IMBC14: homebrewing, beer styles & judging

We were invited by Connor Murphy to take part in the home brewing panel at the Friday evening session of IMBC 2014. The plan was for each of the four homebrewers to introduce one of their beers and talk through how that beer was brewed, especially focusing on any processing problems and lessons learned, while the audience sampled the beer. We also planned if time permitted to have some discussion on the topic of judging beers...

Beer as a food

The good stuff at Six Degrees North

It was a Sunday in June and we were nursing the faintest of hangovers from attending the BrewDog AGM the previous day. We needed a calm, peaceful atmosphere, comforting beer and restorative food. Luckily for us Six Degrees North was a short walk away.

This place is perfect in so many ways, from the wonders of its delicate and delicious in-house Belgian style beers to its soothing lighting and the absolutely ideal volume of the background music. But the most magical thing about Six Degrees North on this specific occasion was its beer and cheese soup, which arrives served in its own bread trencher. You need to eat this. Take my word for it. The word is amazing. Everyone should go there simply to try the soup, and that's before you even get round to their impressive beer list.

It may look good but actually it's poison

When we got home we were keen to make a version of this soup for ourselves. I trawled the internet looking for a suitable base recipe and settled on this one as a good starting place. Now here is my first pro-tip for you: select your beer very carefully. Over the years I've heard conflicting views on how to use wine in cooking. Some people say use any old thing because it doesn't matter and you don't waste the best stuff in food as you won't get to truly appreciate it. Other people say, don't put poor quality ingredients in if you want to make quality food. Personally, I have veered from one extreme to the other. For our first beer and cheese soup, I chose poorly. I figured it would be fine to use up some Dark Star Belgian IPA we had leftover from a case (which we'd been given as a prize in a brewing competition earlier this year). But, it wasn't fine. Not at all. Upon initial tasting of the soup all of the expected cheesy-herby-seasoning type flavours were there up front, followed by a slight bitterness (you just have time to wonder if this is from the beer), then WHAMMO! in the finish came the awful acetone tang across the tongue which poisoned the whole thing. That's right, I'd ruined my soup by using a beer that contributed an overwhelming taste of nail polish remover. It was an incredibly sad moment because it was clear that the soup would have been great if it had only been made with decent beer. Still, a vital lesson had been learned.

A few weeks later I came across this recipe (from Deschutes Brewery in Oregon) for Bacon and Beer Cheddar Cheese Soup and I needed to give it a try to exorcise the demons of the poisonous acetone soup. My second pro-tip for you: choose some fancy schmancy bacon. Those packets of luxury/wood-smoked/lovingly-somethinged-by-hand bacon that your eyes skim across in the supermarket before you pick up your usual pack: get that. Yes, that's right, you need craft bacon* for this recipe.

But which beer should you use? Well, it's up to you really. This particular recipe called for a golden ale but I used a pale (Adnams Ghost Ship) and it worked fine. Probably you could use whatever you like and you'll achieve mild variations in flavour depending on your choice of beer (in fact, it would be interesting to use a Belgian beer... but for me it's still too soon after the acetone soup). By all means experiment! However, please do not use out-of-date beer or, in fact, any beer which you would not happily drink a glass of; that road will lead to misery.

My third pro-tip concerns that all important element of the craft experience: blending. The original recipe doesn't call for any blending/liquidising of the ingredients. But again personal preference gives you the option of creating an ultra smooth soup or more chunky chowder - or anything in between. If you'd like it super smooth you could put the basic soup ingredients (onion, garlic, chilli, celery) into a food processor before frying them. If, like me, you prefer your soup to be generally smooth but a little on the rustic side then cook the vegetables, add the first portion of beer and the stock, then either give it a blitz with a hand-held blender, or if you don't have one, pour everything into a blender/liquidiser and give it a quick blast before returning it to the pan. Get it to the consistency you're happy with before adding your roux.

A couple of other handy hints - be careful about your conversions from US to UK measurements. The first time I used the Deschutes recipe I made a roux with 4oz of flour/4oz of butter. When I added this to the soup the entire thing insta-solidified, like a cheesy cement. Whether this is a positive or a negative depends on how thick you like your soup. With that much thickening power it's more like a chowder, which is nice if you like chowder. The next time I made it I used half as much for the roux (2oz flour/2oz butter) and it turned out much more like a soup.

Third time lucky - this batch came out just right

Finally, I know it's a cheese soup. I love cheese, I really do... however, I think the amount stated in the ingredients list is an epic overkill. I put the full 4oz of smoked cheddar** but only about 100-150g of standard grated cheddar - I wanted it to be a soup not a cheese fondue. But I think you should all experiment and find a version that makes you happy.

