Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

When I was backpacking/pub crawling in the UK over Christmas I discovered that the Poms really enjoy their ales, and for some reason Fosters They even have an organisation, CAMRA, that reviews ales and pubs. They have 2 types of pubs the more modern chain owned pubs and the real gems called "Free Houses". Free Houses are independent pubs that are very traditional, and very welcoming. Because they are not allied with any one brewery they serve ales from small or local breweries. I was lucky enough to visit one or two of these pubs, ok pretty much every one in the country, and sampled/indulged in local beers and ales.

During the couple of weeks before Christmas until New Years the pubs serve beers that are not available at any other time of the year. At this time we stayed in Wolverhampton and visited a Free House around the corner from a mate's place. This pub must have had at least 15 taps, each one with a different ale. One that I tried, "The Last Rites", had 11.5% alcohol content! After trying a couple of pints of this potent brew I was, not surprisingly, as crissed as a picket. There were also ales with strange flavours, chillies and varying alcohol contents. I tried my hardest to taste all of them, and from what I remember did an admiral job of it!

My question is how would they have got the alcohol content so high? Does adding more sugars/yeast at the start do it or would it have been fortified? And can I produce an ale, or preferably a lager, at home with this alcohol level? It must be said that as an ale I gave it about a 6/10 for taste, but after the first pint the taste seemed to get better!

If anyone is lucky enough to get to Old Blighty give the big bars a miss and hit the little local haunts. I found the barkeeps and the punters to be friendly and always up for a party and they love Aussies there. The one chain I did frequent was Weatherspoons, but they are a Free House officially and served good tucker.

Now if we could only teach them that Fosters (brewed in Scotland) is so crap no Aussie really drinks it.

By adding more fermentables to the brew (malt, dextrrose etc) you can increase the %. We used to have a fairly popular brew that was between 7.5 and 8%. We used about 2x the amount of malt/dextrose / vol than the other brews. Although we didn't do it, you can get special yeasts that deal with the higher alcohol brews better than others.

I have a similar recipe here for a "Medievel Amber" that is right up there in % . I just have to get round to putting it down.

Cheers
Axl

We went to good old England in 94 and one of the bed and breakfasts had a bar and there was 2 taps fosters and vb

I went over in 99, They tried to feed me Fosters too but I ended up getting hooked on Kronenbourg 1776

Crikey, that would be enough to put me on the wagon

Mind you the Courage brewed XXXX wasn't too bad.
There is also a mob "Cask Marque" who give quality assurance checks to a heap of pubs, they check how clean the lines are, make sure people are given 1/2 pint of whatever brew they enquire about before purchasing it to make sure it is good and the lines are pulled through properly etc, they are another one to look for if you like your real ales

"Bush" brand beer from Belgium is 14% and far too strong to be enjoyable, "old speckled hen" is a good English ale, my favorite when I can afford it is Coopers extra stronge vintage ale, at 8.5% it is about as strong as I can handle and still enjoy the flavour of the ale (or is that remember the flavour of the ale).

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Why did the chicken cross the road? ... To have her motives questioned.

I agree with you thee Simo, Old Speckled Hen is very nice. As is Coopers Vintage Ale.
Coopers Vintage always reminds me of a Cross between Sparkling and Best Extra Stout.

I also like La Trappe Trappistenbier. I have 2 corked porcelain jugs of it, a Tripel 8.5% and a Quadrupel 10%. I have already had the Tripel and it was a really nice smooth beer. Bit fruity though.

There are some rippers at my local bottle shop, all sorts of unusual imported beers. Love a chimay on the odd occasion, can;t afford to drink it all the time though.

This website has a fair bit of info on imported beers www.internationalbeershop.com.au

Has anyone tried Oztops before www.oztops.com.au brilliant idea, and fun to play with all the different juices. Well worth trying for a bit of fun, I loved the apple and black current juice, made a very tasty brew.

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Bringing Food Production Home

My home brew is around 7-8%, and the ales you can buy hits as high as your talking, sugar is the key, proper brewing sugar though, cane sugar taste like crap

Fosters my god, An American I know, when he first came to Australia all he wanted was a fosters, told him it was crap, in fact I said it's that bad we send the lot to america, completely unsaleable in Australia, no way he said, crocodile dundee drinks it we found some in an obscure liquor store and he loved it, must drink crap in the states, he also wanted to take pictures of the croc's in the swan river I might add Years down the track he realizes that we don't have kangaroo's bouncing down st georges tce, no crocodiles in the swan and the whole crocodile dundee thing was a crock of shit (pardon the pun) and so is fosters, he can't beleive he actually thought it was good

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Cheers
Nocky
Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. Doug Larson
My Weather Site, going 12 years +
Nocky's Backyard
My Aquaponics System

Those strong ales were probably Barley wine,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley_wine

H.

Even tho I'm a wild turkey drinker the thing about brewing that I like is being able to lower the alcohol content. A lot of people try and make beer too strong to enjoy. I like the idea of making beer and sprits with a lot less alcohol but try and keep the taste. The liver might like this idea also.

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To think before you act is a wise option. But not as funny.

My Liver has been bad, it must be punished!

The type of yeast is a factor too.

When living in the bush I used to make a cider that went around 10% and used to use champagne yeast as it had the alcohol tolerance to get it that high.

You do, of course, also have to put in enough sugars to get it that high.

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