Scottish Hampers - Answer Question, Win Stuff

The people over at Scottish Hampers got in touch with me and offered one of their beer boxes as a reader competition prize.

If they sucked, I would’ve said no, but the hamper genuinely includes some good beer! Brewdog Trashy Blonde, Harviestoun Old Engine Oil and Ola Dubh 12 Year Old.

I’m always blown away by the fact that people spend their precious time reading the things I write. Free beer for one of you sounds like a good idea to me.

For a chance to win, all you have to do is send me an email at beerbirrabier[at]gmail[dot]com with an answer to the following question:

Beer is typically made with just four ingredients. Malt, Water, Yeast and what else?

The competition will close at 1pm on Wednesday 30th May and the only condition is that you have to live in mainland UK to win.

Fingers crossed ...

Apricot Berliner Weisse

Ten days ago I brewed a double IPA. The first runnings came in at 1.067, they were bolstered with some simple sugar and then hopped generously with Centennial and Simcoe. The second runnings gave me four litres of sweet wort at 1.025.

The recipe looked something like this: 77% Pale Malt, 9% Munich, 5% Carapils, 4% Pale Crystal, 5% sugar. An original gravity of 1.073 and 75 IBUs from 8.9 grams per litre of Centennial and Simcoe.

Batch 003 of my sour beer career therefore becomes a 1.025 wort fermented with a half pint donation from batch 002.

The Cantillon-dreg-weisse-yeast-mix from batch 002 ripped through the bulk of those 25 gravity points in about 3 days. Since then I’ve been allowing the Brett and bacteria to clean up what’s left whilst I grow up a lacto starter from some fresh wort and a handful of grain (in exactly the same way as here).

I’d planned to flavour batch 002 with apricots but I’ve changed my mind. I found some awesome raspberries at the market over the weekend and I’m now planning to eventually use those instead. So batch 003 takes the apricots and the big lacto-kick. I’m hoping that by adding a large, actively fermenting bacteria culture alongside easily fermentable sugar, I’ll suppress the weisse yeast and get some decent lactic acid production.

I’ve chosen to use dried apricots because fresh aren’t in season. I’ll puree these down, loosened with a little boiling water, before heating to pasteurise. The puree will then be cooled and pitched straight into the beer alongside the lacto starter.

Who knows how long it will take? I’m sure the beer will let me know when it’s ready.

My sour beer lineup now looks something like this:


(From left to right):

Batch 001: Rhubarb Sour. Primary fermentation with an ale yeast, soured with a lacto starter and dregs from Cantillon and Boon. Aged on rhubarb. Approximately one year in glass.

Batch 002: Sour Oat Weisse. Primary fermentation with a German weisse yeast, soured with dregs from Cantillon.

Batch 003: Apricot Berliner Weisse. Primary fermentation with a pitch of beer from batch 002, further soured with a lacto starter. Aged on apricots.

Opening a Dream Brewery

How many homebrewers daydream about turning professional? Most of them, I'd bet. In fact I bet the only ones that don't, are those that've already started the journey toward a brewing career.

So here's an opportunity for you to daydream for a bit. If you opened a brewery tomorrow, what would you brew? A beer range that'll keep you interested, but that'll also pay the bills. Something you'd happily quality assess during the day, then sink a couple of in the evening.

For me, it would be a small but varied core range:

Gateway Pilsner. Filtered lightly. 4% alcohol. Available in bottles and kegs only. This would be the brewery staple, a beer that doesn't leave the front door unless its perfect. It would have a bready, toasty malt backbone with a floral, grassy aroma of noble hop. It would be a beer that the macro-drinker can easily switch too, but not put down.

Pale Ale. A session beer for the cask drinker. 3.8% alcohol. Available in cask only. Munich and cara malts for toffee and caramel sweetness without the acrid, tannic harshness of too much crystal malt. Zesty, citrusy American hops. Served through a sparkler for extra body ... if the drinker so wishes.

