British Guild of Beer Writers Dinner 2009
I don’t know if it’s normal or not for brewers to join the Beer Writer’s Guild, but to be honest, I really enjoy writing about my favourite subject in the world. I began writing when I spent a 3 year stint teaching English in South Korea. Just a monthly article for a local community paper back home highlighting what I was doing over there and how interesting and fascinating the Korean culture and country was. I’ve always enjoyed writing. If I hadn’t followed my other passion, science, at university, I would have definitely studied English.
Before I came to the UK, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a Guild of Beer Writers. I had studied for an Institute and Guild of Brewing (now the Institute of Brewing and Distilling) exam whilst a trainee brewer back in NZ and this was my first encounter with the world of Guilds . The Dungeons and Dragons geek in me always thought it was pretty cool that there were still such things as Guilds in the Old World and I half-imagined dudes in hooded cloaks walking through dusty, pillared halls and discussing the Secrets of the Yeast, shifty eyes looking for random assassins from the rival Wine and Whiskey guilds that were bound to attack and steal secrets aplenty. It’s always good to have an imagination.
So there I was, attending my first ever Guild dinner as a fully fledged member. Simon, Alex and I arrived at the venue and began chatting to the myriad of familiar faces that had already gathered in the reception area. There was a fantastic selection of welcome drinks. Offerings from Brains (SA, SA Gold, Dark and the Rev. James), Caledonian (Deuchars IPA, 80/-, Flying Dutchman, Double Dark), Molson Coors (Blue Moon, Grolsch Weizen, Worthington White Shield, Zatec), Shepherd Neame (Bishops Finger, Spitfire, Whitstable Bay) and Well’s and Young’s (Bombardier, Young’s Special London Ale, Young’s Bitter). But I also noticed that one of my favourite lagers, Budvar had a stand. We made a bee-line for the fridge, sampling a few of the nibbles on the way. Tuna Nicoise tartlets, Maki rolls, Pear and Stilton on crumpets, Lamb kofta… yum! The Budvar lager was a great first beer, quenching the palate perfectly and easily blending into the Budvar Dark that followed, all cappuccino and hints of sweetness.
We caught up with Alastair Hook from Meantime Brewery, who excitedly told us of his new brewery expansion and briefly chatted to Sean Franklin from the esteemed Roosters Brewery and Alastair Gilmour, beer writer extraordinaire, resplendent in his tartan tie.
Eventually we were called into the dining area where we were welcomed by the Guild Chairman, Tim Hampson and introduced to the menu by yet another esteemed beer journalist, Adrian Tierney-Jones and the Hilton London Tower Bridge’s Head Chef, Christian Honor.
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the tables were all named after hops, and we sat at Perle. As I type, we have a fantastic Dry-Hopped Light Ale sitting in one of our conditioning tanks that we thought would be a fantastic tribute to European hops. At 3.3% AbV, it sits at the more challenging end of the spectrum in terms of creating a beer with a lot of flavour. We used Vienna malt as our base malt instead of the usual Maris Otter pale ale and also went for dextrin and caramalt to give a bit of a nutty, biscuit flavour and a little body. Hop-wise, it was all about Saaz, Tettnang and Santiam. “Santiam?” I hear you all cry? Well, its parentage is mostly European (Tettnang and Hallertau Mittelfruh) with a hint of the US, so we thought it was close enough. As well as using first wort hopping (that’s adding the first load of hops into the copper as you begin running off the wort from the mash) we also dry-hopped in the fermenter with the wonderfully fragrant Perle and again in the conditioning tank with Celeia from Slovenia. The Perle from this season is so good, that I thought we should really honour this beer and named it Pearl (we had also previously done a similar ale at 2.7% with the brilliant German noble hop, Saphir… yep, we called that Sapphire). So to cut a long story short, sitting at the Perle table was quite fitting.
The meal began with a Black Shetland mussel and Margate clam chowder with chilli. Creamy and decadent with some delightful edible garnishes, this worked brilliantly with the Meantime Pilsener it was matched with. The Pilsener come across with touches of bready malt and a lovely noble, slightly grassy hop aroma. The bitterness was crisp and clean and a brilliant cleanser after each mouthfeel of silky soup.
Smoked venison with goat’s cheese on a fig and apple juice terrine was next. Cylindrical like some type of meat-lovers Sushi roll, each mouthful was heavenly. The creamy goat’s cheese saturated the tongue with fats and oils and softened the beautiful, thinly sliced venison that surrounded it. Small cubes of beetroot held hands with the venison, that slightly earthy flavour from both combining wonderfully, eagerly balanced by the slightly tart-sweet combination of apple juice and red wine vinegar. But it was the beer that brought it all together. Duchesse De Bourgogne by the Verhaeghe brewery in West Flanders is an exquisite example of the sour red-brown beers that the Belgians do so well. Hints of soft acidity, balsamic-soaked cherries, a background of oak and even a touch of fig that works perfectly with the terrine upon which the venison roll rested. Everyone needs to taste food like this with beer like this. E-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.
