Bass

Irish people know Bass as a weak, tasteless red kegged/canned beer. This was certainly my experience of it. Our infamous taoiseach Bertie was a big fan, but was alone in his Bass preference from what I could see. When I first got interested in beer, around the time of that trip to Newcastle Upon Tyne (see the Landlord entry for more on that), I began to realise that Bass meant different things to the English than to us. The Bass available in Ireland was usually in a can and brewed in Belfast. When I ended up in a cosy roadside inn outside of Newcastle the day after my first cask ale (Landlord), it was Bass that mine host had put on the handpump.

 The difference was quite remarkable. This Bass had depth of flavour, many interweaving aromas and esters, with a dry finish. I'm still grateful to whatever hand was guiding me around my first 'Real Ales', as both the Landlord and the Bass were unforgettable brews, and my memory of the taste of each is as keen now as then.

I haven't before tried to brew it, and really this brew is more of a Bass inspired beer than a clone. I'm using Wyeast 1028, which is called 'London Ale', but is allegedly the Worthington White Shield yeast. This was pointed out to me by Will over at perfectpint.blogspot.com. I was going to try to get my hands on White Labs 'Burton Ale', but it may be the case that this is not from Burton at all, but rather Henley on Thames, and is in fact the same as WY1275, which I have had a patchy relationship with. Anyhow, if 1028 really is the white shield yeast, it should work really well for this beer.

For hops I'll be using Northern Brewer. I think they should give this beer a really unique hop presence, woody and earthy, and should be reminiscent of the Northdown/Challenger hops which I believe are the actual Bass hops. The third defining aspect of this beer will be the water profile. I'll be bumping up the sulphates quite a bit. The profile will be loosely based on Randy Mosher's Ideal Pale Ale profile, with the sulphates dialled back slightly from that. I'm aiming for about 110ppm of Ca, 280 SO4, and around 50 Cl.

Maltwise, I'm going for a 95% Maris Otter, 5% Medium Crystal bill. I'll add a little roasted barley for colour, as I want this to be a darkish orange heading for red. Why do I want this? I dunno, just do. This will be the second beer put on my new handpump, after the Beamish, so it's got about 3-4 weeks to mature if we go easy on the Beamish.

We won't go easy on the Beamish though.

The recipe is a mix of the Wheeler "Brew your own real ale at home" recipe, a "Brew your own" magazine recipe, and some adjustments by me based on experience.

Recipe:

3.91Kg     Simpsons Maris Otter
0.21Kg     Simpsons Crystal Medium
0.05Kg     Simpsons Roasted Barley

15g    Northern Brewer   9%AA     @60mins
30g    Northern Brewer   9%AA     @Flameout

yeast nutrient and koppafloc @ 10mins

No-Chill

Target OG 1.043

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I brewed this last night, having set the timer on my pot to have my water up to strike temp when I got home from work. Everything went quite smoothly until it was time to transfer to my cube - part of the no-chill process. I was using my oldest cube, and while sealing it up I felt a distinct warm sensation on my left foot. The cube had cracked about half way up one of the sides and wort was squirting out onto my shoe.

I've been brewing a lot lately and all of my other cubes were full. I made a snap decision to keg the Beamish I brewed last week and use its cube for the Bass. This made sense as the Beamish had finished fermenting within three days and is to be served as a 'real ale' on my handpump. I was aiming to turn the Beamish around quickly, though not as quickly as it ended up.

Having cleaned and sanitised the Beamish cube, I transferred the Bass clone from the leaking cube with the loss of about a litre or so of wort, not too bad and I should still be able to fill a keg with a little left over.

Fermentation for this one is:

0.5 packet of WY1028 London Ale into 500ml of wort
When finished transfer into 1.5L of wort
When at high krausen transfer to main batch.

I lost quite a bit of efficiency here, and my Ph was a bit low (5.3 at room temp). I suspect a relationship between those two things. I may need to adjust Ph up a bit when using so much sulphate in future. I still hit all of my numbers by judicious use of my refractometer.