As featured in CAMRA’s – The Modern Homebrewer – Andy Parker & Jamil Zainasheff and sponsored by ourselves The Malt Miller.

We would highly recommend purchasing and reading this book as it feature not only a wide selection of recipes but some great knowledge and techniques from Andy and Jamil on how to brew the best beer possible at home.

This recipe was provided for the book from a professional brewer, all of the recipes were scaled by the writers to a 20ltr batch size using 75% efficiency.

Where ever possible we have matched the exact ingredients, however in some recipes slight changes may be required and volume adjustments based on ingredient available to homebrewers. Be sure to fully read the below details before purchasing so you are fully confident in the process and aware of any ingredients which are not included with this kit that you will need to add.

Weights are removed on this page due to publishing agreements but will be provided on the bags when the recipe is purchased or are present in the book for those who purchase it.

 

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Ingredients Included

Simpsons Malt – Black Malt
Weyermann Carafa Special Type 3
Thomas Fawcett – Amber Malt
Thomas Fawcett – Pale Crystal Malt
Thomas Fawcett – Pale Chocolate Malt
Thomas Fawcett – Crystal Malt
Weyermann Rauch Malt
Warminster Floor Malted Maris Otter Pale Ale
Fuggles T90 Pellets (35 grams)
Goldings (East Kent Goldings) T90 Pellets (70 grams)
Fermentis SafAle S-04 – 11.5g (1 pack)

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Method

Beer Style (main): Hybrid/Mixed
Beer Style (sub): Smoke Beer
Batch Size: 20
Original Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 1.011
ABV %: 4.8
IBU: 45
Mash efficiency: 75
Brewing equipment:

THE MASH
Temperature °C (Step 1): 66
Length (mins) (Step 1): 60

Mash notes: Water
Henley-on-Thames water has a high level of temporary hardness which works well for this beer. Lovibonds adds 4g calcium chloride to the mash to bring up calcium levels and help with mash pH.. They also add 4g sea salt, rubbing it into the first wort hops. This gives additional chloride ions to bump up the malt profile.

THE BOIL
Boil time (mins): 60

Hop / kettle additions and timing:

East Kent Goldings 35g/1.2oz @ First Wort
East Kent Goldings 35g/1.20z @ 60 mins
Fuggles 35g/1.20z @ 0 mins

Yeast: Fermentis SafAle™ S-04
Fermentation temperature/steps: ferment at 20°C/68°F for 7 days until gravity is stable, then cold crash.

Comments:

Jeff Rosenmeier, native to Wisconsin, started home brewing in 1994 after tasting a friends home brewed stout. His software engineering job brought him to Henley-on-Thames a couple years later and he continued to dive into the hobby.

In 2005 he founded Lovibonds Brewery after visiting a potential site in the centre of Henley. “We found all sorts of old bottles and invoice books for a company called John Lovibonds and Sons. We obviously knew about the Lovibonds colour scale, but had no idea that this same family also owned several breweries and off licences, one of which was based on this site”. Jeff trademarked the name and began trading from a small scale brewery at his home before eventually moving into the site they had originally found.

The inspiration for Henley Dark is also American, as Jeff explains “In 2000 I was lucky enough to be able to take 6 months off to travel around North America and the South Pacific. One of the highlights was exploring the vastness of Alaska. I had read many articles about Alaskan Brewing Company, one of the pioneering US craft breweries and made sure my itinerary included a stop in the capital, Juneau, home to Alaskan Brewing. At that time their Alaskan Amber was quite ubiquitous, but it was at a Mexican restaurant one evening that I was lucky enough to try several vintages of their Smoked Porter and it blew me away. Henley Dark is inspired by this beer. Alaskan uses Alder wood to smoke their malt, indigenous to the area and the same wood they use to smoke Alaskan salmon. I chose to use our most plentiful wood here in the Chilterns, Beech. After many years of smoking our own malt on a couple of beat up Webers, we’ve since moved to using Weyermann’s famous Beech smoked malt.”
Henley Dark is not as big in alcohol or smoke character as Alaskan Smoked Porter, but the smoked malt blends in very well with the complex malt bill. If you want more smoke, just swap smoked malt for the base malt.