Our main was a slow braised rabbit leg in a roasted rabbit saddle on a white bean puree and with good old chunky chips. As great as the chips were, they could have easily been left off as the rabbit was great on its own. Not as gamey as some wild rabbit I have eaten, but wonderfully moist and tender with hints of both chicken and pork in its full flavour. This was matched with Ringwood Old Thumper. This was the first time I had tried this beer and I have to admit, I think I need to try it on cask. There was a touch of ketone, almost acetone-like and the alcoholic character (it weighs in at 5.6%) was quite dominant. There was some dry fruit there which had the potential to work well with the rabbit, but for me the rawness pushed this away from being a great match. I think on paper, this would have been bang on, but it just wasn’t quite right. That and I’m very diplomatic 
The cheese course was next and it was already going to be tough to fit it all in. Luckily, for every course we were sharing four bottles of beer between ten people, which meant we were having just enough of each beer to allow us to have a great beer-food experience without bloating ourselves with excess liquid. A whole baked camembert with soused (pickled) black grapes and nice crisp breadsticks married perfectly with a 2005 Fuller’s Vintage Ale. The beer was full of fig and green sultana with just the tiniest hint of Brettanomyces (which was hotly debated by James McRorie of the Durden Beer Circle who insisted it was a character that came from some old speciality malts). No matter, the match was fantastic, all warm, creamy, luscious cheese and lashings of fruit (yeah, I loved Enid Blyton as a kid). Yet another reason to shake John Keeling from Fullers’ hand every time you see him!
Last but not least, even though my tight-fitting suit pants popped a few stitches in protest, was an incredibly rich chocolate tower with walnuts, Tonka beans and heavenly caramel with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I’d never heard of Tonka beans before (though had played with Tonka trucks as a child… does that count?) and upon researching found that they often have vanilla and almond like aromas. Would love to play around with these in a brew but apparently they have quite a bit of coumarin in them and in large doses this can affect the liver and act as an anti-coagulant. Funnily enough, this compound is also present in the herb Woodruff, which we grow at Thornbridge and has a wonderful almond aroma. Woodruff was traditionally used in brewing and is still added in syrup form to the sour Berliner Weisse beers. The desert was incredible, though I just couldn’t finish it. The beer that was matched with this was Flying Dog’s Gonzo Imperial Porter, an incredible beer. Its nose smacked of lemon-sherbert balls covered in milk chocolate, it was light, yet rich in the mouth and I was really looking forward to tasting it with the dessert. But the dessert was just a bit too chocolaty (if that is possible), a bit too rich and the beer suffered slightly. It didn’t help that I stuffed excessively large helpings into my mouth… maybe if I’d had smaller tastings, it would have allowed the beer to come through a lot better. I would have loved to see this rich treat matched with the intense Harveys Imperial Stout, which isn’t loved by all, but is definitely an intensely flavoured beer that may have matched this lush dessert. It would have also been fitting considering Miles Jenner took out the Guild Brewer of the Year award this year.
Speaking of the awards, was absolutely awesome to see the omni-enthusiastic Mark Dredge from the acclaimed Pencil and Spoon blog pick up the New Media award and Ben McFarland win the Beer and Food Writing Award with his fantastic World’s Best Beers: 1000 Unmissable Brews from Portland to Prague. I think this is one of the best presented beer tomes around and the section from El Bulli is brilliant! Was great to see another new blogger, Dave Bailey, pick up an award for his brilliant Woolpack Dave blog about life brewing and running a pub. A great social commentary on life surrounded by beer and one I can relate to very easily.
Pete Brown picked up the Budvar John White Travel Bursary and the coveted Michael Jackson Gold Tankard Award as Beer Writer of the Year. Completely deserved in my opinion, what with his epic journey and the resultant Hops and Glory (which you should all buy for your beer loving Dad’s this year for Christmas) on the history of India Pale Ale.
It was also great to see Alastair Gilmour and Jeff Evans get awarded. Jeff contributes a plethora of information, both in books and on the internet and I love Alastair’s writing style – it’s very user friendly, factual and a pleasure to read.
All in all, it was a great night and I’d recommend you all start tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard or scribbling frantically on random pieces of A4 paper, join the Guild, don some robes and start whispering to each other while reading ancient leather-bound books about the secrets of fermentology…
Transmogrification
We did our very first official beer launch last night at the White Horse in Parsons Green. The legendary Yorkshire chef, Brian Turner was really keen to work with us and develop a range of beers that work well with food, especially that brilliant British classic, the pie. Brian actually only had his first taste of alcohol at 26 and has been a wonderful supporter of wine and food over his career as a chef. He told us all a story about how his father was a great lover of cask ale. He would go into the pub with the Turner clan, get a pint poured and wait until it was ready, order all of the drinks for the family (whilst drinking his pint) then right at the end order himself another pint… bloody good system I reckon! Brian is on a bit of a journey of discovery with cask ale, hence his keenness to get into the world of beer and food matching.
