[reverseapachemaster]

You can dig backwards in time to find all of the interesting recipes with honey, fruit, various herbs and spices, but the last five hundred or so years has been an exercise in narrowing the field to a relatively small number of styles and recipes. (But that seems to be true for most European brewing over the same time.) Before the scientific and industrial revolutions in the nineteenth century you see a lot of similar recipes across the country and across a long stretch of time but the way brewers brewed and aged those recipes seems to carry far more variance. Combine sometimes elaborate brewing processes with local hops and grain, local water and the brewer's mixed fermentation culture and you have unique character in these beers that is not easily replicated by taking a simple pale ale recipe and replicating it with the same grain, hops, yeast and water used by the industrial brewers in London or Burton.

[clibit]

Fraoch from Scotland, which is heather ale. The few i've had have been very nice.

Quite a few breweries here do elderflower ales, usually a blonde ale, or similar.

I'm a big fan of the English Golden ales on cask, which are very common here in England now. Lower hopping than a typical APA, but with nice yeast and malts and a well handled cask process they can be really fantastic. With English hops is good but the American hopped versions are wonderful. You can combine English and American hops very effectively too. IMO bottle conditioned beer is closer to cask than it gets credit for. It's not exactly the same, but you can prime lowish and I find by swirling a pint it becomes pretty similar to a cask pint. I use around 4 to 5g per litre of dextrose for priming (not sure what this is in dollars sorry), which is a bit high, hence the swirling. I prefer this to priming lower, you get a nice condition and can knock out excess gas if you want. I'm a bit mid Atlantic with beers like this - mix English and American hops, use lower hop amounts than you folks but more than UK beers tend to, serve cooler than UK cask but not keg cold, more CO2 than UK but less than USA! Ha. Some UK pubs are serving cask a bit colder than is traditional, as it stores better and I suspect it is popular with a lot of people, particularly in summer - when golden ales are in full flow.

[fredthecat]

Fraoch from Scotland, which is heather ale. The few i've had have been very nice.

Quite a few breweries here do elderflower ales, usually a blonde ale, or similar.

I'm a big fan of the English Golden ales on cask, which are very common here in England now. Lower hopping than a typical APA, but with nice yeast and malts and a well handled cask process they can be really fantastic. With English hops is good but the American hopped versions are wonderful. You can combine English and American hops very effectively too. IMO bottle conditioned beer is closer to cask than it gets credit for. It's not exactly the same, but you can prime lowish and I find by swirling a pint it becomes pretty similar to a cask pint. I use around 4 to 5g per litre of dextrose for priming (not sure what this is in dollars sorry), which is a bit high, hence the swirling. I prefer this to priming lower, you get a nice condition and can knock out excess gas if you want. I'm a bit mid Atlantic with beers like this - mix English and American hops, use lower hop amounts than you folks but more than UK beers tend to, serve cooler than UK cask but not keg cold, more CO2 than UK but less than USA! Ha. Some UK pubs are serving cask a bit colder than is traditional, as it stores better and I suspect it is popular with a lot of people, particularly in summer - when golden ales are in full flow.

good analysis and ideas. i am going with the equivalent of about 6.3g per litre of dextrose, but am trying to get it lower and lower for some styles.

[clibit]

good analysis and ideas. i am going with the equivalent of about 6.3g per litre of dextrose, but am trying to get it lower and lower for some styles.

Try cutting to 5g maybe, for certain styles at least. And wait longer than 2 weeks, I find the condition really starts to hit its stride after around 4 weeks, varies obviously. Good cask isn't flat at all, it just isn't obviously fizzy. If you swirl the glass you'll get a rush of small bubbles that form a strong head.You can get a similar effect in keg beer tbh, if you don't over carbonate and allow the CO2 to absorb. I think that makes sense. My mate kegs all his beer but carbonates low.