2 beers i would love to try and re-create

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fatcontro11er
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2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by fatcontro11er » Thu May 22, 2008 12:37 pm

Looking for help !Does any one remember the west coast brewery in manchester ? Brendan dobbin was the man of the time and i rermember two beers he made which were sierra nevada (not the same as the more famous bottle version ) and dobbins e.s.b. which was formidable ! Is there anyway of putting a recipe together to try to recreate these?????????????

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Post by charlie » Thu May 22, 2008 1:01 pm

I visited the pub an sampled the beers a few times.
I think that it was in a very rough part of Ardwick.
But it was far too long ago for me to be able to remember what the beers tasted like.
I think that it closed down about 15 years ago and was never very widely travelled.
Brewing in the badlands between Arnside and Milnthorpe.
Cumbria

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Post by fatcontro11er » Thu May 22, 2008 3:19 pm

you are right it was in a rough part of Manchester and part of the reason it closed i believe was due to vandalism ! a real shame because i think Brendan brewed some the best beers i ever tasted which i`d love to try and resurrect

Parp

Post by Parp » Thu May 22, 2008 4:08 pm

On a slight deviation from the thread.

A defunct beer I would love to recreate is;

Stock's Old Horizontal og1054

Stock's used to be a brewpub in Doncaster I believe.

I loved that beer, havent seen it since the early 90's.

I liked their best bitter too.

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Post by fatcontro11er » Sun May 25, 2008 1:02 am

i agree stocks old horizontal was also a favourite i remember supping it in the beer house in manchester

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Post by smp465 » Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:16 am

Real Ale Almanac says "Old horizontal" - 97% MO 3% Chocolate. Fuggles and Goldings whole hops (5.4%ABV, no bitterness given).

Nothing in my edition (5th) about Dobbins beers, maybe an earlier addition could shed some light??

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Post by smp465 » Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:18 am

Ah, Norman has been on the case - what a star!

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by seymour » Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:45 am

fatcontro11er wrote:Looking for help !Does any one remember the west coast brewery in manchester ? Brendan dobbin was the man of the time and i rermember two beers he made which were sierra nevada (not the same as the more famous bottle version ) and dobbins e.s.b. which was formidable ! Is there anyway of putting a recipe together to try to recreate these?????????????
WARNING: ancient thread resurrection…BUT...this could become a fun conversation.

So, you guys over there know more about this than I do, but in review:

Brendan Dobbin was the proprietor of West Coast microbrewery inside The King's Arms in rough ol' Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, for the short span of 1989-1994. However, in those few short years, he earned the reputation as one of England's best brewers in generations, particularly for his extreme use of New World hops, which was rare at the time, right? He served a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone full of Cascades, but was forced to change the name for legal reasons. He used Green Bullet hops a lot, introducing you all to odd, tropical fruity, pungent New Zealand hops. He supposedly travelled to China and brought home a suitcase full of their native hops from which he brewed his famous Chinese Pale Ale. He might've been the very first English commercial brewer to break the mold and boldly brew entirely new styles every few weeks. It seems he played an extremely influential role in revitalizing the UK beer scene.

Needless to say, West Coast Brewing went out of business, partly because he was ahead of his time, partly because of the scary location, partly because he lacked wide distribution, but also partly--it would seem--because Dobbin had become a rock-star at setting up similarly audacious brewpubs all over the place. He operated under various brewers consulting/contract firms over the years, having installed the breweries such as Steel City (who offer a Saint Brendan IPA in his honor), Porterhouse in Dublin (whose stouts consistently win worldwide "best-of" medals), Messrs Maguire/J.W. Sweetman brewpub in Dublin, Dwan Beers in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, Ireland (since closed, but equipment and recipes sold to Milestone in Newark), Roadside Tavern/Burren Brewing in Lisdoonvarna, Ireland (Dobbin trained the proprietor, Peter Curtin, who bought also bought recipes and leases yeast for his stout and ale), Conwy in Gwynedd, Wales. He even helped with the flagship Red Brick Ale recipe for a regional brewer in Atlanta, Georgia, USA (which I've tasted, it's good)...help me out here, I know there are apparently dozens more Dobbin breweries worldwide. I know he gave Don Burgess of Freeminer Brewer his start, he once ran a company with George Thompson, master brewer of Strangford Lough Brewing Co, he collaborated with Neil Chantrell, founder of Coach House Brewing Co, former head brewer of Greenalls…the list goes on and on...but drumroll please…

Brendan Dobbin designed and installed the original Marble Arch micro-brewery in Manchester. Not only that, he contributed their first bunch of recipes. Marble Chorlton Bitter is an obvious shout-out, but surely several other remaining Marble brews are his too. His obsession with New Zealand hops lives on, and for those of us who are continuously trying to sleuth-out Marble recipes, well, perhaps we should take another look at the ones he crafted for West Coast and others.

