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.

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!

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.

 

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.  Now managed by the lovely Ellie Brightmore, it remains a busy place, especially on matchdays at next door’s Sheffield FC.  Former manageress Cat Mueller will be pleased to learn her ridiculously high standards of service and fare she worked hard to achieve still remain.  In my opinion, which is of course utterly redundant (other opinions are available) the Hallamshire House up Broomhill is my favourite new Thornbridge pub, mainly because it has a full size snooker table, but also because I really like Tom and Becky who run it.  Many a fine evening has been wasted in there so far, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for those who like a ‘proper’ public house!

 Last month, in conjunction with our sister company Brewkitchen, we took over the Beauchief Hotel on Abbeydale Road.  This Victorian building has a restaurant, bedrooms a fantastic Cellar bar (now open!), beer garden and even a BALLROOM. And Simon bobbed over to see us the other day to tell us that we now have the historic Stag on Psalter Lane.

The Beauchief Hotel

 Both pubs will receive the Thornbridge renovation and refurbishment treatment over the next few months whereupon they will thus be restored to their superb watering hole status once again.  As you may have heard, we were successful on Tuesday night at the Publican awards where we won the Best Pub Operating Micro Brewer award, so we must be doing something right.  One thing should be apparent though – we aren’t rushing into acquiring pubs for a quick buck.  These are long term investments that will serve their communities properly and sell our beer the way we like it – in the best possible nick.

Over the past year, our Brewing Director, Rob Lovatt, and Production Manager, Caolan Vaughan have now implemented all sorts of QA forms and Standard Operating Procedures across all aspects of the brewery. Whilst this is relatively uninteresting (nobody likes filling in paperwork, especially when you’re a bunch of maverick craft brewers like ourselves) this has enabled us to standardise all our practice and have checks in place to ensure we have 100% consistency and work to the highest international principles of brewing practice. Pretty essential stuff when you’re expanding the team and growing as a brewery.  Over the past year we’ve had a damn good play, with cask collaborations with Dark Star and Kernel and we also brewed new beers destined for keg such as Tzara (more on this in a later blog I think), Versa, our great Weisse bier and Kill Your Darlings, our Vienna-style lager.  A quick look on our website tells me we now brew regularly 9 different cask beers, 8 different keg beers and 9 different bottled beers. No wonder we’ve been busy! Making beers destined for keg and bottle has meant we’ve had to give vessel space over for additional maturation time.  ’Why don’t you concentrate on cask beer then?’, I hear you ask.  Well, because we like making beer for bottle and keg as well as cask, something our customers also like, and personally I find the Keg V Cask debate as moot as whether a rock band should have a keyboard player.

We are now at full capacity with the fermenting vessel space we have.  Of course, if we shortened the maturation times on our beers and cut a few corners, we could squeeze in another few brews a month.  This will never happen.  Five brand new 120hl fermenting vessels have been ordered and will start arriving soon.  This is a major investment and one our great brewhouse and team can now cope with.  As well as the boring stuff, Rob and Caolan have spent a lot of time moulding us into a brewing super-team and quite frankly, it’s a pleasure working with the lads at the moment, especially big Matthew, the veteran Thornbridge brewer who remains highly sceptical of all of us, much like the old family cat confronted with a trio of kittens.

So, it was clear we needed to bring some more brewers into the team and we decided to try a few people out as apprentices.  After all, the gift of brewing is a precious one that shouldn’t be given to people who don’t really, really want it.  First into the role was Matt Cruz, one of our brewery operatives who had shown he was both passionate about great beer and had at least some of the necessary qualities to be a brewer.  Therefore we felt it to be only right that we invest some time and resources into his development as a brewer.  He is, of course, still learning (as we all are and always will be) but has had plenty of time in the Brewhouse and in the cellar and seems to be enjoying his education!

Will filling %$#%#% with ^%$^%$^$ at the Hall (top secret, sorry)

Next up was Will Inman, a business graduate who had spent a year falling in love with American beer as he worked behind the bar in the Old Toad in NYC.  After arriving back in Sheffield determined to make it as a brewer, he pestered us for voluntary work experience and after noting his hard-working character and quiet, sensible demeanour, he has also been given a place on the Thornbridge Brew team.  Unfortunately for him, his ability to learn quickly and his diligence has meant he is perfect for being in charge of the bottle filler, so now spends endless days changing label reams and unblocking the capper.  We do let him have the occasional day doing other things like brewing, but only when he brings in some of his marvellous homebrew.  Recent beers have included a Founders Breakfast Stout clone and a remarkably tasty beer brewed with the yeast grown from a bottle of Delirium Tremens.

Ben - a really fun guy.

Ben Wood, the last fellow to join the brew team, spent a year in Australia after finishing University, working at the William Bull Brewery in Griffith, NSW.  Reluctantly, he came home, promptly decided to become a brewer and thus spent a year at the Dent Brewery in Cumbria.  After moving to Sheffield he got in touch with us and did a couple of trial days – Ben learnt so quickly that Matthew promptly named him his  ’Number 2′ and, as well as learning much of the cellar practice at the Riverside, is now intimately involved with brewing at the Hall (yes, the Hall brewery is back up and running, the barrel ageing store has been reorganised and is filling up with some very interesting beers indeed – more on these in future blogs when I pressurise Ben into writing about them).  At the moment Will spends more time over at the Riverside with me but will soon swap roles with Ben – following our line of ‘everyone good at everything’.  Either way all three of them are great lads and whilst they’ve all got more to learn (what brewer hasn’t?) we all know we work well together and are now ready to face the challenges an increase in production will bring.