New Zealand IPA. A hybrid for hop-heads. 6.8% alcohol. Available in keg and bottle. Think grain bill and hopping schedule of an IPA from the West Coast of America, but with hops from New Zealand. Biscuity, caramel malts underneath a tropical fruit bowl of mango, passion fruit and lychee. A citrus-free zone.

Porter. A dark beer for everyday drinking; inspired by London. 5.5% alcohol. Available in cask, keg and bottle. Sweet up front with a firm bitterness to finish. This beer would be made with chocolate and brown malts, not roasted grains - producing a flavour profile of chocolate, coffee, heavily toasted brown bread and nuttiness. NOT an alternative to Guinness.

Imperial Stout. Available year-round; only to be drunk on special occasions. 10% alcohol. Available in bottle only. A beer to be sipped and enjoyed slowly. Big chewy, malty sweetness carried by a thick, oily mouthfeel. Notes of espresso, cocoa, liquorice and bitter chocolate. Enough sweetness remains in the finishes to balance out a bold, dry, aggressive hop bitterness.

And then on top of that core range, I'd mess about and have fun. I'd do a version of the Imperial Stout with coffee beans and I'd release it in wax-topped bottles once a year - just like Dark Lord and Kate the Great. I'd funk stuff up with wild yeast and bacteria, ageing it in wine barrels and in casks that once contained spirits. I'd use fruit and spices and I'd try to do stuff that nobody else has done. I'd collaborate with fellow brewers and the brewery would always been open to amateurs.

What would you do ...

Picture from here.

Tropical Weisse & Hopfenweisse

I've been brewing like mad lately. I think my fermentation chamber has been constantly full since the middle of January. I brewed a hoppy American Pale Ale that's just about ready to sample, and then a Hefeweizen that's currently souring at the hands of Cantillon dregs.

Next up is a Hefeweizen, done two ways, with soft fruits in common. Half the batch will be dry-hopped into oblivion with Amarillo hops, the aim being to pull out some nice apricot and peachy flavour to sit against the spicy, clovey quality of the yeast. The second half will be flavoured with a combination of mango and passion fruit.

The yeast is the real motivation behind this batch. I harvested loads from the Lactic Weisse and it seemed a shame to waste it. The grist consists of a Maris Otter base, some munich for malty complexity and then oats (because, again, I didn't have any wheat to hand). The base wort was hopped to 10 IBU's with an addition of Amarillo at 60 minutes and then with a small addition at flame out.


Three days into primary fermentation, I added a puree of passion fruit and mango. The passion fruit was passed through a sieve and then blended with the mango and a little boiling water to loosen. The whole mix was then passed back through a sieve before being heated to 70c in an attempt to pasteurise. The aroma that's currently escaping the fermenter is an irresistible amalgamation of tropical fruit salad and spicy, phenolic yeast.

Looking forward to sample these two in a couple of weeks time.

Hallway-de-Sour

I like the idea of having lots of different wild homebrew aging in the cellar. Just hanging out down there, slowly maturing and developing. Not in bottles as finished beer, but in bulk. Ageing on different fruits and in different woods, ageing at the hands of different yeast and bacteria.

Trouble is - what with me not living in the 18th century - I don’t actually have a cellar. Nor do I have any wooden barrels to age beer in. What I do have though is a TESCO, a TESCO that’s started selling glass Demijohns. A TESCO, and a hallway with a bit of spare surface space. Sorted.

About ten months ago I made this. I then soured it further with a lacto culture and left it to do its thing. Rhubarb ‘Lambic’ therefore becomes batch 001 in my Hallway-de-Sour. Batch 002 is equally fun.


Batch 002 is 55% pale malt, 23% pilsner malt and 22% oats. It’s fermented with a German weissbier yeast, it’s bittered with hops to 10 bittering units and it has an original gravity of 1.057. It’s currently sitting in primary where it will stay for around 10 days. The plan is to then rack to glass and pitch a lacto culture and some dregs from assorted bottles of Cantillon. Once we’ve hit 1.000 and picked up some funk, I’ll pitch loads of lovely apricots and leave for further ageing.

