The Good, the Bad and the Bitter
The Ugly... holding a glass of yum!
Beer and food go well together. There is nothing anyone can say to me that will ever convince me otherwise. Because beer is such a diverse and fascinating vehicle for so many flavours and taste sensations, it just works.
I’ve just spent the afternoon cooking. We had a glut of onions in the cupboard and instead of watching them go soft or trying to plant them on the football pitch out of my back door, I decided to transform them. That, and the fact that we really needed to go shopping, had no food and were both hungry as hell!
First up was an onion gratin with loads of quartered red and white onions, leeks, fresh thyme from our windowsill, a delicious French white and instead of Parmesan and Gruyere, I went for double cream mixed in with Wensleydale and a mature cheddar. Needs must… We also had a large head of broccoli, so I slowly melted leeks down in olive oil, added sliced, peeled broccoli stem, a potato cut into cubes, a few cloves of sliced garlic and cook for a few minutes. I then added a litre of chicken stock, boiled till everything was soft and added loads of broccoli florets. I took half, blended it with my smoothie maker and added a good dollop of cream. The other half, I left as it was. Slightly caramelised leeks, broccoli stem and flowers, chunks of potato all bobbing around in a rich chicken and vege stock.
Short straw drawn and the victim chosen, today it was Jaipur, coupled oddly enough with those legends of Industrial Music, Skinny Puppy… great music for an experiment!!! Actually, Jaipur was the obvious beer because my plan was to test the theory that fats can have an effect on perceived bitterness. The Jaipur tasted after some of the un-blended soup should be more bitter than the blended creamy version.
First mouthful of chunky broth… nice caramelised leek, maybe a bit over-caramelised, loads of broccoli and nice salty stock. Yum! Then a sip of the Jaipur. All sweet and perfumed in my nose, full and fruity in my mouth with sneaky whisps of gooseberry and grapefruit that lead into that citrus twist of bitterness, both mellow and feisty at once. The bitterness was there alright and trying it’s hardest to make me have another sip to benefit from that Maris Otter malt sweetness. I succumbed.
Now for the Broccoli and Leek Soups creamy half-brother, a good tablespoon or so of double cream hiding in a jungle of leek grass and great broccoli trees. Well, a forest that had been chopped down and blended into mulch… Intense broccoli and unctuous cream with a background of salt and onion and something that reminds me of mushy peas… maybe the broccoli is displaying some of its sulphury characters just like legumes do. And the Jaipur.
- Has the BFG sneezed into a ramekin?
Instant sweetness and a slightly thinner mouthfeel. Then a little fruit and some lemon peel and a slide of bitterness down the sides of my tongue as all of those little iso-alpha-acids perform a flanking manoeuvre on the lazy, fat cream taste-bud guardians. The bitterness is there but it’s completely subdued and it’s a good half minute until the bitterness wins and presents itself right at the back of my throat in some type of post-victory warrior dance. Maybe this is their Haka.
My hypothesis is all good, even in something as simple as this, I’ve proven theories, won battles and saved worlds. Most interesting was the fact that Jaipur worked perfectly with a creamy Broccoli and Leek Soup! Maybe that’s just the beer talking…
The onion gratin has drowned in a sea of oil. Too much cheese. I can’t win every battle.
It’s alive…
Who the hell am I?
My name is Kelly and I’m the Brewery Manager at Thornbridge Brewery. It doesn’t mean I get a company car with low mileage. It doesn’t mean I wear a suit to work. It doesn’t mean I get a company expense card.
It means I’m a brewer, a cask-washer, a leaf-sweeper, a spent-grains digger and a copper cleaner. I’m a scientist, a counter of yeast cells, a piece of living, breathing sensory evaluation equipment. Sound cheesy? Probably, but this is something that I’m pretty passionate about. I will get annoyed if you start talking about beer like you know a lot and then have nothing to back it up. Most importantly, I want to brew and I want to help people understand how beer is crafted. To realise that the creation of a pint or a bottle of beer is as intricate and well thought out as the finest wine, the oldest, smoothest whiskey or the most decadent, fruity Port.
