Raven judged World’s Best Black IPA at the World Beer Awards 2012

Following four rounds of The World Beer Awards involving judging by an international, highly respected panel of beer experts Raven has been voted the World’s Best Black IPA. The judging panel blind-tasted beers, from nearly 600 entries in 32 countries, in these annual awards.

Thornbridge’s Jaipur included in Great Taste Top 50

Press Release

Thornbridge’s Jaipur included in Great Taste Top 50
Foods and Drinks in Britain

Jaipur IPA brewed by Thornbridge has been named as one of the Top 50 Foods and Drinks within the UK. The list was drawn up as part of the Guild of Fine Food’s annual Great Taste accreditation scheme, which saw 8,807 food and drink products blind-tasted and whittled down over the course of 45 days by 350 experts.

The top 50 food and drink products were chosen from the 123 entries that had gained a coveted 3-star gold and each one has now been nominated for a Golden Fork Award, the highest accolade in fine food and drink which will be announced at the Awards’ dinner at London’s Royal Garden Hotel this September.

Judges this year included Masterchef winner and restaurateur Mat Follas, restaurant critic and Masterchef judge Charles Campion, food writers Lucas Hollweg and Xanthe Clay and over 300 food buyers from leading food halls, delicatessens and farm shops, including Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason.
Guild of Fine Food chairman Bob Farrand said that each of the food and drink products entered into Great Taste undergoes the most rigorous scrutiny.

“To achieve a 3-star grading involves at least 25 experts unanimously agreeing that the product tastes divine,” he said. “But to be included in the Top 50 in Britain meant each one had to satisfy the discerning palates of a further 25 dedicated foodies. These products all deliver the most extraordinary taste.”

Simon Webster, Thornbridge’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “We are delighted with this award. Great Taste recognises the craft and dedication that goes into making superb food and drink. Jaipur has been phenomenally successful and has been instrumental in putting Thornbridge at the leading edge of brewing in the UK.”
-Ends-
Date: 27th July 2012
For more information: Alex Buchanan 07900 416 812 alex@thornbridgebrewery.co.uk

The Great Taste Awards Press Office:
Sarah Lewis (sarah@completemediagroup.co.uk)
Saskia Leuchars (saskia@completemediagroup.co.uk)
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7420 3550

Notes for editors:
What is Great Taste?
Great Taste is the largest and most trusted accreditation scheme for speciality and fine food & drink. Established in 1994, it encourages and mentors artisan food producers, offering a unique benchmarking and product evaluation service leading to an independent accreditation that enables small food and drink businesses to compete against supermarket premium own label brands.
Since 1994 over 60,000 products have been evaluated. This year alone, over 8,000 products were blind-tasted by panels of specialists: top chefs, cookery writers, food critics, restaurateurs and fine food retailers.

What are Great Taste judges looking for?
They’re looking for great texture and appearance. They judge the quality of ingredients and how well the maker has put the food or drink together. But above all, they are looking for truly great taste.

How do they work?
Working in small teams, experts taste 25 foods in each sitting, discussing each product as a coordinating food writer transcribes their comments directly onto the Great Taste website which producers access after judging is completed. Over the years, numerous food businesses, start-ups and well established producers have been advised how to modify their foods and have subsequently gone on to achieve gold standard.
Any food that a judging team believes is worthy of gold is judged by at least two further teams. Only when there is a consensus will Gold be awarded – that means at least 16 judges will have tasted every gold accredited product. For 3-star Gold, every single judge attending the session, which can be as many as 30 experts must unanimously agree the food delivers that indescribable ‘wow’ factor.

What should consumers look for?
The logo. The Great Taste symbol is their guarantee a product has been through a rigorous and independent judging process. It’s not about smart packaging or clever marketing – it’s all about taste.

Press Release

Thornbridge’s Jaipur included in Great Taste Top 50
Foods and Drinks in Britain

Jaipur IPA brewed by Thornbridge has been named as one of the Top 50 Foods and Drinks within the UK. The list was drawn up as part of the Guild of Fine Food’s annual Great Taste accreditation scheme, which saw 8,807 food and drink products blind-tasted and whittled down over the course of 45 days by 350 experts.

The top 50 food and drink products were chosen from the 123 entries that had gained a coveted 3-star gold and each one has now been nominated for a Golden Fork Award, the highest accolade in fine food and drink which will be announced at the Awards’ dinner at London’s Royal Garden Hotel this September.

