Gale's Brewery (Hampshire UK) recipes

[Otters]

Hello All

As per my recent post on the 'brewdays' post. Please find herewith recipes for Butser Best Bitter, Gales Best Bitter and Horndean Special Bitter. Alas the two formers are no longer brewed because Gales were swallowed up by fullers in 2006 and they ceased production of these beers in favour of pushing their own beers.

However, if you remember sampling these magnificent beers or curious to recreate a fine English beer, using the recipes below you can recreate them, and HSB, to their former glory.

Brewing notes:

Mash at 66/65 C
Assume 70% efficiency
use a an English Bitter style water profile (i find Mr Wheelers sheet invaluable)
Add aroma hops 5 mins before end of boil
Use a standard English ale yeast - and ferment at about 20C for a week and then condition. I start at about 17/18 and let it rise to 20C and control from there
you could use a darker crystal malt for more complexity?
Use golden syrup as sugar addition but don't forget to adjust for the solids content - about 82% solids.

The recipes:
Butser Best Bitter
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 7 lbs. 12.4 oz 3530 grams 85%
Torrefied Wheat 4 EBC 0 lbs. 10.2 oz 290 grams 7%
Black Malt 1300 EBC 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 21 grams 0.5%
Sugar, Household White 0 EBC 0 lbs. 7.3 oz 205 grams 5%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 0 lbs. 3.6 oz 100 grams 2.5%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Challenger Whole 7.7 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.5 oz 14 grams 34%
Fuggle Whole 5.1 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.6 oz 16 grams 40.8%
Golding Whole 5.7 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 25.1%


Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.036
Final Gravity: 1.007
Alcohol Content: 3.7% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 22.191246000608 EBU
Colour: 17 EBC

Gales Best Bitter
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 9 lbs. 11.4 oz 4410 grams 87%
Torrefied Wheat 4 EBC 0 lbs. 5.4 oz 150 grams 3%
Black Malt 1300 EBC 0 lbs. 0.9 oz 26 grams 0.5%
Sugar, Household White 0 EBC 0 lbs. 8.9 oz 250 grams 5%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 0 lbs. 8.0 oz 225 grams 4.5%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Challenger Whole 7.7 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.6 oz 16 grams 35.4%
Fuggle Whole 5.1 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 19 grams 42.4%
Golding Whole 5.7 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 22.2%


Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 37.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 24.1091248126373 EBU
Colour: 24 EBC

Gales HSB
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 11 lbs. 11.8 oz 5330 grams 85.5%
Torrefied Wheat 4 EBC 0 lbs. 12.7 oz 360 grams 5.8%
Black Malt 1300 EBC 0 lbs. 2.2 oz 63 grams 1%
Sugar, Household White 0 EBC 0 lbs. 10.5 oz 295 grams 4.8%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 0 lbs. 6.3 oz 180 grams 2.9%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Challenger Whole 7.7 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 20 grams 34.9%
Fuggle Whole 5.1 % 90 mins 0 lbs. 0.8 oz 23 grams 41.9%
Golding Whole 5.7 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.5 oz 13 grams 23.2%


Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 38.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 27.1543572715384 EBU
Colour: 37 EBC

If you brew one then please let me know how you get on. Don't forget to have a look at my GBB clone on the brewdays post

rgds

Otters

[Andy]

Cheers! Used to love a lunchtime pint of HSB when I was working near Portsmouth

HSB is still brewed BTW (by Fullers in London but with the Gales "brand" retained).

[Otters]

Hi all

forgot to mention that the 'Butser Bitter' is dry hopped with goldings! My sources tell me that after the initial fermentation the beer was stored in a conditioning tank and dry hopped for 3 days.

10gms in either a secondary fv or barrel for a week should do the trick...

Rgds

otters

[pjpeers]

I used to live close to the brewery and can still remember the fantastic smell it produced on brewdays, I went on a tour of it on one of its last open days, definitely one of the influencing factors on me taking up brewing at home!

I'll definitely have to give these recipes ago, thank you for sharing them

[seymour]

...thank you for sharing them

Yes, thank you!

I had some of that same info, but I've seen a contradictory Gales HSB/Horndean Special Bitter grainbill of 78.5% Pale, 5% Torrified Wheat, 1.5% Black Malt, 15% White Sugar. Obviously, that's a lot more simple sugar than your recipe, but not out-of-line with similarly higher-grav English Special Bitters. What do you think?

Also, we've said it a lot on other threads, but it bears repeating here: Marble beers from Manchester are fermented using the classic Gales yeast strain, and it's easily cultured from their unfiltered/unpasteurized bottles. I used yeast from a Marble Dobber bottle on my last batch, and plan to keep repitching it as long as I can.

