Liquor - Salt Addition Calculator

Different historic styles of beer are associated with different cities and regions throughout Europe. This is because different places traditionally would have most likely used local ingredients such as hops but would also have been constrained to a certain extent by the profile of the water supply available to them. The water of Pilsen and Munich is soft and low in salts making it ideal for brewing pale crisp lagers. Dortmund has a lot of minerals in its water and so beers made here tend to be sweeter, malty ales, whilst the water of Burton is very hard and lends itself to the strong, dry, hoppier ales traditionally produced there. The table below shows the main ionic components in the water supply of different historic European brewing centres.

Ions (ppm)	Burton	Pilsen	Munich	Dortmund	London	Köln
Ca2+	268	7	76	260	90	105
Mg2+	62	2	18	23	4	15
Na+	30	3.2		69	24	50
CO32-	280	14	152	270	123	150
SO42-	638	5	10	283	58	85
Cl-	36	5	2	106	18	100

Nowadays a lot more is understood about the ionic chemistry of water and the way liquor composition affects the brewing process than when these cities first rose as great beer producers. Such as the effect calcium has on reducing mash pH by liberating phosphate ions to the way sulphate ions increase hop utilisation during wort boiling. Depending on the raw supply used different water profiles can be mimicked by adding treatment salts such as gypsum to the brewing liquor allowing different styles of beer to be brewed almost anywhere.

Below is a calculator you can use to determine the salt additions you require in your brew to copy different historic styles or tailor your liquor to your brewing needs. Simply enter the volume of your brewlength and ion concentrations of your water supply then change the amounts of the various common treatment salts to determine what your resultant liquor composition will be.

Hop Grist - Bitterness Calculator

Hop hop hooray! I’ve finally got my bitterness calculator to work online. This one is dedicated to those of you who are not American or from the 19th century as it’s in Metric. Working along the lines of Glenn Tinseth’s formula it takes wort strength into consideration and gives an estimation of the bitterness you are likely to achieve with your brew. Up to 6 different hop additions may be entered, plenty even for the hop-heads out there. Simply enter the weight, alpha content, type and boiling times of your additions to get the overall bitterness.

It will likely be some time before I design and brew another beer as a move to London and the world of distilling gin awaits. An apt swan song then given my switch from mashing to macerating. I'll miss wearing white wellies and the dinosaur suit but I'm not so sure about the barrel cleaning and racking! Fear not, there is the potential for a bit of déjà brew with my old colleague and friend Ben Ott of Truman's.

August - IPA

August is here and it's IPA time! With the demand being so high last year a few changes to the recipe have had to be made in order to allow double the volume to be brewed. Firstly our mash tun isn't big enough to cram the necessary amount of malt in for 3000L of a 6.5% beer to be brewed in one go so the same sort of syrup that was used to extend the brewlength of the Grand Cru back in April was employed again. This helps to increase the sugar content of the unfermented wort, however you don't want to be greedy as too much can have a negative impact on the final product.

The second alteration to the original recipe is that it was now going into a cylindroconical fermenter with a very small top hatch and so the use of whole hops was not going to be a possibility and so instead pelletised hops had to be used. This does have its benefits in that they are much less messy when you are cleaning up and there is lot less wastage from the hops soaking up beer.

Finally the hop bill has been cut from 7 varieties down to 5. This years brew includes the following; Amarillo (pine), Bobek (floral), Chinook (grapefruit) and Summit (orange). Hopefully it will be as well received as last time, especially given that we have a small quantity earmarked for the final limited edition bottling run of the year.

Oh-T-Tea - Kristalweizen

June’s special is a rather curious brew called Oh-T-Tea. It's an American style Kristalweizen that has been infused with select botanicals in order to give a zesty, herbal character.

The backbone of this recipe is a standard Bavarian-style wheat beer using malted barley and wheat, and copying the water profile of Munich. From there the American twist is to ferment using ale yeast rather than classic weiss yeast in order to avoid the banana and clove dominated flavour and produce a crisp and refreshing, bright beer with lots of body.

Things got a little crazy as Italian bergamot, Madagascan vanilla, Thai lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves were all added to the kettle in the giant ‘tea bag’ pictured to produce citrus, earthy and grassy notes. Couple this with English Challenger hops added throughout the boil for bittering and aroma, and as a dry hop addition in fermenter has resulted in a beer that smells like iced tea with a slice of orange and a stick of cassia. An ideal thirst quencher in my opinion after a hot summer day.

