Wells Bombardier Premium Ale

[Jaeger48]

I recently brewed an ESB that I thought was close to style but (at least in BeerSmith) but after much dismay in a local brew club rating and reading Jamil's recipe I felt I was quite off the mark. I decided to buy quite a few different bottles of commercial examples and have been sampling them before my next brew day. Nothing I found was close to what I had brewed until tonight I opened the last example- Wells Bombardier Premium Ale. Finally an ale close to the one I had brewed, slightly better attenuation and more hop character than my beer but I feel I'm close.

I do enjoy this beer and I'm going to play around with my fermentation temperature and hop schedule but I was curious- how many people have tried this ale and if I were to enter something similar in a competition are there any thoughts on how it would fare?

[Fritz Eye]

That's a tough one as I just had this over the weekend. It was served at around 55 degrees from a gravity pin.
Their website refers to it as a Premium Bitter which I gues is the same as an ESB
It was darker than most ESBs and had more notes of plum or currents in it.
This could be a good call for the Pope or check the Archives for the Jamil Show, I believe the covered ESB and maybe even Bitters
Good luck, it sounds like a fantastic beer non the less.
Cheers
Fritz

[Jaeger48]

They did and judging by the plum and raisin notes in the recipe I think they (Wells) are using a fair amount of crystal 120 in their ESP to get those notes. It reads as 5.2% alcohol which means they probably have an OG of around 1.056 and assuming their running a traditional English yeast. In my first attempt I used 6.6 lbs of Coopers LME after steeping 1/2 pound of crystal 40 and 1/2 lb of crystal 60. It didn't have the same body and raisin flavor so I tried another version where I added a bit more hops and 1/2 lb of 120. This was too roasty and leads me to believe I need to try a combination of 40 and 80. First I'm going run a few batches with 7 lbs of English DME (thank you Northern Brewer) and the original 1/2 & 1/2 40 and 60. I'm still not sure how well it would do in competition but if it's a tasty beer I'm not going to care. ^^

[Fritz Eye]

nice job, it sounds lie a great experiemnt. I did the same sort of thing with hop schedules for IPAs that I actually did half batches. Primaried in a 5 gal. carboy and transfered to a 3 gallon carboy I bought for the occasion.
It was kind of cool working with lighter brew pots and carboys, plus I brewed every weekend for 4 straight weeks.
Brew on.
Fritz

[boobookittyfuk]

nice job, it sounds lie a great experiemnt. I did the same sort of thing with hop schedules for IPAs that I actually did half batches. Primaried in a 5 gal. carboy and transfered to a 3 gallon carboy I bought for the occasion.
It was kind of cool working with lighter brew pots and carboys, plus I brewed every weekend for 4 straight weeks.
Brew on.
Fritz

Fritz makes a nice IPA. I know because I judged it at the state fair

[Jaeger48]

Well it's in the primary but I didn't scale it back for my smaller primary carboy (5 gal) because I have still have Jamil's Haroldisweizen in my 6 gallon primary. OG was @ 1.070 (still doing top off water) so I pitched anyway and will get a 6 gallon better bottle tomorrow and rack to that. I'll pitch another smack pack (Wyeast's London ESB) just to make sure it's going to attenuate.

One thing I really found interesting was the difference between the Munton's Light DME compared to the 1lb of Briess DME I used to get my OG closer to where it needed to be. The Munton's has a wonderful soft malty character while the Briess seemed sweeter and somehow harsher. I've used the Briess DME at length before but will be using the Munton's in all my English Isle beers for a while.

[Fritz Eye]

Fritz makes a nice IPA. I know because I judged it at the state fair [/quote]

Thanks for thr props BBKKF but I hope you did not ruin your crediblity with the BJCP.
At the time I unknowingly was using stale Cascades and a base malt that was darker than I anticipated.
Am know using Briess with much better results. I may not brew strong, but am brewing stronger.
Cheers.
Fritz