Planning a brew to put down for Christmas, which is only 12 weeks away, so anything huge is out of the window as I don't have sufficient conditioning time. Enter, stage left, Ron Pattinson's blog, and his guide to Vintage beer, for a massive resource of suitable recipes.
The problem? Well, it's a problem I keep having with many of these historic recipes, mainly American 6 row pale malt. I can't get it here in the UK, and can't find any consensus on what would be a suitable substitute. Some say 'meh, don't worry, just use any pale malt', others say Vienna, others UK distilling malt. Arrrgggh! I suspect it may vary from recipe to recipe; if it was used for its huge diastatic power, maybe distillers malt, if it was used because it was cheap and neutral in flavour, maybe any old pale malt. But that is just my uninformed guess.
So I've settled on 1804 Barklay Perkins TT ~ a nice early porter that doesn't use any 6 row, and isn't crazy strong.
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