Woodfordes Wherry

[WHL]

Hey Fellas,

I have a not so new vial of White Labs 06 Bedford Ale I got for a Wells Bombardier, but I want to get it started on an ordinary bitter. I saw a post where Steve Flack said Woodforde used the Wells yeast strain and settled on a Wherry, though I was having some trouble finding a recipe and have never drank one. Then I hit upon the post by Ray.Norfolk from a couple of years back where he laid out the ingredients. I put it in the Beer Engine and this is what I came up with:

Wherry #1

Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 4 lbs. 8.8 oz 2070 grams 92%
Caramalt 30 EBC 0 lbs. 3.7 oz 105 grams 4%
Crystal Malt, Dark 300 EBC 0 lbs. 3.6 oz 100 grams 4%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Golding Whole 5.7 % 60 mins 0 lbs. 0.6 oz 17 grams 57%
Progress Whole 6.4 % 60 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 38%
Styrian Goldings Whole 4.5 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.3 oz 10 grams 5%
Styrian Goldings Whole 4.5 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 100%


Final Volume: 13 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.039
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 19.6 Litres
Mash Liquor: 5.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 34 EBU
Colour: 25 EBC

Anybody brewed one based on Ray's posted perimeters? What kind of late addition Styrian Golding additions did you make? What about the balance of Dark Crystal and Cara to achieve color and body? The Cara Malt I have is 34L. Am I in the ballpark? I'd like to brew it this Sunday.

Thanks, Bill

[seymour]

BUMP.

Have you guys all seen this? I don't think I'd ever seen the all-grain recipe to Woodeforde Wherry before. Kinda fun.

[Monkeybrew]

It's nice to see a recipe for Wherry, but having drunk quite a bit of it in my local pubs, I wouldn't call it a hoppy brew, and certainly wouldn't have thought that the 0 min addition of Styrians looks correct.

Then again, I don't think that I've got the greatest taste buds, so it would be nice to hear other people's views on 'the real' Wherry recipe.

MB

[wilfh]

You can also get the yeast from the bottles if you can get them.
I agree on the aroma. It's not that evident

[Derby Dabbler]

I used this recipe a year ago. It didn't seem to taste the slightest bit like wherry and after a bit I slung 2/3 of it.

[seymour]

You can also get the yeast from the bottles if you can get them...

It's true Woodforde's uses a proprietary English ale strain, and it's always possible that primary strain sometimes sneaks its way into the bottles, but it's believed their bottle-conditioned beers contain a separate strain more suited to bottle and cask conditioning. Again though, I'd love to be proven wrong. Here is a recent round-up of bottle conditioned beers believed to contain the primary strain, in case anyone is interested:

I don't know what's available in your stores (at least some of these were listed on the ASDA link you posted), but here's a list I've been compiling of bottle-conditioned beers which are believed to contain the primary strain. I'm sure there are many more which I've missed, and perhaps some of these listed contain a secondary bottling strain. As always, I'm eager for corrections and rebuttals.

Adnams (mini-kegs contain the primary dual-strain, but bottles do not)
Brakspear Oxford Gold, perhaps Triple as well
Cantillon (classic source for diverse lambic cultures)
Chimay
Coniston Bluebird Bitter
Coopers
Courage (some)
D'Achouffe
DeDolle (excellent Belgian multi-strain)
DuPont (classic saison culture, but reportedly a triple-strain, results vary)
Duvel (probably contains primary strain, some dispute)
Fullers Bengal Lancer and 1845 (extremely popular)
Gales Prize Old Ale (classic primary strain, but so old it's likely dead)
Hopback Summer Lightning
Itchen Valley Godfathers
Kindl Weiss (good Berliner Weiss lacto blend)
Marble?
Maredsous (yes-primary, but same as Duvel)
Marstons (some: Oyster Stout or Tesco's IPA?)
Morland Hen's Tooth
Ommegang
Orval (excellent blend of Belgian primary strain + brett)
Ridgeway Bad Elf, Lump of Coal, probably others (brewed by Hepworth, same primary dual strain used in bottles)
Ridleys (some)
Rochefort
Schneider Weiss (supposedly the only hefeweizen bottled with primary strain)
Sharps (some, perhaps the only way to obtain historic Morrells strain)
Shepherd Neame Spitfire and 1698
Sierra Nevada
St. Austell Proper Job and Black Job
Tesco's "Finest Belgian Abbey Ale" by the Huyghe Brewery
Thomas Hardy (some)
Thwaites (some)
Unibroue (a Belgian-style brewery in Canada, very spicy, a mutation of Chimay?)
Westmalle
Westvleteren
Widmer Hefeweizen (not a true Hefeweizen strain, Americanized version of historic Zum Uerige alt strain)
Worthington White Shield (probably not primary strain, but a nice high-attenuating strain anyway)
Wye Valley (filtered but then bottle-conditioned with fresh, primary, single-strain)
Youngs Special London Ale

A few more ideas for fresh yeast:
Many local microbreweries have imperfect filtration, and likely skip reseeding with a secondary yeast, so it's always worth a try.

Just because a beer doesn't specifically state "bottle-conditioned" doesn't automatically rule it out. If you hold it up to the light and see a layer of white at the bottom, that's yeast. A member here obtained primary yeast from a cloudy bottle of St. Peters Golden Ale. An email to the brewery confirmed they had a recent problem with their filtration!

Other members have reported local pubs giving them the dregs of an "empty" real ale cask, free for the asking, which is almost always their primary strain. I wanna hear more of these success stories.

http://byo.com/stories/article/indices/ ... techniques
http://hbd.org/mbas/yeastht.html

[orlando]

I was intrigued by the Ray.Norfolk quote. It is possible that the Ray in question is Ray Ashworth, one of the founders of Woodfordes. If it is him then the recipes veracity must be pretty high. I will ask him if he indeed did post it and get back when he answers.

[sllimeel]

This is the recipe that Ray Ashworth gave to our local CBA group, scaled down from the original CAMRA award winning recipe. The orignal was a hoppy beast, hence it's winning appeal, the brew today is a very poor beer in comparison!

Fermentable
Pale Malt 5 EBC 3550 grams
Caramalt 30 EBC 185 grams
Crystal Malt, Dark 300 EBC 185 grams


Hop Variety
Northdown Whole 90 mins 26 grams
Styrian Goldings Whole 5 mins 100 grams


Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.038
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.7% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30EBU
Colour: 26EBC

[seymour]

Cheers, slimeel, thanks for that! What else you been sittin' on?

[sllimeel]

Thats the only jem i have..