recipe suggestions for speights drinkers

[martin w]

most of my mates are pretty much speights drinkers through and through and won't hear of anything else, they'd look at you like you had 2 heads if you offered them db/tui/export etc
so i'm trying to find a recipe for something that will offer them a bit of a different drinking experience but isn't so different that it scares them!

any suggestions?

[JR]

"Any suggestions?"

I’ve got a suggestion; since you are in Arrowtown you could shoot down to the arrow brewpub and make some new friends! I made it there last weekend and thoroughly enjoyed all their beers.

Sorry I don't have any sensible recipe advice but if you’re making a speights clone I would try and make it a bit like the distinction ale. To me it tastes a bit more like a real beer and is probably closer to something you would brew yourself than the regular speights.

[martin w]

thats the type of thing i'm after, i don't want to clone speights as such, may as well just buy it, i'm just after ideas that they may be receptive of.

[Karle]

That's a dangerous question to ask in here!

Don't give up, try to convert your friends with a nice pale ale that isn't too hoppy. I'm sure they will like it. In my experience It's usually the hoppiness that doesn't appeal to people who are used to Speights etc.

What about one of these:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/ or
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f64/

[Stu McKinlay]

Well since most of them couldn't pick speights from tui in a blind tasting, they must be "drinking the label" rather than what is inside. I'm thinking that you could bottle your homebrew in speight's bottles.

If you want to brew something like it, two cans of a good bittered malt extract (like munton's) and a nice clean yeast such as Safale S05 should see you right. No extra hops.