The pies themselves were awesome! We had two on offer, a succulent Steak and Mushroom and a ridiculously tender Steak and Thornbridge Ale number, perfectly crafted by Dunkleys and a hit with the chefs that turned up. Antonio Carluccio of the legendary Neal Street restaurant and Master of the Fungus was really impressed by the pies and didn’t mind the beer either! I’m also pretty sure Ainsley Harriot walked away with a couple for the trek home as well!
Doing my bit for Movember... can't beat Brian though!
As per usual, it all comes down to ingredients. Although usually frowned upon in these days of nutritive awareness, the pastry for the pies was made with good old lard. Both my and Cat’s grandparents grew up on lard (or dripping) on bread and if you’ve ever tasted it, you’ll know how good it is. In fact, I’ve even read here and there that lard has less cholesterol and saturated fat than butter. Shock, horror! I’m sure the nutritionists of the world will tell you it is all bad, but then again, I’ve been reading a book called Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (which you should all read) and my pessimism with the world of science reporting in the media has grown exponentially!
The beer in question is Brian Turner Amber Ale at 4.2%. This beer has been in a constant state of flux since we first started developing it and has gone through a series of hop and malt combinations until I think we have it just about right. As a brewer, I suppose it’s a good idea to mention how most beers that come out are a work in progress. A beer begins with a concept inspired by a number of things: a beer that we have tasted, a strange beery dream, an ingredient we have found and love, an intuitive flavour experiment or some random combination of the above!
We have released this beer under different guises over the last 6 months and kept tweaking as we’ve gone with the beer being based on good ol’ Maris Otter pale ale malt, a ridiculously generous helping of Vienna malt and the wonderfully nutty and slightly coffee-esque Amber malt. We didn’t want to do a standard pale ale dominated by hop characters. It was more about developing a beer that would work well with a few different types of food, generally nice hearty winter dishes.
I think that can be a bit of a problem with Thornbridge. Some people tend to expect all of our beers to be jam-packed with loads of hop notes, yet sometimes it’s great fun for us to play around with drinkable, balanced beers that highlight both malt and hop characters. That’s what Amber Ale is about. Earlier in the year we visited Charles Faram, our fantastic hop supplier and we nosed a brilliant English hop called Bramling Cross. The best sample of this came from an esteemed hop grower by the name of Tony Redsall (you can listen to him on the BBC here) and we earmarked this as a hop we wanted to use. We made use of it in a beer named Hopton, then a beer for the Wetherspoons Real Ale festival called Pioneer and finally it became part of Brian’s first beer.
The hop itself is wonderfully fragrant. It has hints of citrus, more English than American (even though Bramling Cross is a relatively new English variety, established in the 1920s as a cross with a Manitoban wild hop) as well as berries and generally gives the beer a nice, soft fruity character. Most people speak about Bramling Cross giving a blackcurrant or ribes aroma to beer, though in the last three years, I have yet to pick this up in the samples I have nosed.
So we had a hop to showcase, yet we were also thinking about a food match. Vienna malt helps to give a bit of sweetness and a hint of biscuit to the beer. Couple that with Amber malt (we originally played around with different Crystal malts in the Hopton and Pioneer) and it gives hints of toasted rye and digestive biscuit as well as a wonderful dry character. It is this dryness that I really like. It helps to pick up the bitter finish and cleanse the mouth and it is this that makes it match so well with the pie. The subtle malty characters blend perfectly with the hint of glaze on the pie lid, push through and swirl together with the velvety gravy and then on the swallow, you get a wonderful and simple cleansing of the palate. The beer itself is good as a pint. Every swallow left my mouth tingling with a pleasant bitterness, warming ever so slightly and the dryness made the next sip inviting.
I was happy and so were these guys!
Antonio, Brian and Ainsley... loving the beers!
Merrie, Merrie, not contrary!
Christmas beer o’clock at the new brewery and we’ve decided to bring back a beer we brewed last year called Merrie. Originally this fantastic deep brown ale was flavoured with Liberty, Chinook and Santiam hops and a generous dosing of some Derbyshire Hidcote Lavender grown by one of our Thornbridge gardeners, Liz Bailes. The lavender itself is drenched with its own intensely fragrant essential oils and screams of the lavender body wash you all use in the shower, even though it’s not yours but you like the smell anyway
This year we’ve upped the ante. That and we like experimenting, so we’ve fused this beer with another beer we brewed last year called SuJu. SuJu was a collaboration brew with Birrificio Italiano where we brewed a delicious 6% rustic brown ale and used a massive amount of freshly crushed Juniper berries. The beer ended up showcasing the wonderful, sweet pine, mango sap-like aromas of the Juniper berries as well combining a hint of hop bitterness and the wonderfully rich speciality malt characters that I love in a beer. It was Super Junipero… yeah, hence the name.
Sshhh, brewer at work...
