Its been an interesting few weeks down in Dorset. I got a mention from Nigel Barden on Radio 2 for my Smokin' Bock paired with hay roasted veal, which resulted in a number of texts from my mum and also a few extra sales too. The plan is to bottle the May limited edition 7% Belgian blond Grand Cru in the same style packaging but using a different high alcohol tolerant yeast to condition the beer.
I also did a 'meet the brewer' event at our local Weatherspoon's which was rammed thanks to free beer samples of Equinox, Mutiny, Jurassic fermented with saison yeast and a sample cask of the beetroot beer appearing at our brewery tap over the Easter bank holiday. Many thanks go to John the manager for helping to organise this and get the word out and also the local CAMRA crew who turned out en masse.
The SIBA South West beer festival is in 2 weeks time at Tuckers Maltings in Newton Abbott, will do my best to make an appearance and try a few tasty beers from our local friends/rivals. Hopefully I'll also be able to discuss the trauma of brewing high volumes of strong Belgian style beer on our kit with our malt supplier, more on that next time.
Thought I'd just give a little update on happenings. Firstly our debut limited edition bottled beer, 100% Smokin' Bock, that was brewed last year and subsequently oak aged for 100 days is on sale. Its character has developed into a wonderfully complex plethora of different flavours: First you smell breadcrust, then its treacle and bourbon on the palate backed by an alcoholic warmth that is enveloping. The bottle design is also something I'm quite proud of; It really needed to be special and I think the gold foil encasing the clay swing-top gives it that little extra.
I've also got a batch of beetroot beer fermenting away on our clandestine pilot kit, which is a bit of a step into the unknown to say the least though I'm fairly certain about its colour! It also contains a small percentage of apple juice, its sharper flavour should help balance the earthy notes of the beetroot. The finished article will be named and served by the staff of our brewery tap, Tom Browns, in early April
Its SIBA BeerX 2014 in less than two days time now, been looking forward to this for a while. A great chance to learn, meet up with people I haven't seen for a while and sample a few beers.
Autumn, along with January, can be a quiet time for breweries in the UK. With the festive period looming and the British summer a distant memory trade tends to slow somewhat, particularly in the high %ABV bracket. It was therefore surprising that our MD and sales team were so on board with brewing a 6% bock, a historic style of German beer originating from the city of Einbeck, for November.
Traditionally bocks are quite dark as well as strong. This is because the technology to produce the lighter coloured malt, necessary in making the pale lagers associated with Germany nowadays, had not been developed. There are now many different incarnations of this style such as, pale maibocks, freeze distilled eisbocks, and wheat dominated weissbocks. Interestingly bock is also German for goat, so it's fairly typical to see one featured on the label.
We decided on a more standard bock, goat and all, with a slight twist by using beech smoked malt. This gives our interpretation a smoky character in order to back up the sweet, malt dominated flavour profile created in ours by using large quantities of Munich style malt and having a high final gravity (necessitating the use of the special hydrometer, see pic).
We have just racked our Smokin' Bock into cask and I'm pretty happy with it. A tiny hint of pear drops on the nose, not what I was after but it should diminish, then that hit of smokiness which I was wanting. The flavour is all treacle and honey with a very low but balanced bitterness. We've decided to keep some back and are oak maturing it as a special treat for the new year, which we plan to bottle as a seriously limited edition. Prost!