Mutiny - Dark Lager

Lagers used to be dark, its a fact. Before malting technology allowed for the production of lighter coloured grains, brewers were restricted in what their offerings could look like as well as taste like. This meant that when Louis Pasteur was investigating the storage properties of beer in Germany, it was amber and brown beers he was testing and not the pale, golden varieties available today.

Mutiny is a Munich style dunkel, an interpretation of the historic lagered beers of Bavaria, brewed with richly flavoured Munich malt giving the beer a hint of chocolate and a slight nutty flavour. Marynka hops from Poland added late in the boil provide contrasting floral and honey aromas. Whilst the brewers' trick of adding black malt to the mash at sparge has helped to boost the depth of colour without affecting the flavour, making it stand out all the more.

When I sampled this beer after a week in conditioning tank, I immediately got a few more glasses and brought them into the office. This is definitely one to share, if possible whilst sporting lederhosen.

Equinox - American Red Ale

Brewing a red ale is a lot more challenging than I had ever anticipated when I first decided to make one over a year ago. There's a fine balance to be achieved between light and dark as well as the hues of yellow, orange and red that come through from the malts in order to get the colour just right. Basically its rubbish if it's amber or brown but if it's just right, in that Goldilocks region, when it's a vivid scarlet it looks fantastic.

The red ales of yore tend to rely on a precise dose of roast malt in order to deliver the colour along with an archetypal burnt flavour, however most modern brewers use caramelised malts instead thereby imbibing a sweeter nature. Some heinous individuals even resort to straight up cheating by adding coloured syrup extracts to their brew. I've gone for a hybrid approach adding both roast malt and dark crystal malts, as I'm using a trio of US hop varieties in the kettle as well as dry hopping the finished article in tank to create a rich, zesty ale bursting at the seams with big flavour.

It has taken months to get right but it's worth it. This beer will put an ear to ear grin on your face after every sip. A bit like the dinosaur suit I wore in the brewery for a brief appearance on channel 4's Sunday Brunch show.

What A Flanker - Golden Ale

Rugby is the best game in the world. It's a big statement and I know it's not without its flaws, scrums are getting a lot of negative attention at the moment, but seriously think about it. At grass roots level a position for every body type, the lanky or short kid is not left out and the larger child shall we put it, is hailed as a hero! Professionally men in excess of 100kg able to do 100m in under 15secs running at each other with little to no protection, officiated by a man half their size, who never seems to know the rules with nothing but a whistle to stamp his authority. How can this be interpreted as anything other than truly great?

The beer I've designed to accompany this veritable festival of mud, blood, sweat and camaraderie is a 3.8% pale golden session ale. Plenty of Munich malt gives a smooth, honey character while a classic East Kent and Styrian hop combo conspire to provide beautiful aromas. Ideal for what can often be a good few hours of angst, dismay and hopefully jubilation.

Come on England!

Frosted Jack - Pale Ale

2014 has started with a bang, a bout of rain, and a new beer. Well it's actually been sold to Mitchell & Butlers as part of their winter program for well over a month and was originally created for a one off contract brew with another company last Christmas but it is the DBC limited edition January offering.

Frosted Jack is a 4.3% golden ale that I developed around the American hop variety Amarillo. Discovered by accident hiding in a crop of Liberty and originally termed Super-Cascade, this hop is rammed full of the oil myrcene which is responsible for the archetypal brash and citrussy American hop flavour.

Frosted Jack has woken up a few taste buds and we’ve been selling on average well over 100 casks of this stuff every week since mid November. In fact there are now increasing demands for more distinctive, wild and down right flavoursome beers to enter the fray of the DBC limited edition monthly specials. Fear not ale fans, I’ve got plenty up my sleeves and all will soon be revealed in this years glossy new brochure.

So if you’re not one of the ones joining the rather lame sober-January brigade have a Hoppy New Year.

Warlock - Pumpkin Ale

Warlock is the first seasonal that I did at DBC just over a year ago and I couldn't help but have another go at it this year. In fact its hard to come up with another beer that could potentially take its place at Halloween. Amber going on orange in colour; with a floral, grassy aroma and a sweet malty flavour; this 4% best bitter is brewed as an easy quaffing session ale.