We always learn every time we brew a new beer, so Stef wove his magic on the new plant and came up with a great recipe. A blend of Pale Ale, Smoked, Munich, Vienna, Chocolate and Amber malts similar to that used as the base for the original Merrie and SuJu complemented by the wonderfully lemony Santiam and the distinctly citrus Perle with a good whack of Chinook to complement the resin and pine from the organic Juniper berries. I painstakingly ground up a massive amount of the berries and just to enhance the citrus characters we decided on some freshly ground coriander seeds as well. On grinding, these filled our brewers office with wonderful ginger and lemon aromas. Cheers Julian Graves!
Big berries, little grinder...
With our new hopback doing some great things to the aroma of our beer, this is where we’ve decided to use the lavender this year. Previously this was used earlier in the brewing process as well as at boil end, so we are really keen to check out the results. In a pub. In a pint. And hopefully at Christmas!
A splash o'purple in a sea o'green
J.W. Lees Harvest Ale 2007 and Cheese
I like cheese. I like beer. Beer and cheese go together incredibly well, however it all depends (obviously) on what type of beer you’re drinking and what type of cheese you’re eating. I really enjoy stating the obvious.
As one of those strange, foreign, New Zealand blokes, I absolutely love it that this country offers such a diversity. Not only in beer, but in the amount of both British and European cheeses that you can easily pick up. Even from a supermarket!
As part of my preparation for the British Guild of Beer Writers Barley Wine Seminar this year, I’ve been given the task of matching our Thornbridge Alliance Barley Wine with a cheese. So I thought a bit of practice might help me to make this most interesting of choices. Take one beer, add four cheeses. Masticate, enjoy, type.
The Harvest Ale pours a nice orange-brown and shows really poor head retention, the head disappears in about 20 seconds and I made sure my glass was extra-clean! The first sip floods the mouth with toffee, a little marmite, some deep, rich orange notes, more juice than peel, and a hint of dried fig. It’s smooth on the swallow and the alcohol warms, it doesn’t burn.
Maximum shutter speed just to catch the head!!
First up is a Somerset Brie. Nice and ripe, unctuous and creamy with a little firmness in the rind that lets you feel like you can chew it instead of slurp it. Then there’s that tiny hint of ammonia. I love this in Brie. The riper the better and as I have just realised, this ripeness allows it to hold up well to the complexity of the Harvest Ale. The creaminess fills the mouth and is cleansed out by the alcoholic nature of the beer. I taste the cheese afterwards and get a little lingering fresh fig coming through from the beer this time.
Next up I go foreign with a Chevre Blanc. It’s bright, white rind slightly mushroomy with a more dense thick section of cheese leading into the delicious crumbly, creamy intense white interior. It gives me wonderful notes of fungus and damp forest floor on an Autumn day crossed with a wonderful, light lemon balm twist, bordering on fragrant lemon dishwashing liquid. Upon smelling deeply, there is almost a suggestion of tap water heavily dosed with chlorine. The first sip of beer yields something completely different. For the first time tonight I get a bit of bitterness coming through from the beer. It also highlights a slightly green note in the beer. Something sappy and unripe. I try again. The bitterness is there instantly and then the lemon and earth of the cheese follows. Nowhere near as good as the brie…
A Cropwell Bishop Stilton follows. Off white with the beautiful green-blue lacing we know all too well. I taste a piece and it takes me instantly to my Aunty and Uncle’s farm in Okato in New Zealand. It has a bit of barnyard funk to it. A little silage, a bit of cow-shit, but all fresh and green and digested grass. Not the intense smell I get from some farms in the UK with their barns and animals kept indoors at certain times of the year. I also get a bitterness. Although creamy, this bitterness coats the roof of my mouth and makes me feel like I need to drink something. I do. The beer floods my mouth. Sweetness, malty, salty marmite with some higher alcohol fruitiness coming through. It alleviates the weird bitterness that came from the cheese, but this returns soon after I swallow.
Finally I taste an Applewood Smoked Cheddar. Will the smoke work with the beer? The cheese smells and tastes wonderful. Soft, sweet smoke with some acidity and a great rich creaminess that makes Cheddar such a brilliant cheese. Sometimes I find a lot of yellow fruit characters, particularly pineapple in mature cheddar. Not this one. The smoke is dominant but not overpowering. The sip of beer causes the smoke to disappear. The smoothness hits the acidity and the contrast results in flavour fusion. It even allows a punch of acetaldehyde, that nice green apple flavour to pop out in the beer. Maybe it’s just the name of the cheese though. The Derren Brown effect or something…
Obviously a brewer took this photo. Definitely neither a chef with brilliant plating skills or a photographer of any ability...
My conclusion. I came into this expecting the Stilton to shine through as the winner. It’s often referred to as the ultimate companion to a Barley Wine. I was pleasantly surprised and think either the Brie or the Chevre Blanc walks away the winner. Must do this more often!
New Brewery, New Beer Geek!
It doesn’t just take a great, new brewery to brew good beer, it also takes great people. Thornbridge has always been about employing people that can bring something to the table and help us progress as much as we can to make great beer, both quality wise and flavour wise. This is why we have such a diverse brewing team… a couple of Food Science graduates, a Heriot-Watt brew school graduate, an ex-chef, a champion home-brewer. And now we’ve decided to go a step further and hire a doctor!
