Landlord

I can remember quite vividly the first pint of Landlord I ever drank. I was in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne for the weekend with my girlfriend and another couple. Not knowing Joe all that well, the girls suggested we head for a pint while they went shopping. We found a dingy pub upstairs over a shop, and both ordered our first ever pints of cask ale. By some miracle it just happened to be Timothy Taylor Landlord. It was an extraordinarily fine pint of beer. As a stout drinker from Ireland, lightly carbonated cellar temperature beer wasn't the huge jump in beer drinking experience it might have been for some. I think we had one or two more before Joe rang the girls to ask for more time, which was duely granted. We ended up more than slightly tipsy on a Friday evening at about 5 O'Clock. Nice.

I was lucky enough to find it in one or two pubs in London a couple of years later, and again it made a huge impression on me. Cask Landlord is the kind of beer craft brewers should be aiming to make. First and foremost it's drinkable, as my mother would say "There's a taste of more off it". This drinkability comes from a perfect balance. You can taste everything that's gone into the making of Landlord, but nothing dominates. It has a gentle yeast character, beautiful styrian golding aroma, nutty maltiness.

Unfortunately I have not been able to source a decent bottle of Landlord anywhere here in Australia. Every example I have tried has been badly oxidised with zero hop character, as well as costing a small fortune. As a moderate alcohol, relatively moderately hopped beer (well compared to some hop monsters anyway), I suppose it was never going to travel very well. There's only one solution available to satisfy my thirst - brew it!

Luckily I'm not alone in my Landlord obsession. It's got to be one of the most talked about beers on UK and Aussie homebrew forums. In particular Dr Smurto's Landlord on Aussiehomebrewer is frequently mentioned as a particularly tasty clone. My only worry with these clones is what people are aiming to clone. In this case is it fresh Landlord on cask? Is it 4 month old multiple heat/cool cycled bottled examples such as the one I paid $14 for a couple of weeks ago in a Brunswick establishment which thinks it's god's gift to beer?

Fermenter samples of the session bitter are a bit inconclusive on the late hop character. Unfortunately the WY1275 has been pretty slow for an English ale yeast, it's now at 1.025 after 6 days. Not that slow, but slower than I expected. I'm not yet ready to say if the 'method argonoise' from aussiehomebrewer is a good option for me when looking for that late hop character with no-chill, we'll just have to wait and see.

Of course the obvious solution to capturing late hop character is chilling - and at last this is an option for me! I dislike half baked solutions, so I decided to wait until I had all the bits and pieces I needed to plumb in a plate chiller before buying one. It's not just about the chilling, you need to be able to clean the things properly too. Backflushing with a pump being the optimal solution. Anyhow, it's fitting that my first beer through the plate chiller should be one of my all time favourites.

Plate chiller ready for action. It may be plumbed in but it's not properly mounted - to do!

Here's the recipe.

Dr Smurtos Landlord

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         4.36
Anticipated OG:          1.045    Plato:             11.14
Anticipated EBC:          12.9
Anticipated IBU:          29.7
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 96.4     4.20 kg.  Pale Malt (Golden Promise)    UK             1.037      4
  3.6     0.16 kg.  Crystal 60L                   UK             1.035    158

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 42.00 g.     Fuggle                            Pellet   4.00  24.5  60 min.
 21.00 g.     Goldings - E.K.                   Pellet   5.00   5.2  20 min.
 31.50 g.     Styrian Goldings                  Pellet   5.25   0.0  0 min.


Yeast
-----

WYeast 1469 West Yorkshire


Yeast choice is pretty straightforward here. 1469 is the closest you're going to find to Timothy Taylor, and I had about 60ml thick slurry of washed yeast from a very recent brew.

Malts for this one are Simpsons Golden promise and Simpsons Crystal (medium). Both the mash and the wort smelled amazing this morning. Bodes well for the finished product.

Plate chilling went quite well. The only issue was cheap K-mart water hose female connectors, which didn't match well with the male connectors I bought with the chiller. That will be fixed for the next time.