BeerBorg

To begin with, let me say that if you are not interested in making a session ale, no need to read this post. A session ale, as served in English pubs, is a relatively low-alcohol beer intended to see you through the evening. Meaning you can have a few pints and still get on the tube (mind the gap).

As research, my grown son and I went to London last year to visit pubs and drink real ale. We managed to visit 26 pubs in a week. We also liked the pub grub.

I have been brewing off and on since 1970, mostly without any great success. Lately I have been interested in brewing session ales like the English bitters we had in London. So, I decided to try the Innkeeper kit from Northern Brewer. It is a Timothy Taylor Landlord clone.

My latest batch of Innkeeper is the best beer I have ever made. It a classic English bitter; it could be served in any London pub. But it didn't start out that way. I have made eight batches of Innkeeper.

The first four did not turn out well because I made some yeast mistakes (Don't mail-order liquid yeast in the summer, and don't try to make Innkeeper with dry yeast)

But the fifth batch of Innkeeper was a very good bitter. I made it with WY-1469 West Yorkshire yeast. I shared a liter with my son who thought it was perfect.

So, my conclusion is that it is well worth working on a style until you get it right. Batch eight of Innkeeper is now in the fermenter.

Sounds like a great "research trip" that you took. 26 pubs! That's one way to really know a style.

I definitely agree that repeating a recipe with small variations is the best way to hone in on a perfect brew! My problem is my attention span and patience are both too short and I like way too many styles of beer so I brew some of everything. On a good note my shotgun approach does yield some winners from time to time

Hey guys great to see you both on.

Diversity is good, we do case sized batches in LBKs so we always have different things in the pipeline but I like that the OP stuck to his guns until he got the results he wanted on a style that he liked alot.

We redo batches often after taking tasting notes and deciding on some changes that might improve a recipe we designed. I consider those types "house ales" because they were good enough to tweak and repeat.