With a couple of Englishman and a couple of Kiwis, Stef, our solo Italian was far outnumbered in this league of nations, so we’ve decided to take another Italian on board! Some of you may recall Andrea Pausler (originally from Spilimbergo in North-Eastern Italy), who has just finished his PhD on the effects of bottle conditioning in the production of craft lager beers at Udine University in Italy. Andrea had previously joined us in 2008 for a few months to get some hands-on brewery experience while completing his thesis. He was instrumental in setting up our original Thornbridge laboratory and showed the commitment and passion that makes us who we are.
The Second Italian!
A keen sportsman, Andrea is right into running, skiing and football and more importantly is a massive rock fan, so will fit in perfectly to the team, what with Matt’s Foo Fighters obsession, JK’s unnatural love of Iron Maiden, Dave’s fist-punching Ramones, my dark, melodic Tool and the funk-rock of Stef’s Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m sure he’ll be air-guitaring with the best of us!
Recently, Andrea has been brewing throughout Italy and conducting research and analysis in the university’s pilot brewhouse. Along with JK, myself and Stef, he will be heading up our laboratory as well as bringing some fantastic Italian flair to the beer as we show him the ropes and teach him about our style of brewing. Most importantly, Andrea will lead our bottling operation and bring a wealth of knowledge with regards to the extension of our bottle-refermented range.
In terms of beer styles, Andrea is really passionate about all of the great top-fermented British and American beers but finds the bottom-fermented Czech lagers to be the best (after all of the brilliant Italian craft beers, I am sure!). This sounds great to us, as we’d love to brew an amazing Pilsener here at Thornbridge some day! I know that when Stef went to Italy for a visit, he and Andrea brewed a lager jam-packed with Nelson Sauvin hops at the brewpub where Andrea was working. Apparently it was awesome!
After just winning three medals in the International Beer Challenge (Gold for Kipling in the Ale section, Gold for Bracia in the Speciality section and Silver for Saint Petersburg in the Stouts), which you can check out here, I’m sure a bottle-conditioning expert is definitely going to come in handy!!
As well as that, we think it’s pretty cool that we now have a Brew Doctor on the team!!
You can also check out an abstract (that I found in the MBAA Quarterly) from some of his research below!!
Sensory comparison of the same lager beer stabilized through two
different techniques: Pasteurization and bottle conditioning
ANDREA PAVSLER (1), Stefano Buaitti (1), Matteo Milan (1)
(1) Department of Food Science, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
The shelf life of beer is one of the major concern for brewers and, as is
known, it is obtained through the pasteurization process. Nevertheless to
preserve the “handmade” characteristics of a product, the shelf-life can be
improved by bottle conditioning without heat treatment of beer. Industrial
lager beers, generally characterized by low alcohol (between 4 and 5% by
vol.) and extract content, after filtration, are pasteurized to obtain biological
stability. Bottle conditioning is a technique generally used to produce
top fermentation beers with an alcohol content higher than 6% by volume.
To evaluate the effect of bottle conditioning on sensory quality of a lager,
a bottom fermentation beer (pasteurized) has been compared to the same
beer bottle conditioned with different yeasts. A pasteurized lager (sample
P) and five bottle conditioned lagers (not pasteurized) with four yeast
strains were tasted after 10 months. As is known after this time, sometimes
even earlier, beers can show staling problems affecting shelf life. All
tasted beers came from the same starting batch (SB) of filtered and not
pasteurized lager; sample P was obtained from SB after pasteurization
processing (21 PU, Pasteurization Units) while bottle conditioned beers
were added with sucrose to have a final carbon dioxide content of 4.5 g/L
and an amount of yeast to obtain a viability equal to 5 × 104 CFU/mL. All
samples were stored at 20°C. The samples of bottle conditioned beer were
kept at 23°C for the first month to allow the yeast to ferment the added
sugar. A sensory test of all beers was carried out by a trained panel of
13 assessors; each sample were randomly tasted at the 10th month, and
aroma and taste were evaluated considering several aspects using a rating
test. Results showed that bottle conditioned beers were appreciated as
much as pasteurized ones and, some of them, even more. Possibly due to
its reducing power and oxygen scavenger effect, yeast acts as a protection
against the off-flavor development mainly related to staling taste. Results
showed that bottle conditioning can be an interesting and valid system
even for bottom fermentation beer in order to obtain a stable and distinct
product according the yeast strain used.
Couple o’ Awards
Been far too blimmin’ long between posts to be honest. Might be something to do with the madness of commissioning a new brewery. Maybe, just maybe.
Thornbridge Riverside Brewery is up and running (and you can read about the opening day on Mark Dredge’s blog). In fact, as I type this now, I can hear our awesome external calandria thermosiphon boiler drawing hot Saint Petersburg wort through it in preparation for a good blast of delicious light muscovado sugar. Believe it or not, this delicious brew isn’t even going to be served at a pub near you. In fact the whole shipment is destined for Christmas Puddings!! How’s that for an ingredient!!