I’ll let you know what’s happening at the brewery, what our thoughts as brewers are, what beers we’re drinking, what crazy, twisted concepts we want to bring alive as beers for you to enjoy and probably a bit of stuff on the wonder that is beer and food!
So, here it all begins… a foray into the world of blogging, whether it be methodical, random or just the plain old ramblings of a brewer.
The best place to start is right now!
I look out the window at a good 7 or 8 inches of snow and wonder why I didn’t try to make it to the brewery today… Hope like hell that we don’t get any more snow tonight! The flipside is that it’s given me time to write an article for the brewery website (www.thornbridgebrewery.co.uk) and start up a Thornbridge Brewers Facebook group so we can let the facebookers get into the know as well. I’ve just put a bit of Tool on in the background, my favourite band and am tasting a small snifter of Halcyon, our Imperial Pale Ale.
This is good stuff! One of the joys of living above the brewery tap (The Coach and Horses in Dronfield) is that I get to write basic tasting notes for each beer that is on handpull…just something for the customers to read and get a bit of an understanding about the flavours and aromas they’re likely to find in their pint. This version of Halcyon is bloody brilliant. We’ve had a bit of a play with this brew over the last couple of years. Every time we brew it we almost throw the recipe out the window!
This time we’ve decided to slightly up the amount of bitterness… we went for around 80 IBUs in the past, but we thought a little more bitterness would help to round out the malt sweetness that is so prevalent in this brew… We upped the recipe to give almost 90 IBU… this was the equivalent of around 16 kg of hops used in 8 bbl (a British barrel is 163.66 litres), in other words, a bloody lot of hops! We weren’t quite happy with just a small amount, so added another 4 kg in to the conditioning tank for dry-hopping and the results are quite astounding!
Rich, golden and oozing with malty goodness… this is Jaipur on steroids. Fruit dominates the nose, but it’s not a citrus onslaught. For me, it’s berries and even a little bit of grape juice. And you can’t forget the undeniable whiff of rich alcohol… the type you know will be awesome on a snowy day such as this. There’s also a little bit of mineral in there… maybe a hint of saltiness? All I know is that it was enough to make me salivate like crazy in anticipation of the first mouthful.
I think we’ve got this one on the right track… it’s heading towards the perfection we’re on the eternal quest for. The malty, cereal, caramel characters that the massive amount of Maris Otter malt provides, acts as an awesome vehicle for this mixture of hops. Again, I get berries and grapes with a light sweetness. All of a sudden a little sneaky Hunter S. Thompson on acid gremlin of bitterness appears. Out of nowhere, the citrus appears, rips a few epithelial cells from the roof of your mouth and base of your tongue, lingers for a bit, then slowly fades into that happy place. You know the one… that place where you know you need to have another sip just to get all of that fruit and sweetness and balanced bitterness and warmth. In fact, I was so absorbed by the flavours that I didn’t even realise the hefty 7.7% alcohol by volume. It’s there alright, yet it’s not a punch-in-the-face alcohol… more of a great aunty-pinch-on-the-cheek if you get my drift. I took a picture because it was so pretty.
Crap photo, great beer!
Am all out of blue cheese, though the Cropwell Bishop Stilton I tasted with the Goose Island IPA I had last night would have been about bang-on for this beer as well. It wasn’t too intense or creamy, yet still had all of those great, funky blue characteristics that were matched by the Goose Island’s wonderful hop characters. Instead, I have some Old Squire Special Reserve Vintage Cheddar from Wales. This actually works. The fats coat your mouth and mask the bitterness somewhat but allow a whole lot of fruity hop to pop out, along with an interesting, almost fresh-sawn cedar character. It also allows the alcohol to come through a bit… I guess the bitterness was hiding it all along! The cheese itself has some acidity and sweaty characters, but light, vibrant citric flavours as well… these work perfect with the Halcyon.
Thus ends the inaugural entry, I’m off for another little taster!
