"Endangered" Beer: Burton Ale

In the last few weeks, Burton ale has come up in my blog feed not once but twice: first in a post on endangered beers by Martyn Cornell, then again the other day in a writeup specifically on the style by Jeff Alworth.  The components of this old English style, especially for its original iterations, are either impressive or frightening, depending on your point of view: high starting and finishing gravities, with a staggeringly massive bittering charge.  This is a amber-to-dark, heavy beer that balances its substantial residual sweetness with an incredible amount of bitterness.  Certainly not one that encourages (or rewards, presumably) pounding back multiple pints in a sitting.

The first mention of the style I came across was an article in Zymurgy last year, also written by Martyn (along with Antony Hayes).  It came out around when Northern Brewer released its Northern No. 1 limited-edition kit, a stronger interpretation of this style than the recipe in the article.  Since then, I've had a Burton ale on my long-term docket; I've never tried one, and I'm not sure that I'll even like it once I have it.  The thought of creating a beer that needs a year just to become drinkable, though, was too intriguing not to try.

The recipe I used is pretty much straight from Zymurgy; I upped the base malt, inched down the chocolate, and went with domestic grain.  To increase the caramel undertones and make up for efficiency loss, I gave it a 120-minute boil; between the long boil and hop absorption, I'm only expecting about 3 1/2 gallons in the end.  In anticipation of this brew, I've had the half-pound of Kent Goldings hanging out in the back of my beer freezer since January; they went in the pot for the full boil.  Filtering 8 ounces of hops through a funnel strainer is not my idea of fun, and plenty of vegetable material seems to have made it into the carboy anyway.  Everything about this beer is big, including the water additions; the 12 grams of gypsum I added to Burtonize my local water even made the unhopped pre-boil wort taste rough.  I've started rehydrating dry yeast, adding a little yeast energizer to the mix, and my beers have been taking off very quickly; this one started about 2 hours after pitching, then forced me to move to a blowoff tube the next morning.

While this beer is far from making it into the glass, there are a few things I'd change were I to rebrew it.  I'd probably increase my base malt (and switch to an English pale variety like Maris Otter) even more and aim for an even bigger, older version of this style.  The small amount of chocolate malt darkened the wort a lot more than I was expecting; some day I'll stop believing the projected colours Beersmith gives me, as light beers almost always turn out darker than expected and vice-versa.  Next time I'll lower it even more and probably switch to pale chocolate.  I'd also be interested in brewing a recipe more in line with what Martyn describes going into Greene King's Burton Pale Ale in an earlier post, including crystal malt and a couple different caramels and brewing sugars.  For now, though, I'm content to see how this one matures.  I'm just waiting for primary fermentation to finish so I can move it to long-term storage and age it on some oak cubes.  For a freaking year.

Burton Ale

Batch size: 3.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.085
Projected SRM: 14.9
Projected IBU: 186.4
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 54%

Grains
98.8% - 15 lb Malteurop 2-row
1.2% - 3 oz Briess Chocolate

Hops
8 oz EKG (5.4%) (120 min)
2 oz EKG (Dry hop 2 weeks)

Yeast
2 pkgs Windsor dry yeast

Extras
1 tbsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
1 tbsp Irish moss (10 min)
2 oz Oak cubes, home toasted - medium (secondary)

Water profile
SLC

Water additions (mash)
2 qts RO water
12 g Gypsum
7 g Epsom salt
1 g Chalk

Brewday: 5 June 2012
Mash: 20 qts @ 150F for 90 minutes
1st sparge: 8.5 qts @ 200F
2nd sparge: 9 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume: 7.4 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 12.9P (1.052)

Much darker than expected; can’t believe so much colour came out of just 3 oz of chocolate
Lots of hop trub seems to have ended up in the fermenter, despite filtering
Fermented in swamp cooler at 65F ambient
Blew off the airlock on day 2; replaced with blowoff tube for a little under a day until it settled down

Secondary: 1 September 2012?
“Re-”oaked: 5 January 2013
Don’t remember when I moved this one, nor can I recall if I actually added the oak at the time.  Not terribly worried about over-oaking this one, I added 3.1 oz oak in January.  Still haven’t tasted it; will wait until the one-year mark to do so.