Today is our 15th brew on the new plant and I’m manning the helm without Stef, who is taking a well-deserved break in Italy. However, I have our newest recruit, JK ably assisting me and Matt and Dave are working hard at the Hall Brewery brewing a Wild Swan and racking Kipling.
So far, things have been all about learning, learning and more learning and with our centrifuge commissioned just last week, the next job is the commissioning of our bottling line!
Other cool happenings over the last couple of months have included two medals at the Great British Beer Festival. Kipling, our 5.2% South Pacific Pale Ale picked up a Silver in the Strong Bitter section (which Jaipur won last year) and Lord Marples (at 4.0%) picked up a Bronze in the Best Bitter section. We were absolutely stoked with the awards, especially considering it’s the first award that Marples has ever won!! Both of these beers have been labours of love and we have all been working hard on getting them just right over the last couple of years, so are like proud parents!
Just as exciting is the World Beer Award that we picked up with our bottle refermented Halcyon Green Hop Vintage 2008. This won the World’s Best Harvest Ale at this years competition (and before you ask, no, I wasn’t judging in that category) and Bracia, our Chestnut Honey infused Dark Ale got a Highly Commended in the World’s Best Spiced Beer category. Quite happy it wasn’t put into the Honey Beer category as we would have been up against Jeff Rosenmeier’s Lovibonds Gold Reserve Wheat Wine, which is a brilliant drop.
The Halcyon Green Hop Vintage 2009 will hopefully be completed in the coming months. We have already brewed the beer and are waiting for a massive shipment of fresh hops that we can age it on ready for bottling. I can’t give you any dates though, as we have to get the bottling line working before then!
Also, for anyone out there that’s after a great book, I can throughly recommend Ben Mcfarland’s World’s Best Beers. I just got it online and it’s fantastic (yeah, yeah, Thornbridge made it in there…). Brilliant, perfect and nonrepetitive descriptions of some amazing beers, great format, wonderful photos and some cool guest articles. I especially liked the breakdown of beer and food matching by the experts at El Bulli, really interesting to get the world’s greatest to give their views.
Anyway, back to the brew, almost time for the wort to weave it’s way through the massive pile of hops that are sitting in the hopback, thieved of all their precious jewels of lupulin. I promise some videos and photos will be here soon!
Ratebrew…
What is Ratebeer, I here you all ask in unison. Being the laziest of bloggers, I did my usual wiki search and discovered that a guy called Bill Buchanan began the site in May 2000 to act as a focal point for beer lovers to have a virtual yarn about the breweries and beers that they love. Considering this is something that people have done for years in pubs all over the world, it makes sense I guess. Everything else was extending throughout the virtual world: dating, role-playing, football games, and the use of colons (the grammatical ones…) in a correct manner. It was bound to happen!
As the name suggests...
Ratebeer was subsequently taking over by a guy called Joe Tucker who runs this virtual beer collection site from the States, boasting over 2 million beer reviews! That’s a lot of drinking, recording and discussing!
I’ve had a bit of a rant before (I’m prone to long, circular arguments with myself when I write) about Ratebeer and how in the fever of beer collection, many a ratebeerian will actually rate a beer even when it’s obviously not in tip-top condition, but I also understand that people can write what they like! Saying that, I find Ratebeer a fantastic resource for feedback. I like knowing what people think about our beers, good or bad… as long as they don’t try and tell me how I’ve brewed them, as I wrote about here.
So here we are in the middle of July and it happens that the Ratebeer crowd are having their European Summer Gathering just up t’road (yeah, pretty bad for a Kiwi to go all Yorkshire, somehow the accents just don’t mix) in Sheffield and two of the Ratebeerians, Simon Johnson from the brilliant Reluctant Scooper blog and Ian Harrison from the excellent Pubs and Beer site have come up for a brew day!
Matt, Ian and Si... rubber gloves at the ready?
Simon has been here and brewed before and wrote a really nice blog that you can check out here. Actually if beer rating sites annoy you, as they do quite a few brewers, then I’d recommend Ian’s Pubs and Beer site. The interesting thing about this beer rating site is that they will often go into the same pubs and taste the same beers and rate them every time. This is how it should happen! Drink the beers you like and rate how the pubs themselves have kept them. It removes the possibility of the pub just having an average pint or it being the end of the barrel or the beer having being on the handpull for who knows how long. A great resource chronicling some good pub and beer information anyway. In fact, it’s definitely up there with the Ratebeer site in that the web address states exactly what the website is all about!
So with Ian and Simon here, it’s time to chat about the beer! I’ve been back and forth to Simon and Ian over the last month or so talking about ideas for the beer, what they envisage for this brew, what sort of hops, malts and other ingredients we have available, generally building up an image in my head of the type of beer that they want to brew. Because there’s a gaggle of brewers here at Thornbridge, we all have a diverse range of ideas and thoughts as to how beers should be brewed. It’s great to bounce ideas off one another and create and evolve a concept to its fruition. I gave all of the boys Ian and Simon’s ideas and we got to work.
