A kit like old peculiar?

Thinking ahead to the winter and festive stocks what kit beers do you think come closest to a Theakstons Old Peculiar? This is my all time fav dark ale and would like to have a similar HB if there is one out there.

Worcester Hop Shop have an all grain kit for Theakston's Old Peculier HERE

This is based on the Graham Wheeler recipe from his book Brew Your Own British Real Ales 3rd edition. He also has a recipe in an earlier edition that is slightly different. I will be doing a test brew of Old Peculier soon that is a combination of both his versions. :)

At 11.99 thats pretty good price

I suppose what you could do if you cannot do a full volume AG is possibly try to do an extract and just use DME instead of the Maris Otter and steep the crystal and chocolate malt for 25 or so minutes, add half the DME boil as normal adding the final half of DME at the end of the boil

Thanks for that information, not equipped for full AG at the moment but I reckon an extract brew could be the next feasible step for me! Do you mean buy the kit anyway and replace first stage with extract or just buy ingredients separate?

HisDudeness said:

Thanks for that information, not equipped for full AG at the moment but I reckon an extract brew could be the next feasible step for me! Do you mean buy the kit anyway and replace first stage with extract or just buy ingredients separate?

Click to expand...

If you was going to do extract I would just buy the ingredients.

Infact googled you can buy an extract recipe kit

http://www.brewuk.co.uk/oldpeculiar.html

£20 is a lot for 13 litres. I'd buy 3kg of DME and make a bigger batch. The Maltmiller and the Home Brew Company do 3kg of DME for £14/15. Geterbrewed similar I think.

Then I've seen various hop bills for Hobgoblin. I would get Challenger for bittering and Styrian Goldings for late additions. Styrian G are just Fuggles grown in Slovenia. Then you need crystal and chocolate malt and some yeast. 500g of each won't cost much. Dried yeast S04, liquid White Labs WLP023 or Wyeast 1275.

You would have some crystal, chocolate and hops left over for another brew. I can knock up a recipe quickly if you wanna do this as an extract brew. Certainly better than trying to find a kit like Hobgoblin.

Thanks again guys an extract recipe would be much appreciated clibit but its for old peculiar not hobgoblin!

Ah! How did I do that?! Senior moment...

Will sort out a recipe though, later, no worries.

eezybrewer said:

Worcester Hop Shop have an all grain kit for Theakston's Old Peculier HERE

This is based on the Graham Wheeler recipe from his book Brew Your Own British Real Ales 3rd edition. He also has a recipe in an earlier edition that is slightly different. I will be doing a test brew of Old Peculier soon that is a combination of both his versions. :)

Click to expand...

ordered

OK, the Theakstons website says this:

"Old Peculier is a beautiful, yet very simple beer, brewed using a very generous blend of finest pale, crystal and roasted barley with two bitter hops combined with the majestic and noble ‘Fuggle' hop to produce a beer of awesome full-bodied flavour with subtle cherry and rich fruit overtones."

So I've come up with this:

Batch Size (L): 21.0
Original Gravity (OG): 1.058
Final Gravity (FG): 1.015
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.70 %
Bitterness (IBU): 31.6
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

3.000 kg Dry Malt Extract - Light (86.21%)
0.180 kg Roasted Barley (5.17%)
0.150 kg Crystal 240 EBC (Dark) (4.31%)
0.150 kg Crystal 150 EBC (4.31%)

40.0 g Fuggles Leaf (5.7% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)
20.0 g Fuggles Leaf (5.7% Alpha) @ 15 Minutes (Boil)

Yeast S04 or White Labs WLP037 or Wyeast 1469

If you just want to get one crystal malt, use 250 - 300g of dark crystal. But the mix should work well. If getting both, don't worry about EBC, just get 'crystal' and 'dark crystal'.

The commercial description on ratebeer.com says, "Abv reduced from 5.7 to 5.6 in 2010. Its initial sweetness is, apparently, "of roasted and vinous notes with a subtle bitter aftertaste". Strong fruitiness, often with "banana notes" standing out, is derived from Old Peculier's fermentation process."

I've based the above on this info, and used regular crystal and dark crystal as I think this will get close to the OP colour and malt flavours.

Do you know how to do an extract brew? It's easy...

Boil about 10 litres if you can. If not, 6L is about the minimum, in a stockpot or similar.

How: Steep the grains in a grain bag at about 70C in this water for 30 mins, then remove and stir in 1kg malt extract. Bring to boil, add 40g Fuggles, 50 mins later add 20g Fuggles, 10 mins after that switch off. Stir in the rest of the extract. Cool in sink. Pour into FV via a sterilised sieve. Top up to 21 litres with cold water. Aerate with a sterilised whisk or similar. Pitch yeast around 20C.



This will be much better than a kit, and you will get a lot of satisfaction. You could improve it even more, and save a bit of money, by replacing 1kg of extract with 1.5kg Pale Malt (eg Maris Otter) and steeping this with the other grains but keep the temp between 65 and 70 for 45 mins by wrapping the pot with a towel or fleece.

