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!

Introduction

Hi I'm Oliver Kitson and I'm the Brewmaster at Dorset Brewing Company's Jurassic Brewhouse.

I thought about starting a brewer's blog back in January and its taken 6 months but I'm now finally up and running. I'm going to be focusing on experimentation with beer and doing things that are out of the ordinary in terms of the day-to-day running of a brewery and beer production. So this will include things like monthly specials, beer festivals and making other beery creations.

Plenty of other foodie types are embracing blogging and social media and it really is time to get on board, so here goes.