Ron Pattinson has just published a really great blog post about “amber beer”.
We’ll admit it: we sometimes struggle with the level of scholarly detail on Ron’s blog. This post, though, is really illuminating.
It’s interesting to us for a couple of reasons.
First, because when we first started brewing, we tried to make something called an amber beer based on a recipe we found on some corner of the internet. It didn’t work, but the malt smelled incredible.
Secondly, Ron talks about punters with a fixed idea of what a beer should cost — 3d. That reminded us of the Czech Republic, where we got the impression that bigger brewers were dumbing their beer down to keep to a magic price point that local punters demand.
In the UK, we seem to have smashed through £3 a pint without blood on the streets, but we were worried there for a while.
5 replies on “Read Ron on Amber Beer”
Hi
Did you guys mash with amber malt or something like in Ron’s posting pale and black malt with a low O.G.?
It was years ago, but I think we used almost all amber malt, misunderstanding completely what it was and how it should be used. (Maybe there is a difference between what amber malt means in the US and the UK, and we were using a US recipe? Can’t quite recall how we made such a mess of it.)
Nothing like the beer Ron’s describing!
I think it also looks a bit different to Martyns book (Amber Gold and Black), must look over it this evening
Also modern amber malt has no diastatic power generally, but there is one available
In the Sam Smith’s estate in the North-West there’s still some way to go before the £2 a pint barrier is breached 🙂
Curmudgeon — true, and you can still get a sub-£2 pint in a Sam Smith’s pub in London, but our two locals here in Cornwall both charge more than £3 a pint as standard, and neither are posh places. (Or tourist pubs.)