Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

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M3Brewery
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Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by M3Brewery » Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:02 pm

Hello All,

Our brewing collective "M3 Brewery" want to try an all grain Winter Royal from Wethered.
We've looked at the Castle Eden recipe in "Real Ales for the Home Brewer" by Marc Ollossen, and are questioning the 2 hours mash time and 2 hours boil time.
We've been brewing all grain recipes for four years and have always limited the mash and boil to 1 hour. Results are good.

Any suggestions would be helpful, especially if you have brewed this recipe. We are using a 90 litre steel pot HLT, Mash Tun and Boiler setup with gas burners and corni kegs for storage.

Thanks

Jon

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Eric
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by Eric » Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:42 pm

Hi,

There is little doubt that some good beers can be made with one hour mash and boil, but as a norm I prefer to mash and boil for longer.

I don't know of the book you mention nor its author, but if the Castle Eden recipe is from the Castle Eden brewery that was in County Durham, then indeed they did mash and boil for such periods and more. Below is a photograph of their actual brewing book when they mashed for two and a half hours before they underlet and boiled for 2 hours. This was for a brown ale and at that time they would boil their paler worts for two and a quarter hours.

Hope this helps.
BA.JPG
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charliemartin
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by charliemartin » Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:53 am

Whatever happened to the brewery? We used to get Castle Eden ales in Aberdeen back in the eighties. Not seen it for years.

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Eric
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by Eric » Thu Jan 17, 2019 5:37 pm

charliemartin wrote:
Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:53 am
Whatever happened to the brewery? We used to get Castle Eden ales in Aberdeen back in the eighties. Not seen it for years.

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Sadly long since gone and today their site is a rather good housing estate. Gobbled up by Whitbread, there's a bit of a resume of their history to be found here. I'm not sure those facts and timelines are precisely correct, but it will give you the picture.

Joseph Nimmo's was a particularly successful regional brewer in terms that they invested in modern handling systems while brewing in traditional ways. Their output was significant to supply the demand by many industrial workers. They malted barley from Cambridge to the Scottish Borders which were blended only at the mash tun. Hops were direct from selected growers and the blend determined for each brew, they were truly craft brewers of their time. I would have thought it was into the late sixties before the Nimmo's estate (and that of Flower's) were rebranded as Whitbread and Trophy introduced and brewed at Castle Eden.

When Whitbreads decided to close Castle Eden there was a management buyout with a contract for what I thought was seven years to brew for Whitbread. I think when that contract ended the site was sold for housing to buy Cameron's (the Lion brewery) in Hartlepool, which now does mainly contract brewing. They do occasionally brew Castle Eden Ale which I think might be to the original Nimmo's XXXX recipe. I might have confused facts here from the various bits of information I've managed to find. Nimmo's business was quite extensive and interacted many others, even one time a family member taught brewing at Durham University, but can't remember if that was late 19th or early 20th.

The recent attempts at Nimmo's XXXX at Hartlepool did not match that from Castle Eden in my opinion. I've been meaning to have a go since learning early last year when an aunt died, aged 103, that XXX was her favourite tipple in fifties and sixties. When tring to determine their techniques and manner of brewing from the brewing books you quickly realise without the actual brewery, supply chain, skilled staff and many other aspects how impossible it becomes and why today we come across many relatively bland beers.
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charliemartin
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by charliemartin » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:31 am

Very interesting information. The name Flowers rang a bell too. I think the beer we got up here was actually called Flower's Castle Eden ale.

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Eric
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by Eric » Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:56 am

charliemartin wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:31 am
Very interesting information. The name Flowers rang a bell too. I think the beer we got up here was actually called Flower's Castle Eden ale.

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That was interesting to read, got my mind to drag up all sorts from the past, but to Flowers. R Fenwick started a brewery in Sunderland towards the end of the 19th century which was sold when the company moved into malting and mineral water manufacture. That company might in some form be going today, "Villa" being perhaps their best known product in their history. Anyway, at some stage that brewery came into the hands of Stratford based Flowers. They were taken over by Whitbreads about the same time as Nimmo's and the local estates of both breweries were rebranded and the Flowers brewery closed to concentrate brewing at Castle Eden.

I remember being in a Flowers pub opposite their brewery in the mid sixties when the beer went off. The landlady shouted for two chaps sitting in the window who carried the then empty wooden kilderkiln over to the brewery and returned with a full one which was immediately tapped and dispensed. I still wonder if the brewery kept a specially racked barrel for that pub. The Flowers brewery would certainly be gone by 1970, I think I was drinking Trophy in one-time Flowers pub that year.

Beer went both ways between Scotland and North East England and my beer of choice in the sixties was McEwan's Special, as it was called here. From the 1920s into the fifties James Deuchar had two ships, Lochside I and Lochside II, bring his beers down here from Montrose before a merger formed Scottish and Newcastle. In the 19th century a Deuchar, not sure if the same one or family, had a brewery in Sunderland that brewed with water brought from Scotland by boat. Similar happened in England with water by rail from Burton which continued into the sixties. It was in the late fifties that the Burton Yeast company ceased trading, just one of the many changes to British brewing in those years.

I've ordered a copy of the book mentioned by the OP.
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by Jocky » Mon Feb 04, 2019 3:52 pm

Shorter mashes/boils have become more popular among home brewers in the past 10-15 years or so with the realisation that longer boils aren't necessary to produce beer on a home brew scale.

While saying that, if you are trying to clone a specific beer you may need to think a bit about that brewery's methods and specific ingredients, and a commercial brewery is a different beast to a home brewery.

For example, what are they counting as the 'boiling' time? While I may start the timer from when I first see movement on the surface of the wort, a commercial brewery may count the time as being from when the mash is finished lautering and the kettle burners are fired up. While it may take an hour to get to what I would consider a boil, they count it as boil time.
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Re: Winter Royal Wethered / Castle Eden

Post by HTH1975 » Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:43 pm

The two breweries I’ve worked at both start the boil time from when there is a rolling boil; which should be in conjunction with the end of the sparge if you’re on the ball and have set the heat correctly on the boil kettle.

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