hi,

I have to say it turned out pretty much spot on! Its the wife's favorite beer and she reckons it was actually slightly better, "slightly less sweet, slightly more hops at the end"

but really pleased with the flavourings, they give it a great aroma.

In the end i used probaly used one tsp (teaspoon) of corriander seeds and half one tsp cloves, loosely crushed in a pessle and mortar. Then i had forgotten to buy some vanilla pods, so to my shame i used prob about one tsp of Vanilla Extract.

None of this flavours are overpowering, but all of them are present, but critcally don't taste like they have been added in, they are subtle enough that you might think they are just from the yeast. Clearly not from the SO4

Hope that helps
Ed

[WishboneBrewery]

Sounds interesting, I read your initial post and thought 'Vanilla Extract' would be better and possibly to-taste just before bottling/kegging.

[Rubbery]

I went to the brewery recently and asked about the Clouded Yellow yeast. They have been using the standard brewery yeast but will be changing it to make it more cloudy in future. I understand the new yeast was recovered from a bottle of European larger.

[Leebo87]

Hi,

Sorry for the bump to an old thread but this is also my Mrs' favourite and would like to brew it for her birthday.

What was the reasoning for the lager malt? On the bottle it says Maris otter and wheat.

Any way I was glad to find a relatively simple recipe, looking forward to brewing it Thanks, Lee