What d'you guys think? Discuss.

Anyone met Brendan Dobbin? Anyone remember their first encounters with his hoppy ales? Any stories to share?

And with regards to the ancient original post, by now we oughtta all have the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale recipe memorized, but what about West Coast ESB? Anyone? Anyone hoarding any other Dobbin recipes? Please share.

Cheers!
-Seymour
Last edited by seymour on Thu Nov 28, 2013 3:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Belter

Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by Belter » Wed Nov 27, 2013 8:09 am

Wow. What a legend. Imagine having that on your cv

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by fatcontro11er » Wed Nov 27, 2013 10:26 am

Aye he is now growing micro bananas on west cork!
I recently tried to get in touch with him through a brewer he used to collaborate with, outside Edinburgh, but when he was contacted the message I got back was he said he's retired!!!!
He did have problems with a large Irish brewery over his naming of his' guiltless stout' an organic stout hence the guiltless but because the word guinless was used prior in an advertising campaign buy the bully boys and after a drawn out court case the money men win!
Mark daid who was a brewer land lord of the marble arch when the brewing started told me Brendan had designed the first list of beers and that one of them was a replica of? Snpa or dobbins esb? Can't remember now and it's been so long since I've had them !
I do remember getting a barrel of dobbins esb for May 18th it was 6% with a orange hue and fabulous flavour but is that marble dobber?
As of the snpa he brewed it is remenisant of the stuff you get now but I remember his being some what darker, richer and smoother!
I shall be returning to my birth place(Salford) this weekend and an ale trail will be the order of the day for sat and no doubt a foray into the marble to see if what I've been brewing in trying to emulate these two trend setting ales are anything like what's on offer!
Stuart

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by seymour » Thu Nov 28, 2013 3:33 am

Irish bananas, who woulda thunk it?! :)

I found some great Dobbin-related photos on Tandleman's blog:

Check out these labels, pay special attention to his extremely attenuative lager fermentations! You can't see the whole label, but his Diat Pils was OG: 1040 yet ABV: 5.5%! Mittlefrau Pils was OG: 1049 yet ABV: 5.6%, etc. Those must've been some extremely dry, light-bodied lagers!
Image


Image


Image

Another note: I've read that many companies which hired Brendan Dobbin to design and install his brewery also "lease" (whatever that means?) their yeast from him. Perhaps Marble originally got their historic Gales strain from Dobbins? Another interesting one comes from his Porterhouse brewery in Dublin, arrogantly brewing better stout a mile downstream from Guinness. They said about their stout yeast strain:
...traditional top-cropped Bi strain Yorkshire Stone Square yeast, highly flocculent, from the Old Romsey Brewery in Kent by way of the East Riding Brewery...
How cool is that?!

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by fatcontro11er » Thu Nov 28, 2013 1:08 pm

I wonder what yeast would ferment so low?

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by Clibit » Thu Nov 28, 2013 3:58 pm

Interesting, I only have a vague recollection of the West Coast Brewery having moved to Manchester in 1989. Here are some articles that talk about it/Brendan Dobbin:

http://www.scoopergen.co.uk/essay_stbrendan.htm

http://www.scoopergen.co.uk/essay_hopheroes.htm

http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/freeminer.htm (Apparently Don Burgess from Freeminer worked at the WCB with Brendan Dobbin. He must know some stuff).


Finally, a job vacancy. Anyone interested?

http://www.marblebeers.com/wp-content/u ... B-Job1.pdf

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by fatcontro11er » Thu Nov 28, 2013 4:24 pm

That's right on his first day it's reported Brendan left him to do the brewing saying " your better qualified than me to do it"!lol

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Re: 2 beers i would love to try and re-create

Post by seymour » Thu Nov 28, 2013 6:06 pm

fatcontro11er wrote:That's right on his first day it's reported Brendan left him to do the brewing saying " your better qualified than me to do it"!lol
I've read that too. He said it because Don was a recent biochem grad. But Dobbin is a Herriot Watt brewing program grad, which is nothing to scoff at either, so more than anything that seems to demonstrate his modesty. :)

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