The problem with doing a pumpkin beer is that trying to source pumpkins outside of October is actually quite difficult and being a monthly special the beer has obviously got to be ready for delivery prior to the month commencing. In fact the first time round there was a countrywide pumpkin shortage which led to some frantic phone calls and price negotiations after I confidently promised to deliver a bona fide pumpkin ale. 

No such difficulties this year as I was much more organised, even to the point where I prepared my pumpkins by carefully dicing them the day before rather than nearly resorting to frantically bashing them with a mallet whilst mashing in on the day! The pumpkin mash, all Styrian hops in the kettle and post-fermentation dry hopping in tank with Lubelski whole hops gives this ale a little tweak at every turn. I really enjoy making this one and it's likely I'll be doing it again next year.

Midnight Blinder - Foreign Stout

Midnight Blinder was an old Goldfinch Ale, a microbrewery that was located in what is now the skittle alley of our brewery tap Tom Brown's in Dorchester. I'm told that in those yonder days Midnight Blinder was simply liquored back to produce Flashman's Clout, which in turn was further diluted to produce Tom Browns. Not so any longer, both Tom's and Flashman's have their own grist formulations with the latter containing a significant amount of dark chocolate malt to give it its complex malty flavour.

Midnight Blinder was going to get its own grist recipe too and it was going to be far cry from its original incarnation. I decided to go  much darker with this 5% stout than Flashman's, all the way to 90EBC. Verging on Ink black, only seriously heavy imperial style porters and a handful of hardcore black IPA's coming in higher.

The hop profile was also going to be combination of old and new. Challenger for bittering and East Kent Goldings in for flavour would then relent to American hops in late for an aroma to match its look. I decided upon Galena and the now often overlooked Cluster, a predecessor to Cascade. Both of these hops can be too much for lighter beers to handle and impart a zesty, sort of blackcurrant hit to the aroma which combines really well with the large amount of chocolate rather than roast malt I decided to add for a sweeter character.

Wetherspoons got involved with this beer and have bought around 400 casks to date, which has given it a good deal of exposure and helped to raise the profile of what we're all about at DBC. It also meant my dad who lives several hundred miles away was able to try it and he let me know that he approves!

DBC IPA - India Pale Ale

There is a fair amount of debate over what an IPA should be in terms of bitterness, strength, character and aroma. People have even written entire books on the subject of IPA's (Pete Brown's Hops and Glory is a good read).

A lot of the newer breweries are producing creations with levels of hop flavour that really do make your tongue feel funny while many traditionalists continue to produce the more balanced and lower ABV variants that have been consumed in vast quantities for decades.

I was inspired by a dry hopping experiment I'd done with an old colleague where a standard pale ale was taken to new heights of glory by the addition of a rather large amount  of Chinook. The flavour of this hop is wonderfully unique, it's all pink grapefruit and zesty goodness, and it had to be included in my offering!

In the end I decided the DBC IPA should be a beer dominated by A-list hops including the likes of Cascade, Summit, and Apollo along with whole leaf Chinook for dry hopping. Caramalt and wheat were added to the grist to provide a biscuit flavour and help with head retention respectively. Topped off with a start gravity of 1062.5 to give it a final ABV of 6.5% meant this beer was set to be no shrinking violet.

Rocking motion through the use of our fork-lift was also applied to the beer during its conditioning, in a similar manner to madeira, with the hope of recreating some of the agitation that the real McCoy would have undergone on its transcontinental maritime journey. Had some really good feedback off this one, with plenty of people crying out for more and some Ale aficionados journeying far and wide in search of it. Wish I'd made twice as much, as I write we've long sold out.

Elderweiss - Hefeweissen

Elderweiss was conceived as a bit of a rebellion form the norm. I wanted to brew a foreign style of beer with specialist yeast and do something that was a bit different to what had been done before in terms of monthly specials as well as our core range. So a cloudy 5% wheat beer then!

Along with the mix of Styrian hops at the end of the boil I also opted to go for hefty dose of elderflower (also known as holunderblüten) syrup too to give it a more floral character. This really did help balance out the archetypal wheat beer flavours of banana and cloves formed during fermentation by the special hefeweissen yeast that we propagated up from a small vial in the pictured vessel.

Despite the stress of step mashing on our kit to help break down the proteins and beta-glucans from the large amount of wheat in the grist this really was an enjoyable beer to brew. The end result was also pretty decent especially given the only other time I had made a weissbier was in my Parent's kitchen whilst still at university!