[Goulders]

Bump

Just to bump an old thread, a homebrew club member pointed out that there is a video of Gales on YouTube

If you go to about 2 minutes in, you will see the malt bill for HSB. This doesn't have the sugar (which was a syrup btw) but a quick calculation based on black malt being 1% of the malt bill, the recipe comes up with:

Pale malt 75.7%
T Wheat 6.5%
Black 1%
Crystal 3.2%
Invert (Golden Syrup) 15.6%

If you see this thread, you will see some follow up to recent conversations with one of the ex-brewers.

Basically:
N0 late hopping of any note
It was fermented at 23.5 degrees for the first 24 hours (19.5/20 after)
Mash at 64 degrees
FG of 1013/1013.5
Crystal Light (70L) used, because that was used in the bitters and made ordering easier. Used to be dark crystal but when they changed there was no noticeable taste difference.
Yeast was Whitbread B (new propogation every 2 weeks)

As an aside, Malcolm at Irving & Co uses good quality sugar (more expensive than malt) in some of his brews for flavour and it also reduces nitrogen in the boil. He puts that in at the beginning of the boil, but I don't know when Gales added their syrup.

Don't ask me any questions on the above as that is all I have been able to glean, but hopefully it helps someone wanting to clone Gale's beer.

[Edited to move the FG info]

[BrewerBen]

That video is a great find, i had never seen the inside of gales before. I liked all the old brewing equipment they used. I wonder what happened to it all.

[Piscator]

Goulders thanks for bumping this and the link to the video - that is great stuff.

I've been thinking for a while that my next brewing project might be working on getting low(er) gravity traditional English bitter really nailed and repeatable. I think this is tougher than it sounds as the focus is on the malt and yeast with no huge doses of hops to hide any defects. This thread and the video have helped me to make up my mind, and I'll be starting off by brewing the Butser Bitter recipe posted by Otters in the morning.

I'm just off to weigh out the specialty grains & hops now.

Cheers
Steve

EDIT: Mmmmmmmm forgot how much I love Fuggles, they smell awesome

[Pinto]

EDIT: Mmmmmmmm forgot how much I love Fuggles, they smell awesome

Brought back a random memory - my Grandparents used to live in a little tithe cottage on the kent/sussex border and I used to visit quite often; although (as far as I know) my grandad wasn't a homebrewer, along the southern wall of the cottage they had fuggles bine growing wild and free amongst the other plants, and while passing one late summer day, I grabbed a stem complete with 3 or 4 cones which I hung on the rear view mirror of my car.

Nicest smelling and longest lasting air freshener I've ever had !

[Piscator]

Lovely memory

[Pinto]

Recommendation too lol - much better than a magic tree

[hambrook]

So attempt number 6 at HSB brewed yesterday;
- Salifert measurement taken night before with 33 litres of brewing liquor prepared with CRS and DLS; 7 litres moved to HLT; 25 litres in the Braumiester
- Invert sugar (Golden Syrup) replaces Granulated Sugar
- DARK Crystal replaces medium crystal to improve colour profile
- 23 Litre batch in a 2015 Braumeister with 90 min mash at 60 degrees, 10 mash out at 78 degrees, 5 litre 78 degree sparge, 90 minute boil
- Wyeast 1332 Northwest Liquid yeast made into a 2 litre starter 18 hours ahead of pitching. Prepared via James Bond method
- Pitched at 24 degrees and into the brew fridge at 23.5 degrees

This might be the closest I get and will be the base of my nano-brewery premium strength brew. I now want to learn how to harvest the other Wyeast pack so this becomes the 'Brewery yeast'. The learning continues.

As a side note I tasted my first HSB made in The Braumesiter last night, MASSIVE improvement on all other HSBs I have brewed. This particular recipe I boosted the Black Malt and swapped out white sugar for molasses. Big leap in taste and this was before any water treatment. It's not quick fruity enough which I hope the water treatment and the Wyeast 1332 (Originated from Gales strain); might just bring that out paired with the invert sugar. This brew will be available to taste at the next Pompey Homebrew Club meet on 12 May - hunt the Facebook group if you want to come along.

[Piscator]

Hambrook - do you have any info on the dry hopping at Gales? Otters suggested they used goldings but my old copy of Michael Jacksons Beer Guide says their draught ales were dry hopped with styrian goldings? Any views?

Cheers
Steve

[hambrook]

From my discussions with the ex head of QC at Gales late hopping was almost non-existent. I don't think they dry hopped at all. Gales was malty, flat, sweet English ale with hardly any head and no complex hopping. HSB was fruity, chestnut and hint of Dundee / Fruit Cake.

[Piscator]

Great, thanks for the inside info - I've dry hopped my first Butser with a small amount of goldings.... I'll leave them out of the next batch.
When you say late hopping was almost non-existant does that mean they did use a small amount of late hops or that they only used one charge of kettle hops at start of the boil?
Yes I remember HSB from my uni days in Sussex, I might work on that once I get Butser where I want it.

Cheers
Steve