That is an interesting recipe you have put together there clibit. As I have stated in an earlier post I will be doing a 10 ltr test brew of Old Peculier in the near future. This will be a combination of the two versions of Graham Wheeler's clone recipe from two separate editions of his book BYOBRA. If you click HERE and scroll down the page you will see a side by side comparison of his recipes for this brew. Please forgive the link being to another forum but this came up in a search I did.

The one on the right is from the 3rd edition (that I have) and the one on the left from an earlier edition. Both editions give an extract version at the bottom. As I write this post I am drinking a bottle of the real thing that has a definite chocolate after taste that is very nice and as you can see chocolate malt is included in the 3rd edition version. Hope this is of some use. :)

Cheers. And good luck. My recipe is just a mad stab, though it's based on some basic ingredient info from the Theakstons websites which says pale malt, crystal and roast barley. And Fuggles.

I see the main issue as the yeast and fermentation process, which is clearly a major contributor. It might well pay to get some West Yorkshire ale yeast, Wyeast 1469. Or Yorkshire Square WLP037.

Apologies, didn't see that the extract kit was only 13ltr

Tbh I would just buy the ingredients anyway and follow what clibit suggested. Those extract kits are a good idea but IMO they are way too expensive but then again DME isn't the cheapest

Wow thanks so much for the help with this, clibit your clear instructions on the method have reassured me that extract brewing should be fairly straightforward, although I now need a big pot! (got a 20 litre stockpot on the way already). I do agree with the previous poster about the chocolate notes in the real version, so if I did want to include some chocolate malt how would your recipe be adapted (the AG kit linked earlier had about 200g), reduce the amount of DME?
Thanks again everyone once my summer kit brewing is out of the way I will definitely be giving this a go

HisDudeness said:

I do agree with the previous poster about the chocolate notes in the real version, so if I did want to include some chocolate malt how would your recipe be adapted (the AG kit linked earlier had about 200g), reduce the amount of DME?

Click to expand...

You could cut the roast barley to 100g and add 100g chocolate malt. I wouldn't go overboard with the chocolate myself, OP isn't very chocolatey IMO. In fact, I think Theakstons would have said there was chocolate in it if there was, and I wouldn't use it, in a first attempt. If you insist...

3.000 kg Dry Malt Extract - Light (85.71%)
0.150 kg Crystal 120 Dark (4.29%)
0.150 kg Crystal 75 (4.29%)
0.100 kg Chocolate (2.86%)
0.100 kg Roasted Barley (2.86%)

Chocolate malt, crystal and roast barley can all be steeped separately in a small amount of water at about 70C, so you could make a few versions to test out which gets closest. If you had some 10 litre plastic buckets you could split the wort after the boil into 3 x 7litre batches. Then use different combinations of crystal, roast B and Choc by steeping small amounts and boiling each for 15 mins and adding to the FVs. Bit of a faff, but interesting and a good learning process. If you're that arsed about working out a really good OP recipe.

Or you could just try the Wheeler recipe, which is on the Worcester Hop Shop site as a grain kit:

Light DME 3kg
Crystal Malt 295g
Chocolate Malt 215g

Challenger Hops 30g for 60 mins (could just use Fuggles)
Fuggle Hops 14g for 60 mins

Fuggle Hops 14g for 10 mins (Wheeler says Goldings here but Theakstons say Fuggles)

S04 yeast or Wyeast 1469. Or WLP500 belgian ale yeast, which one online blogger used and reckoned it worked really well in his OP clone.

Well I guess I will just have to buy a couple of bottles to do another taste test! Perhaps I am just remembering chocolate flavours because it was mentioned in both the kits linked previously, I would love to experiment with different combos but am limited by space for buckets at home so probably would only be able to split the brew in half at the most, will wait and see how adventurous I'm feeling when I get round to doing this

Below is a version of Old Peculier that I have put together based on the two versions of Graham Wheeler's recipes. I have used BrewMate set at 70% efficiency and the grain EBC values and hop AA values set according to what I have in stock. I would welcome the opinions and suggestions to tweak the recipe from the more experienced brewers among the membership. This is for a 19 ltr brew although I will be doing a 10 ltr test brew first time round.

Theakstons Old Peculier
19 ltr brew
OG 1.058
FG 1.015
ABV 5.7%
Bitterness IBU 29

90 Min Mash
90 Min Boil

4.150 kg Marris Otter Pale Malt
232 g Torrified Wheat
200 g Crystal Malt 150 EBC
200 g Crystal Malt 200 EBC
175 g Chocolate Malt
106 g Black Malt

15 g Challenger Hops 8.3% AA 90 Mins
14 g Fuggles Hops 4.1% AA 90 Mins
10 g Fuggles Hops 4.1% AA 15 Mins

3 g Irish Moss 15 Mins

Yeast Safeale S-04

That looks good to me. I just think I'd use roast barley, probably in place of the black malt, given that Theakstons say crystal and roast barley.

I think your may be right on that clibit. I based this on what I have in stock but a trip to my local HBS may be worth it for the Roast Barley to get this, hopefully, as close as possible to the real thing. :hat: