Tasting Days: Irish Red and English Bitter

The way I schedule my batches, it takes about 7 weeks to go from grain to glass: fermenter for 3 weeks, in the bottle for 3 weeks, then a week in the fridge. Then enjoy.

I'll tell you right now: it is not easy waiting that long.

The best way to counteract impatience is to have a good pipeline in place. If I can brew every few weeks, then I have batches in various stages of production, and it gets my mind off any single batch.

It also means I sometimes have the happy fortune of beers ready for their first tasting day in consecutive weeks.

Such was the case with two of my latest batches, an Irish Red (last week) and an English Bitter (this week).

I had brewed a batch of this Irish Red last year and really enjoyed it. I wanted to rebrew it this year in time for St. Paddy's Day, but I didn't want a full case of it, so I just made a small 1-gallon batch that yielded 9 bottles. I made a small adjustment to the grain bill over last year's batch - I cut the roasted barley in half, which made the color of the final beer a bit lighter - and I made some changes to how I treated the water in order to highlight the malt character over the hops.

This year's Irish Red is indeed lighter in color, but the reduction in the roasted barley also cut back the roasted character of the beer. Irish Reds don't have the roastiness of a stout, but they should have just enough roast to leave a dry finish on the palate. Next time I brew this recipe, I'll probably try to source a lighter color roasted barley, so I can have the lighter color as well as the drier finish.

The beer I was really waiting to try was the English Bitter.

Bitter is one of the many styles I've never tried. It's not easy to find commercial examples in the States, and I hear they're getting difficult to find even in the UK. But I also hear they can be a fantastic drink.

If you can't find it in the store, why not make your own?

I had planned to open my first bottle of the bitter on Saturday, but I just couldn't wait, so Friday it was. I was so happy with how it turned out, I ended up dreaming that night I was in England, hopping from pub to pub, drinking this delightful brew.

The first thing to note is that bitters are not bitter. The recipe I brewed is balanced toward the biscuity malt, but it finishes just dry enough to drive you back for another sip. And at 4% abv, it's easy to drink by the pint. The characteristically low carbonation and higher serving temp (around 55° F) make this bitter go down very smooth.

Two lessons learned: never judge a style by its name, and always try to have some bitter in the pipeline.