Judges this year included Masterchef winner and restaurateur Mat Follas, restaurant critic and Masterchef judge Charles Campion, food writers Lucas Hollweg and Xanthe Clay and over 300 food buyers from leading food halls, delicatessens and farm shops, including Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason.
Guild of Fine Food chairman Bob Farrand said that each of the food and drink products entered into Great Taste undergoes the most rigorous scrutiny.

“To achieve a 3-star grading involves at least 25 experts unanimously agreeing that the product tastes divine,” he said. “But to be included in the Top 50 in Britain meant each one had to satisfy the discerning palates of a further 25 dedicated foodies. These products all deliver the most extraordinary taste.”

Simon Webster, Thornbridge’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “We are delighted with this award. Great Taste recognises the craft and dedication that goes into making superb food and drink. Jaipur has been phenomenally successful and has been instrumental in putting Thornbridge at the leading edge of brewing in the UK.”
-Ends-
Date: 27th July 2012
For more information: Alex Buchanan 07900 416 812 alex@thornbridgebrewery.co.uk

The Great Taste Awards Press Office:
Sarah Lewis (sarah@completemediagroup.co.uk)
Saskia Leuchars (saskia@completemediagroup.co.uk)
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7420 3550

Notes for editors:
What is Great Taste?
Great Taste is the largest and most trusted accreditation scheme for speciality and fine food & drink. Established in 1994, it encourages and mentors artisan food producers, offering a unique benchmarking and product evaluation service leading to an independent accreditation that enables small food and drink businesses to compete against supermarket premium own label brands.
Since 1994 over 60,000 products have been evaluated. This year alone, over 8,000 products were blind-tasted by panels of specialists: top chefs, cookery writers, food critics, restaurateurs and fine food retailers.

What are Great Taste judges looking for?
They’re looking for great texture and appearance. They judge the quality of ingredients and how well the maker has put the food or drink together. But above all, they are looking for truly great taste.

How do they work?
Working in small teams, experts taste 25 foods in each sitting, discussing each product as a coordinating food writer transcribes their comments directly onto the Great Taste website which producers access after judging is completed. Over the years, numerous food businesses, start-ups and well established producers have been advised how to modify their foods and have subsequently gone on to achieve gold standard.
Any food that a judging team believes is worthy of gold is judged by at least two further teams. Only when there is a consensus will Gold be awarded – that means at least 16 judges will have tasted every gold accredited product. For 3-star Gold, every single judge attending the session, which can be as many as 30 experts must unanimously agree the food delivers that indescribable ‘wow’ factor.

What should consumers look for?
The logo. The Great Taste symbol is their guarantee a product has been through a rigorous and independent judging process. It’s not about smart packaging or clever marketing – it’s all about taste.

California and the World Beer Cup

In this belated blog post, Brewery Director Rob Lovatt gives us an insight into his last trip to America for the World Beer Cup.

In May of this year, Caolan and I were lucky enough to be invited to judge at the world’s most prestigious beer competition, the biennial Brewers Association World Beer Cup.  This year it was to be held in San Diego County, California, a place with over 50 breweries.  One of the best aspects of the competition is the 211-strong international judging panel made up of 27 different nationalities, all of whom are brewers or brewing industry experts. Obviously we were delighted to attend.

Initially, things did not go to plan – Caolan and I both lost our luggage on arrival, not a good thing in hot and sunny California.  However, the brewing community is a generous one and our ex-work colleagues and friends at Little Creatures Brewing and Charles Faram hop merchants soon hit us up with a few t-shirts to tide us over.  We were based at the Town and Country resort in the North of the city.  We soon settled in and got straight down to the business of judging the various categories. With 95 categories to get through, the following 3 days were a exhausting blur of judging tables and beer samples.  When judging beer, it is important to do it as best to your ability as possible, something the brewer who’s beer you are judging will appreciate – the very thought of putting beer into a competition that is then not tasted or appreciated properly is insulting.  The judges assembled, being brewers, understand this and is thus a reason why WBC medals are taken seriously.  Another aspect is the scorecards each judge fills in, detailing any faults or pleasantries the beer has. These are then posted to the brewer, providing valuable feedback on any beers entered.

