Fullers Imperial IPA

I noticed the recipe on twitter today so reposted it here in case anyone wants to reproduce this one.

[Dennis King]

I wonder what No.3 powder is.

It looks like they add black pepper at the end of the boil - any-one else do this or am I reading code for something else?

We'll they're not American so I doubt it will be bell peppers.

If you want a peppery hop but it's cheaper or tastier to add a different hop + pepper it kind of makes sense.

Brilliant - is there one for London Pride somewhere?

Oh and their Porter, two of the best beers darn sarf.

Not that I've seen, although I don't go on twitter very often.

This might be something that they're doing now though as it was tweeted by a brewer and then retweeted by the main brewery account so they're obviously comfortable with the recipe being out in the world.

Maybe you could just email them and ask for the other recipes you want?

would have thought they'd be more guarded over beers like pride and porter. i think these are oneoff brews?

still can get plenty of information about their brews/process from just these two sheets though. loving these

I'm sure Fuller's brewmaster gave out the recipe for Pride on an episode of Can You Brew It?

That's it. And I think they also did 1845, and Meantime's IPA and Porter. Lots of good stuff on that show, pity they seem to have stopped doing it. The Jamil show, which has replaced it(?) seems to be more drinking, burping and overall far less informative......

Interesting how scaled back to 20 litre brew thats nearly a kilo of sugar/ragus...if its a 260 HL brew right

Not a fan of adding sugar to a brew as it is usually only done to keep costs down rather than really to add something to the beer . Some sugars can be good though

Sometimes brewers add something to keep it cheap and accidently find it adds to the beer like flaked rice in Budweiser

Even taking into account extraction efficiency, that from Ragus Invert #3 would still be more than twice as expensive than could be obtained from Fawcett's M.O. The main advantage of sugar in this recipe is a high original gravity without an excessively long boil or low efficiency lauter.

The State of Missouri, the home of Budweiser, is one of six US major rice producers, nearly 20% of which is used in beer manufacture. Rice is low in nitrogen (yes, taste too) while 6 row barley has enzyme levels sufficient to convert a higher level of adjuct than using the two row more common in UK.

The use of rice didn't catch on in the same way in more northern parts of the US or in Canada due to the additional cost of transport compared with using more locally grown barley and wheat.
The use of Invert sugar as in the Fuller's recipe also produces a beer with less nitrogen and thereby less likely to haze.

I used unrefined sugar from a local Punjab shop, jaggary, in a recent brew. I've never used ragus but I would love someone who has used it to comment on how similar they are. The eventual brew was a disaster as ran out of malt, used home grown cascade and tesco had 3 bags of frozen cherries for a fiver which I added as a grand finale. Looks good but hops fight cherries in a week brew.

Jaggary, is that the sugar made from coconut nectar?

Jaggary can be made from a range of saps such as cane juice , palm and date oils. I've never brewed with it but have drank a Belgian style beer that incorporated jaggery. The beer was too complex for me to determine what of the flavours it provided.

Invert sugar is made from cane sugar, candy sugar from beet.

In all cases such additives provide extra flavours without being dominant.

At those ratios it comes out at:
77% MO
11.5 Crystal light
11.5% Invert

there's so many different way to balance a beer, and fuller's really are masters of it. even their super-hoppy american beers are well rounded.

i wonder if their yeast is quite attenuative too. like eric says, there's plenty of invert in there, and they're chucking in a lot of gypsum. i've actually settled on a slightly opposed approach - using invert and low mash temps but boosting sweetness with chlorides and a medium attenuating yeast.

it's also light crystal so i wouldn't expect the flavour to be overpowering either. plenty of people (me included) have gone much higher with regular crystal. dark crystal i might be more cautious of