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.
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!
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.
Winter beers tend to be a rather over the top affair. Brash names involving intoxicated reindeer and flavours that are more at home in fruit cake are what's associated with them and long may that continue! They are an opportunity for a brewer to get a bit experimental with the ingredients list and push the boat out in terms of flavour and in many cases strength too.
My offering at DBC is a 4.5%er titled Eberkneesup which is based on an oaty mild recipe I've tinkered with by adding orange peel and star anise for a punchier flavour and a dose of cinnamon to partner up with the Bramling Cross hops and give it a really warming aroma.
Its certainly got the desired festive vibes to it (the bin smells bizarrely alluring at the end of the day!) but without going over the top flavour-wise in order to retain what I can only describe as quaffability. I want people to be able to have another pint of it rather than moving on to something 'a bit more bland', also helped by the fact it isn't 10% alcohol.
Have a wonderful holiday period and all the best for the new year.
There has been a lot of discussion recently over the specific definition of both 'craft beer' and 'real ale' and some people have really got their knickers in a twist over it! CAMRA seem to be relaxing their traditionally conservative stance indicated by the introduction of both continental keg and American bottled stands into the GBBF.
I was lured into the debate when an e-mail from Tony Egerton at CAMRA asking for my take on the matter appeared in the DBC inbox. It immediately reminded me of a rather lengthy blog post by the Brewdog guys. Martin and James joined the fray and suggested a series of defining points for 'craft beer' relating to size, authenticity, ownership and integrity. You can check it out here:
http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article/defining-craft-beer.
So I gave it some thought while digging out the mash tun. I reckon forget size, after all Brewdog are turning into a giant themselves and could well find their 'craft' status revoked given their rate of growth by their own standards. It really should be about care, love and passion. Materials and processes should be chosen primarily for their desirable qualities and not because they are simply the cheapest option. i.e. A brewer is in charge not an accountant.
The beer should be made by somebody dedicated to that profession and in my opinion someone who would do it as a hobby anyway. A brewer who is dedicated and understands the science of whats going on and why, not a production operative who is simply doing it for his wage packet and only cares about quality because its part of his KPIs. It's also about the company ethos as a whole in my mind. If they think of their product range as simply a brand portfolio then they aren't craft. If they put the beer in bottles that are anything other than brown for marketing purposes or whatever, they aren't craft. Basically the beer comes first!
Whether ale is real or not is another matter, its not just about ale in a cask anymore. Unfiltered keg beers exist; filtered and re-pitched cask beers exist (many big boys such as Banks's do this); Key-kegs (seen in the middle of the pic) now allow 'yeast in' beer to be served through a lager font and Cornelius kegs can be used to serve both variants through fonts or hand pulls!
In my mind if its got yeast in it then it's undergoing conditioning within the container it is being served from. Therefore forget handpull vs font and keg vs cask etc. Yeast in = Real ale. I suspect the debate is likely to continue but ultimately all anybody wants is a tasty beer.
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!
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.