Evenings were spent exploring San Diego’s remarkable beer bars and breweries, hanging out with old friends from the international brewing scene and new friends made on the judging tables during the day.  Some would argue that San Diego is the world’s best city for craft beer (although beer lovers from cities such as Portland and Bakewell might disagree) and it certainly offers something for every beer enthusiast, from the outrageously hoppy IPAs of Port and Ballast Point, to the heady, broody stouts of Alesmith; from the amazingly accurate Germanic recreations of Lightning Brewery to the off-piste, style-bending Belgian experiments of Iron Fist.  There are few places on earth that offer such a diverse range of beer styles and brew them with such technical competence and flair.  Needless to say we did as much ‘research’ as possible, with Hamilton’s Tavern being the real highlight of the area.

Following the genuinely tiring days of judging and researching, the award ceremony was held at the Resort where Gold, Silver and Bronze medals were handed out – one of the reasons the WBC is known as the Beer Olympics!  Another distinctive feature of the WBC is that categories are not given the full slate of awards if the judging team decides that the entries do not ‘make the grade’, so awards are not handed out without merit. So it was with this in mind when we were absolutely delighted to pick up a bronze medal for our Black IPA, Raven, especially considering it was such a strong category and the beer had travelled five and a half thousand miles to get there, while other entries had been driven a short distance across the city!

After the high of the ceremony, it was time to bid goodbye to San Diego and fly North to Sacramento in North California for some recuperation, following some mild celebrative beverages.  First of all we drove to the student city of Chico, home of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co for a technical tour of the brewery provided by their Brewmaster, Steve Dressler, and the Company Ambassador Steve Grossman.  This was the brewery tour of a lifetime and we cannot praise the beer (and food) highly enough! Everything about the place impressed, starting with the fabulous welcome. One thing we noticed immediately was all the employees were smiling and appeared happy to be there; something we strive for at Thornbridge. And rightly so: the attention to detail was noticeable, with the best of everything brewing technology has to offer – amazing lab facilities and quality control procedures, in fact it is fair to say we took a lot away with us in terms of inspiration.

The same can be said of the other breweries we got to visit in North California, completing a whistlestop tour of Russian River in Santa Rosa, the fantastic Firestone Walker Brewing Company  and another of our favourite breweries of the trip, Lagunitas in Petaluma.  Again we were there to see how they were managing demand for their beers and keeping quality as high as they do whilst growing as a company. Growth presents a number of different hurdles, such as distribution and packaging technologies, but the main one being quality and consistency of beer flavour.  Like Firestone Walker and Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas continue to produce fantastic beers whilst growing as a company, but also do it with an admirable ethos of fun, irreverence and devotion to all that is good in craft beer.

Overall we were fascinated and seriously impressed with the commitment brewers show to great beer in California. Thankfully the beer scene is moving towards making unique, flavourful, but above all balanced and highly enjoyable beers with a huge focus on the latest developments in brewing science and technology. It was fantastic to make lots of new friends in the California brewing scene and we can’t wait to get there again to do some more judging, exploring, and beer drinking!

Thornbridge Tzara: Our Köln style beer

Finally, we have seen the back of winter (fingers crossed).  Daffodils have flowered, blossom has bloomed and most of us are getting up when it’s light and getting home from work in time to crack open a beer in the garden.  Thoughts of the average beer lover turn away from the heavy brews; warming imperial stouts are placed at the back of the cupboard, barley wines are stuffed into their hiding places until their restorative qualities are needed again.  It’s time for warm weather beer – light, refreshing and quaffable. 

Full text here

One such beer is Kölsch, the famous beer of Cologne (Köln), Germany’s fourth largest city, situated in North Rhine Westphalia.   Kölsch is a very specific beer style – in 1985 the Köln Brewery Association prepared the Kölsch Konvention, that was then published in the Bundesanzeiger and stipulates that Kölsch can only be called so if meets the following criteria: - it is brewed in the Cologne metropolitan area, it is pale in colour, it is a ‘Vollbier’ (a German beer tax category beer with a starting gravity of between 11 and 14 Plato), it is hop accented and it is also filtered.  In 1997 the beer style received protected designation of origin status from the EU, meaning it is now afforded the same protection as our beloved Cornish Pasty.  Craft breweries wishing to emulate this crisp, snappy and refreshing brew circumvent this legislation by naming their beers ‘Kölsch style’ or ‘Köln style’.  And examples are growing in number; Goose Island Summertime, Ballast Point Yellow Tail, Harpoon Summer Beer and our utterly marvellous Tzara.  One common thread unites these Kölsch style beers – an attempt to stay true to the basic principles of Kölsch brewing.

Kölsch beers are sometimes mistaken for light lagers because of their straw blond colour. They are, however, distinguished by their very subtle but noticeably fruity flavours.  It is light in both body and appearance, its maltiness is subdued; its hoppiness is assertive but unobtrusive.  This is a beer designed to be drunk all day every day!