My thought process is that the clove and banana phenolics produced by the weissbier yeast strain will work well with apricot. Tartness alongside that could be fantastic. I used oats instead of wheat because that’s all I had.

Batch 003 will also be fun ...

Homebrew - Almost Tasty

I often hear people say: "anyone can throw a load of hops into a beer, it's balance that requires skill". Whilst I'm inclined to agree, I also think that achieving a bright, clean, pronounced hop flavour in a pale beer is far from easy. I know, I've tried and failed many times.

Increasing hop additions and delaying until the end of the boil hasn't made any real difference. I closely control fermentation temperature, use a clean, neutral strain and get beers without any yeast character; so it's not that the hop flavour is being masked.

The next variable is water. London water is hard. Almost as hard as understanding water chemistry for brewing. In simple terms, water contains minerals, the amount of these minerals in the water will depend on geographical location. London water is hard because it has lots of minerals in it. Two of the ions in these minerals are Chloride and Sulphate. I want to change the balance of ions such that there's a lot more Sulphate than there is Chloride. For reasons I won't go into*, a skew towards sulphate will accentuate hops, whereas the reverse will favour malt. To achieve this, I will add Calcium Sulphate (Gypsum) to my mash and Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salt) to my boil. Done.

When it comes to hop additions, large and late is the name of the game. Standard.

Here's my recipe:

Grain: Pale malt (61.6%) and pilsner malt (23.1%) for the base, carapils (7.7%) and flaked barley (3.8%) for body, pale crystal (3.8%) for some sweetness and complexity.

Hops: Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo (all pellets). 3g addition of each variety at 10, 7, 5, 3 and 1 minute from flame out.

Other: Batch size 7 litres, original gravity 1.059, mash temperature 68c.


I missed the original gravity by a point and got 1.058; happy with that. I did lose A LOT of wort to hop material though, only ended up with around 4 litres. Instead of throwing away the dirty wort, I racked it into a second vessel and pitched some yeast. What's the worst that could happen?

I've named this one 'Almost Tasty', on account of the inspiration I took from Mike McDole's 'Tasty APA' recipe.

* mainly because I don't understand them.

Brewdog Blitz!

If you want to learn about beer, you’d do much worse than to start homebrewing. What better way to understand the ingredients and processes integral to beer, than to get hands-on with them? I’m always reminded of this when I drink beers like Brewdog’s Blitz!. Beers of super-low strength that aim to deliver the same flavour hit as their heavyweight rivals.

Attempting to brew one of my own made me appreciate just how difficult it is. 5 IBUs either side of target and you’ve missed by 25 percent, a final gravity that’s 5 points too low and you’ve screwed up your ABV and dried out your beer. It’s a balancing act where everything sits on a knife edge, the slightest mistake will stand out like a sore thumb and there’s nowhere to hide.

Step up Brewdog Blitz!, a modest 2.8 percenter that’s clearly inspired by recent legislative change to halve duty on beer brewed between 1.2 and 2.8 percent ABV. Described as a West Coast hop bomb, it’s brewed with a grist of only caramalt and is probably best described as a US amber ale.

There’s lots of caramelly, malty, sticky toffee aroma that follows through into the taste. I’m thinking sweets with too much sugar in them, Flumps and candy floss. Sitting atop that is a load of American hops. Not in a traditional citrus and pine West Coast IPA sort of a way though; more a reserved, jammy, tutti frutti ice cream, candied peel sort of a way. The body is thin and watery, but whatever, what were you expecting for 2.8 percent!?

5am Saint Junior.

Consider me a fan. This is the beer that Nanny State should’ve been. Beers of this strength might not deliver the depth of flavour and character of those that are stronger, but what they do offer is a decent alternative for those that want something weak but worthwhile.

I tried Blitz! when the Camden bar opened and I loved it. Here, in the bottle, it’s great too. This should be on at all times in Brewdog bars, I would drink a lot of it and I can see other people doing the same. Top marks.