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.

Harvest Moon - Saison

Harvest Moon is a hybrid saison style beer blending both British and Belgian styles to create a dry, refreshing flavourful ale. Plenty of wheat and light caramelised malts have been combined to give a sweet smoothness, whilst a low gravity finish and a brewing liquor high in salts imparts a dry, crisp character. Just to be clear in a brewery 'liquor' is treated water for making beer with, water is what's used to rinse the floor down.

Bottom fermenting British ale yeast was used to produce this batch as the trial brew back in early summer using the traditional continental strain wouldn't stop fermenting and resulted in multiple exploding containers and a very big mess in the warehouse! To counter the loss of peppery, spiced flavours through the yeast substitution fresh coriander and parsley were added to the beer during conditioning as well as ending up in the drayman's packed lunch (fair enough I guess). Despite sounding rather outlandish this addition of herbs is true to style in old farmhouse beers and is referred to as a gruit. Other options for herb and spice additions  in beer include caraway, yarrow, juniper, ginger, aniseed, heather and bog myrtle. Williams Brothers in Alloa are probably the most famous brewery for employing botanicals other than hops to flavour their beer with and I would highly recommend a tasting session.

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.

Castaway - Oak & Coconut Conditioned Strong Ale

July has arrived and the sun has got his hat on. Most breweries will produce a hoppy pale beer for mid summer, not DBC. Instead we've followed suit with our strategy of trying to do something different to everybody else (e.g. not making a mild for May) and brewed a 5.5% burgundy coloured ale. Castaway tastes as close to rum without actually containing possibly the worlds greatest and all too often overlooked spirit as I could get.

Motueka and Amarillo hops during the boil have lent a spicy, earthy and delicate pine aroma whilst plenty of crystal malts have given this beer a sweet treacle backbone. Following fermentation oak conditioning with coconut chips has rounded off the flavour and produced smooth nutty, stewed plum and charred character. This dangerously moreish beer is really something.

On another note we've decided to continue with our one off casks for our brewery tap in Dorchester after the success of our beetroot beer in spring. So for summer we have a firkin of Jurassic dry hopped with the new American variety Mozaic heading over there for next weekend. I enjoyed a sample with some friends from University last week, hopefully the Tom Brown's crowd will approve.

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.

Grand Cru - Abbey Style Ale

May is almost upon us and the abbey style blond Grand Cru goes on sale next week. With people becoming much more willing to give strong ales a go hopefully the the wonderful Belgian flavour profile of cloves, vanilla and tropical fruits will prove a hit. However, brewing this particular limited edition ale was not without its issues. 

As with most beers of this style I used malt extract in the kettle to boost the starting gravity and enhance the flavour of the finished product; too much of this though can give a poor mouthfeel and make the beer taste thin. The malt extract comes in the form of a thick syrup which takes an age to pour from the tub as it oozes out in thick gloops. I had six of these to add to my wort before boiling, and whilst trying to manage the rest of the brewhouse I may have got more than a little hot and bothered but at least I managed to not spill any of it.

Foreign yeast that the brewhouse team were unfamiliar with provided the next hurdle. Some of these have behaved wonderfully in the past as with the Elderweiss brewed last summer; others have been more troublesome such as the trial brew for the upcoming September saison literally erupting beer like a geyser all over the cold store. Belgian yeast was used in tandem with our own strain to produce high amounts of esters and phenolic compounds imparting fruity and peppery flavours within the beer. This yeast set off like a rocket at the start of fermentation, munching its way through the sugary wort like a microbial version of man vs food. The brakes needed to be applied by dropping the temperature in order to prevent negative attributes developing such as the butterscotch aroma caused by diacetyl. Krausening (good word, isn't it?) with a ball of violently fermenting yeast near the finish helped to eliminate green-apple flavour acetaldehyde, allowing the softer, elegant flavours to come to the fore. For more great brewing lexicon check out the Oxford Dictionary of Beer.

This week also saw DBC win a Gold medal at the SIBA South West competition in the specialty beer category with our dark wheat beer Silent Knight. A great result for the team and something to be proud of.

Update On Happenings

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.