If you like cheese and bacon and beer then you should probably make this soup right now. If you're feeling like a bit of a show off then have a go at making your own bread bowl, we did it the first time round and it wasn't so difficult. But it's equally good from an actual bowl. :)

*probably it will be just as delicious with standard bacon, but why take the risk?
**I found I couldn't grate my smoked cheddar - no matter just slice it up small, it will all melt once it goes into the pot anyway

(post by Emma)

Beer Cocktails (yes, really)

My first experience of drinking beer cocktails was in BrewDog Glasgow in 2012. As soon as we arrived I spotted a board with a list of three beer cocktails and got a bit excited. I loved beer. I loved cocktails. Surely a beer cocktail could only be better than the sum of its parts, right? My drinking companions quickly talked me down and insisted that we have a couple of rounds of beer first to work our way up to the cocktails. Eventually I got my way though and we tried one of each cocktail. Now, I don’t recall exactly what they were called or precisely what was in them (I know mine was made with Punk) but one thing they all had in common was that they were decidedly less pleasant than any unadulterated BrewDog beers. My friend Vanessa described hers as tasting like ‘old ladies shoes that have been kept in a cupboard for a long time’. We didn’t want to finish them and went back to beer instead.

The Homebrew Sessions Vol.3: Brewing with Adjuncts

Branching out from 'standard' brewing practices, how do brewers go about creating some of their more experimental beers*? According to homebrew legend John Palmer an adjunct is 'any non-enzymatic fermentable. Adjuncts include unmalted cereals such as flaked barley or corn grits, syrups, and refined sugars.'

Levelling up the Crema Brewery

For those that follow us on Twitter, you've probably noticed that we've come a long way from home-brewing with a big stock pot and some plastic buckets. As we've accumulated more kit and refined our brewing process, we felt it was time to share our experiences with the home-brewing world.

'It takes a certain ballsiness to go to a bar alone if you’re a woman'

At least it does according to this blog post which was published a year ago. Yes, that's right - in 2013. Until I began writing this post I had no idea that a person (male or female) going for a drink by themselves was such a big deal. But there are hundreds of websites, blogs and forum posts, where people ask for and give advice on the topic. But what is even more surprising to me is that the old-fashioned concept that 'women shouldn't go to pubs or bars by themselves and if they do it means they are only there for one reason*' is still being voiced today by women.

Collaboration Home-brewing. Yes, it is a thing. Part 2

This is the second post about some of the collaboration home-brewing we've been doing with fellow home-brewers. We started this post back in March after publishing Part 1, but due to additional time commitments with work (Chris is now brewing one day a week with Weird Beard Brew Co) and volunteering (Emma has been tutoring an A Biology student), we've struggled to find time for blogging.

Part 2

Our second collaboration arose from a piece of brewing equipment we bought. Tired of constantly swirling a 2L conical flask every time we looked at it, we decided to invest in a stir plate. If you're serious about ensuring you're pitching the right amount of yeast, one of these little toys is a good buy. However, we love having scientific kit in the brewery (kitchen) so that made it an easy decision. When our friend, Andrew Drinkwater, heard we'd bought a stir plate, he pitched a hard-to-resist idea to us. Why not brew an all Brettanomyces IPA and use the stir plate to grow enough yeast cells for a 100% Brett beer?

Where do you start with an all Brett IPA? What flavour profile do you aim for? Which strain of Brett do you use? We threw around some ideas between ourselves initially and, then when we bumped into him at IndyManBeerCon, we asked Thornbridge's ever-helpful Dominic Driscoll for advice. We particularly wanted help with which strain to use and how to make a decent starter for it. Dom consulted some of his fellow professional brewers (Ryan Witter of Siren Brewing deserves a credit here) and came back with an answer for us - use Brettanomyces clausenii (we used White Labs WLP645) in normal sized starter running on a stir plate for about 36 hours.

Our Brett starter on the stir plate.

So with that vital information on how to build up the yeast count answered, we ploughed into phase 2 of recipe formulation. We knew we wanted a very hoppy beer to jostle a little with the inevitable Brett aroma. Doing a bit of research, especially focusing on a presentation by Crooked Stave's Chad Yakobson's on the effect of lactic acid in brewing with Brettanomyces (Chad's presentation to the American Homebrewers Association can be found here) and the formation of ethyl lactate, which produces a pineapple aroma in beer. Coupled with this, we decided to go for a hop bill that would complement the pineapple aroma so we choose Australian (Vic Secret) and New Zealand (Pacific Jade, Southern Cross, Wakatu, Motueka and Kohatu) hops. We stuck with a fairly basic grain bill of Maris Otter, malted wheat, Pilsner malt, acidulated malt (for the lactic acid) and Carapils. We aimed to mash for a medium body to give it enough punch but without it being too sweet.

The day before brew day, we took stock: yeast starter heading towards high krausen, hops all accounted for, malt... Whoops, we had forgotten to order the acidulated malt. After a short collaborative panic, our co-brewer Andrew offered to drive down to the Home Brew Shop in Aldershot to collect some on his way to stay at his parents' house in Gloucestershire for the night. Phew, disaster averted.