So what goes into a Kölsch then? Well, for starters, consider the malt bill.  Mostly Pilsner malt and Wheat malt (between 5-10%). We got ours from our favourite German Maltster, Bamberger, adding a dash of Carapils from Weyermann.  Pale Ale malt and Torrefied Wheat do not make the cut with Kölsch.  Hops must also be classically German – traditionally, Perle or Spalter Select are used for bitterness (we went with Perle), Tettnanger and/or Hallertau Tradition added at the end of boil for aroma.  Our Rolec Hopnik is filled with the same amount of hops as a brew of Kipling with a combination of both. The nature of these noble hops used will not overpower the essence of the brew. Our liquor needs to be soft so we get that distinctive smooth mouthfeel – luckily Bakewell water comes off the millstone grit of the Peaks, so is, thankfully, lovely and soft (also allowing us a blank canvas for other beers that need harder liquor).  And most importantly of all - the yeast strain.  This must be a classic Kölsch strain, or you may as well give up and brew something else.  As Matthew, one of our brewers likes to say, we have the skills to pay the bills, so we obtain a Kölsch strain from our good friends at White Labs, San Diego and propagate it to an ideal pitching rate via various flasks and finally our yeast propagation vessel.  So our ingredients are indeed simple but of the absolute highest quality.  But that is not all that is required for the perfect brew of Kölsch…

Look in many English and American brewing texts and you will see Kölsch referred to incorrectly as an ‘Ale’.  It does ferment at near Ale temperatures, but one has to consider how the Germans themselves classify Kölsch – ‘Obergäriges Lagerbier’ – top-fermenting lager beer.  Calling all top-fermenting beers ‘Ales’ is simply misusing the name.  To the Germans, Ale is a British thing and doesn’t ever get mentioned in the same breath as Kölsch.  What is now needed is a few weeks of lagering at 4˚C, slowly moving down to -1˚C, to round out those fruity flavours from the Kölsch yeast strain.  Having nothing in the way of spare capacity and a completely full production schedule doesn’t stop us from completing this lagering period fully – it is essential for a perfect Kölsch.  Thankfully our bosses understand, primarily because they like good beer too.

Before...

After fermentation and lagering, the other key difference now occurs between a true Kölsch and Tzara, our Köln-style beer.  We don’t have a filter, so instead we use our centrifuge to clarify the beer.  A true Kölsch is always filtered, but centrifuging allows us to clarify the beer without stealing those delicate flavours we put into the beer in the first place.

After!

Brewing  Kölsch-style beer ourselves guarantees we can appreciate the Kölsch style at its best.  We do everything we possibly can to keep oxygen away from the beer after primary fermentation.  Dissolved oxygen can produce off-flavours, ruining the delicate taste for which Kölsch is known.  We keep levels typically below 10 µg/l (something we do for all our beers). It is a style which has no strong flavours to hide behind; no massive hop pungency, no crystal malt sweetness, no boozy alcohol.  Brewing excellence is thus required throughout the whole process.  It is a massive challenge to get it just right; we bloody love making Tzara and hopefully you enjoy drinking it as much as we like brewing it.

 

Meanwhile, back in Bakewell…

Dada, our Sheffield city centre bar

Last year was a great year for Thornbridge as a whole.  We got ourselves some more places to drink in after work Thornbridge pubs.   Joining the marvellous Greystones with its superb, intimate gig venue (see listings and buy tickets here), we turned Trippets Wine Bar on Sheffield’s Trippet Lane into Dada Bar, a kind of arty, exhibitiony city centre bar which has a bloody marvellous range of beer and lots of pics of famous Sheffield musicians currently gracing the walls (though none, scandalously, of Sheffield’s greatest, ABC. Sort it out please).  The fantastic Coach and Horses in Dronfield became a fully fledged member of the Thornbridge family late last year.

Hopping across the Pond

In the latest episode of  ’awesome stuff we get to do in the name of work’, Production Manager Caolan Vaughan shares his experiences of travelling to Fort Collins in Colorado to help brew our latest collaboration with the mighty Odell Brewing Co.

Thornbridge Brewers on Tour, Part 2

As I mentioned in last week’s post, it was that special time of year in Holland – the Borefts Beer Festival.  Thornbridge Brewery got an invite to exhibit, and so, pallet of beer already sent, it was time to leave Matthew in charge of both breweries and set sail for the continent.

Farewell, sweet Hull