Beer blog boys brew brilliant beer
First up was Simon and Ian’s initial concept… A light, pale ale, with Liberty and lemongrass / lemon balm to the fore, perhaps some mint in there? Make a real summer quencher!
That was the concept, so we got to work…
Kelly's plan
I thought of a beer around 3.6-3.8% using pale ale malt, some flaked maize instead of wheat to help head retention, and a little crystal rye, caragold and crystal wheat. Maybe hopped with Liberty and some german hops… potentially Northern Brewer or even Celeia, a Styrian offshoot. Dosed liberally with fresh lemon balm and mint at the end of the boil.
- Matt’s plan
Matt has pale ale malt, flaked maize also, and a little Vienna and pale crystal malts, with Liberty and lemon balm. Again, around 3.7%
- Dave’s plan… world domination?
Dave has pale ale malt, wheat malt, Vienna and a touch of crystal wheat, hopped with Styrian Goldings and Saaz and maybe some pineapple sage and Sorachi hops and a bit of lemon zest, weighing in at 3.8%.
- JK’s plan
JK has pale ale malt, Munich, caramalt and wheat for head retention with some Liberty and Amarillo hops with some lemongrass and around 4.5%. He also has an interesting concept for a “mint choc chip mild” with pale ale malt, pale chocolate, pale crystal, and fresh mint with Liberty and Challenger or Cascade hops. Interesting idea, though maybe something for the autumn months!
So by our powers combined we came up with a recipe! We went for Maris Otter Pale Ale malt, wheat malt, Vienna malt, Crystal Rye malt and Pale Crystal malt, giving us a lovely light orange wort. Once Ian and Simon arrived we hit the hops, nosing Liberty, Sorachi, Willamette, Santiam and Amarillo before deciding on a good whack of Liberty (5 kilos in 10 barrels) and a touch of Sorachi. Sorachi emits intense mouldy orange and coconut characters and comes across quite lemony in the beer, so we had to be careful with this hop. If we used too much it may overpower the gentle herb and lemon Liberty notes and overwhelm the delicate notes of the herbs and spices that we added at boil end.
Coriander seeds were the obvious choice with their wonderful citrus and powdered ginger characters to accentuate the hops but the next decision was which other herbs were I to raid from our fantastic Thornbridge gardens. It was off to see Chris, one of the resident gardeners. Like our brewer Matt, Chris was also a chef, and they both bring with them a great nose, palate and understanding of flavours and how ingredients work in food.
Off to the glasshouse, first to be used was some lemongrass (pictured below), freshly sliced from the soil. This was added crushed and sliced with the crushed coriander seeds before the end of boil to aid oil extraction.
After boil end, in went the lemon balm, the mint and the Tahitian lime leaves. All slightly more delicate in their aromas, with the Tahitian lime smelling incredible, much more scented and delicate than Kaffir lime leaves.
Lemon balm in our brewery herb garden
Good ol' garden mint... all crushed up, it reminded me of Rowley's Jaipur Mojito
Wonderfully fragrant Tahitian lime
The aromas in the brewery were fantastic, especially as the herbs and spices were bashed to within inches of their lives with a mallet. We’re all hoping like hell that these flavours make their way into the beer and gives us a wonderfully fragrant, light, easy drinking summer ale!
We’re yet to name this brew and I’ll update the blog as we go… should be a good’n!
Alecost
Do dark beers sell as well in the summer months? I’ve noticed at the Coach and Horses that it’s definitely pale beer season, with even my favourite Thornbridge session ale, Ashford, pushing three days for a firkin to empty as beers such as the delightful Hopton, our English Pale Ale showcasing the new season Bramling Cross hop (with a touch of Pioneer for bittering), Seaforth, our new 5.9% English IPA and the elusive Black Thorn selling with a lot more gusto. Speaking of the Coach, not only did it win the Sheffield CAMRA District Pub of the Year, but it also went on to be placed third in the Derbyshire Pub of the Year awards, so well done to Cat, Mark and the team!
I digress… some of you may have heard of, or even tried Alecost before, as we brewed it last year with Mike Pidgeon of the University Arms and Ben Tysoe of the Devonshire Cat, both fantastic pubs in Sheffield.
Probably the most interesting thing about Alecost is linked to its name. Alecost was a term used for the herb Costmary (Tanacetum balsamita) that has been used in the brewing of ales and beers since at least the 15th century. The famous herbalist and physician, Nicholas Culpepper refers to it as the “Balsam Herb” due to its balsamic odour, though I think the most noticeable character of this herb is the spearmint aroma that it gives off when rubbed or picked.
Growing happily in our Thornbridge herb garden
So why on earth would we want to put something that smells like spearmint chewing gum in a beer you may ask? The malt bill includes a good whack of Maris Otter Pale Ale malt and is complemented by flaked barley, Munich malt, roasted barley, amber, black and crystal rye malts. This gives a wonderful, deep complexity with the toasty graininess of the rye combining well with the charred, bitter chocolate characters of the deep roasted grains and the intense, almost coffee-like amber malt. The alecost works to slightly lift this stout, making it, in my opinion, the perfect good weather beer. Instead of the dull thud that the swallow of a heavy stout can sometimes give you, this lifts at the end with an underlying fruitiness and almost cooling effect. It’s not noticeable as being herbal, it just lightens the load a bit!