We got everything set up on Sunday morning in readiness for Andrew's arrival. Bacon defrosted for sustenance, cheese plus a good selection of beers in the fridge for later. Then we got an unexpected message from Andrew. He had just reached Clapham Junction only to find that the acidulated malt wasn't in his bag. Where could it be? PANIC! CONFUSION! DISASTER! It transpired that his mum had tidied the acidulated malt away with his other grains which he stores at his parents' house.

While Andrew made the rest of his journey on to our place, we desperately scoured the internet. Could we get any acidulated malt on a Sunday? No, was the apparent answer. Could we acidify some pale malt? Maybe. Could we buy some straight lactic acid? Not easily and it might involve a journey into an obscure part of London. What else contains lactic acid which is perfectly safe for consumption? Emma's previous life working as a lab tech in yogurt manufacturing made her pause for a moment... yogurt? But you can't put yogurt into a beer....and the bulb over her head flickered and died. Just like our brewday by the looks of things.

Andrew arrived and we got stuck into our staple brewers' breakfast of bacon + cheese + some form of bread. This fired the synapses in Emma's brain and the light bulb flickered back into life. The answer to our lactic acid problem was Yakult. For those who've never heard of it before, it's a 'health food drink' that's made with sugar, Lactobacillus spp. and a few other odds and ends (mostly proteins) but the main point is the Lactobacillus eats the sugar and turns it into lactic acid. We looked up the data sheet for Yakult on the interwebs and estimated the volume we might need from the approximate amount of lactic acid they stated was in each bottle. A quick trip to Sainsburys and we were sorted.

With the brewing liquor now on to heat, grains measured out we were finally ready to start. The Yakult went into the mash with the grains because although there are many different ways to make sour beers, in this case (to get the flavour profile we wanted) the acidic pH had to be established during the mash. After we added what we thought we needed, we tested the pH and in the end we had to add more to get the pH down to our target of 4.7.

The rest of the brewday proceeded as planned and we got the wort into the FV in good time with the yeast pitched. We had a little bit of a heart in mouth moment the next day when we realised that after 24 hours there wasn't any activity in the airlock but with a 1degC raise in the temperature using the Chamber of Fermentation, it was soon bubbling away happily. (Note: Chad Yakobson's presentation does mention that Brett strains typically have a 24 lag period, so I guess we should have read it more thoroughly!)

We dry-hopped with Moteuka and Vic Secret and dry-zested it with lemon zest soaked in a small amount vodka to sanitise it, which we pitched also as it had clearly dissolved some of the oils from the lemon zest. We cold crashed the beer to drop the dry-hops out and then kegged the beer before force-carbonating it to 2.7 volumes of CO2 to help lift the aroma and make it zesty and refreshing.

The beer came out really well in the end and we named it 'Sabotage B.A.Y' after the unintentional sabotage by Andrew's mum, that nearly scuppered our whole brew day, and B.A.Y which stands for for Brettanomyces And Yakult. Then we brewed it again, this time with actual acidulated malt and more dry-hops, which came out much better, but this beer only came about because Andrew had convinced us to give the idea a go in the first place.

After the success of the Sabotage B.A.Y, we decided with Andrew that we should try to make another hoppy Brett IPA but this time with US hops instead of NZ/Australian hops. We also decided to change the yeast strain and after a bit of research, we opted for Brettanomyces Bruxellensis Trois (White Labs WLP644) which is a more traditional Belgian strain that produces a slight tartness along with flavours of mango and pineapple. We used the same grain bill as Sabotage B.A.Y but this time hopped with Magnum (bittering), Centennial, Cascade and Amarillo. We dry-hopped with Amarillo and Cascade pellets along with a dry zesting of orange zest soaked in vodka.

This beer came out really well, with a more subtle Brett character than the Sabotage B.A.Y and strong orange and mango flavours. After struggling to name this beer, we settled on 'Helius' after the Greek god of the Sun, which we felt was appropriate with the refreshing orange aroma and flavour blasting out of it. Definitely a beer to brew again.

Probably one thing left to mention that some people are likely to ask questions about - contamination. We used Brett yeast strains in two beers - how did we clean our kit? Well, firstly, anything that the Brett encountered in large quantities (FV, carboy, keg) was labelled with a big piece of Duck Tape with 'Brett' written on it. This way we knew what had to be cleaned using more rigorous methods. Secondly, Brett can be killed like any other organism - heat (steam, boiling water) or sterilisation (various sanitisers) both work pretty well. We opted for the latter in this case with Emma obtaining some Virkon (an oxidiser) that kills almost all microorganisms it comes into contact with. We filled the vessels up with the correct dilution and let the Virkon do its work for at least 30 minutes before rinsing off. We also had a mini-cornie (9L) with Virkon in it for use in cleaning our counter-pressure bottler or dispense line if we've let any of our Brett beers sit in them for a period. As of yet (touch wood), we've not had any problems with Brett contamination in any of our other beers.