Hop wise, we originally went for the Japanese/American hybrid, Sorachi Ace with it’s fantastic over-ripe orange and coconut characters and the New Zealand Saaz offshoot, Riwaka with its grapefruit, lime and tropical fruit undertones. This time however, we were out of Riwaka, so chose the delightful Spalter Select instead. On the rub this hinted at strawberries and cream and a boiled sweet character that we thought would help to bring out some fruity sweetness in the aroma.
It doesn’t just end there though. To accentuate both the roasted malt characters and the gentle alecost aromas, we added a bunch of ground caraway seeds. The brew we did last year used only dried caraway seeds from Julian Graves, however this year, our wizard gardeners here at Thornbridge grew some Caraway(Carum carvi) for us to use.
This is the bottom...
And this is the top!
The fresh caraway seeds smelt a lot different from the dried seeds. Being fresh, they had a lot more of a grassy aroma, were not as pungent and minty as the dry counterparts and the green, unripe seeds had a light, almost coriander leaf character to them. In the end, we went for a blend of the fresh and dried seeds. The great thing about caraway is that along with the mint character, it also has a lovely almost aniseed like quality to it. This blends in perfectly with the dark malt characters of the beer and brings all of the ingredients together!
Caraway is also a well known digestive aid… does this make Alecost the ideal food accompaniment? I’d quite happily drink this beer with a load of different dishes, whether enjoying it with some fresh herb-filled sausages on the barbecue or enjoying it alongside a spicy cumin-filled curry. There’s lots of options for this beer.
Good old wikipedia informed me that caraway seeds contain limonene that actually has yeast killing properties! Apparently this is why rye bread (which usually contains caraway as well) is more dense than normal bread. My understanding is that most hops contain the wonderfully fragrant limonene (you can probably guess from its name what it smells of) and most beers containing hops ferment relatively well. Maybe brewers yeast is just a lot tougher than bakers yeast. Is this true of brewers and bakers as well? Could this be the next genre of Ultimate Fighting Championships?
Another interesting thing I found in my research is that costmary contains compounds called parthenolides which have been shown to help in migraine prevention… I wonder if that means no headaches the next day…
The Birth of a Brewery Part Three
Everything is still all go at the new Thornbridge site in Bakewell, with the Italian engineers working hard to get all of the pipework and electrics installed in time for us to begin commissioning. We’re hoping the beginning of August will see our first trial brews in the new brewhouse but as for bottling, the centrifuge and bottling line are yet to arrive and be installed.
Yesterday, we had a visit from the world’s leading beer writer, Roger Protz and showed him around the brewery, which was great! Roger had spent the day with our director and marketing manager having a few pints and a great lunch at the Cricket Inn in Totley, Sheffield before heading out to see our new site and meeting up with the boys in the existing brewery.
Stefano has been down at the new site for most of the week. In fact, I even saw his first attempt at welding… pretty good for a beginner, though I think we’ll leave it to the engineers for the time being (actually, it was a million times better than when I first tried welding when I was back at Tui Brewery in New Zealand!).
As you’ll be able to see in the video below, the dramatic changes over the last two clips are beginning to slow and we’re really getting into the nuts and bolts side of things. The cask preparation area, reception, control room, production offices and laboratory are all being built and we’ve even designed a small plating room in the lab so as to do any microbiological work in a sealed, clean area.
We’re going to begin slow in the lab. Microbiological analysis, yeast counts, viability, pH, wort and beer gravity, turbidity, CO2 content and attenuation limits will be done to begin with and then we’ll branch out and look at other potential tests as time goes on. We’re also going to have a designated tasting area where we can do weekly evaluations on all of our products in a controlled environment ( though saying that, who said a pub wasn’t a controlled environment!!) and formalise this so we have more people tasting to give us a better indication on how the beers are going… sometimes us brewers are the worst critics of our own beer by a long shot!
Anyway, I know you’ve all been waiting to see how the brewery is progressing… hopefully the next video will show the finished product! Enjoy.
The Birth of a Brewery Part Two
The long awaited sequel to my debut film. That’s right, the oh-so-imaginatively named Birth of a Brewery Part One. This time, I got inventive and changed the name from Part One to Part Two. The reason for this is so people could differentiate between the movies and also so I could write an introduction that included a bit of sarcasm.
In reality though, we all know that Back to the Future II was loads better than Back to the Future I, mostly due to the inclusion of a hover skateboard… I do remember thinking that they would be invented by the new millenium… how wrong I was. Of course, Aliens and Terminator 2, with it’s cool liquid-metal-melty guy were also sequels that improved on the originals.
I hope this vid-blog follows the same path!
I am worried about part three though… when was the third movie in a trilogy the best???
Anyway. Lot’s of shiny stainless steel awaits!