We’re still winning plenty of beer awards for the trophy cabinet too.  In October of last year we were particularly pleased to win Beer of the Festival at CAMRA’s Sheffield Beer Festival again, an award close to our hearts seeing as it was our very first, way back in September 2005.  And February saw us win two Golds and a Silver at the SIBA National Keg awards, (plus Silver overall) leading us to ponder what would have happened if we could have entered more than 3 beers!  As nice as it is to win awards, making the kind of beer we love without compromising and making enough great craft beer for the people who want to drink it is what we actually want to accomplish and what we are now in a position to achieve.  So it’s fair to say we’ve been a bit busy and have enough to keep us occupied for a while.  Nevertheless, this year you can expect more new beers, more collaborations (both international and domestic), more export, much more barrel ageing projects and maybe even a couple more new pubs…

At Thornbridge it’s no secret that we love getting together with like minded people and sharing our love and passion for the finest thing in life – beer! So much so that in our short lifetime we have had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the finest breweries from all over the world; Fyne Ales, Dark Star and Kernel from the UK, Epic from New Zealand, Mountain Goat from Australia, Birrificio Italiano from Italy and Brooklyn Brewery from the States. Some may say we like to get around! However, this is all with good reason – it’s an opportunity to share and learn from each other’s knowledge and experiences and these differ from brewer to brewer and from country to country.  For those of you that don’t know, Doug has been a friend of Thornbridge ever since he bobbed his head round the brewery door with an armful of beers in 2009 and after a few beers together at the GBBF that year and the year after, we had the legendary Doug in 2010 over to brew Colorado Red, a twist on the American Red style using oil-rich English hops. The result was a kick-ass beer and an enduring friendship.  Since we first brewed Colorado Red together we had both said that we would welcome the opportunity to do it again and in late 2011 Doug said he would like to invite us to come to Colorado and brew together again. Naturally, we obliged!

Now that the invite had been sent it was time to get planning. After many an e-mail exchange and much discussion within the respective brewery teams, we eventually came up with the idea of a Double Extra Pale Ale, similar to the philosophy of our Jaipur and Odell’s St. Lupulin, which is an Extra Pale Ale.  So with the details all sorted it was time to leave England and fly to the US of A!  After arriving in the States on Tuesday 21^st  February I got to meet and greet the Odell’s team that we would be working with on the brew. Whilst I was there I got to taste the test batch, which was brewed on their 5 US BBL system and discuss possible tweaks.   The following day was spent doing extensive technical brewery tours of New Belgium Brewing, Funkwerks, Equinox Brewing, the CooperSmiths Pub and Brewery. That’s a lot of beers to be squeezed into one mammoth day and that’s only in Fort Collins! The next day I drove down to visit Left Hand Brewing in Longmont and then onto to the amazing Avery in Boulder.  So within just two days I had the opportunity to look round and investigate some of the best craft breweries in the States, with many ideas and philosophies that will stay with me forever.

It was a fun day!

I did however get back in time to Fort Collins to put the finishing touches on the recipe before mashing in the first brew the following morning. Friday 24^th February 2012 was a memorable day in the history of Thornbridge – our first collaboration brew in the USA and what a pleasure to be doing it with Odell! An amazing day and one I will personally never forget.

HOPS!

The beer then. We intentionally brewed it with lower bitterness levels so instead of that dominating bitterness we could have a beer based around hop flavour and aroma; the idea being to create a more enticingly drinkable beer at the expected 9.5 % ABV and also showcase the beauty of a special vessel both breweries have in common – the marvellous Rolec Hopnik.  As we did before with the Colorado Red we thought we would take a similar philosophy to showcase some of the finest ingredients available, again showcasing our countries’ great ingredients…all UK malt and all USA hops; arguably from a craft brewer’s perspective some of the best ingredients in the world (depending on the style of course).  So there you have it, a Double Extra Pale Ale called Pond Hopper which will hopefully be available in 75cl cork and caged bottles in extremely limited supply very soon here in the UK.

Anyway, when staying in Fort Collins and brewing at Odells, count your lucky stars if you just to happen to be staying above the Choice City Deli and Butchers, and also happen to be ‘crawling distance’ of Tap and Handle - a new craft beer bar in the old town.  As this was my first trip to the States and my first in a real American craft beer bar, I was over-awed with the quality and choice and had several nights exploring the 74-strong tap menu. Ah, bliss! Eventually Monday morning came and since this is the start of the working week I decided to travel into Denver to check out Great Divide Brewing, Breckenridge Brewery and Dry Dock Brewing.   Essentially this was more work as technical tours abounded so I won’t bore you with the grisly details. However, as an Australian and someone removed from the UK brewing industry what became abundantly clear is the great difference in education, quality and investment between the UK and the US, something that is slowly being addressed.  As it was my last night in the States. we decided to have a meal and beers at Freshcraft and finish up with a fitting visit to Falling Rocks Taphouse before flying back to the UK the following day.  Luckily the beer is in safe hands and one of the guys on the Odell brewing team sent me this photo of the first dry hopping addition…

It was a whirlwind tour of Colorado but one that will not be forgotten soon. Americans seem to have a real positive attitude for everything that they tackle. This is especially prominent in their love of craft beer. You see it from everyone that works both in the industry and around it. It was simply contagious! Being given the opportunity of working with Odell on this collaboration was a real pleasure and it gave a real insight into the ethos, philosophy, love and passion for what they do and what they do is make bloody fantastic beer. It was a real honour to be welcomed by them as if we had been old mates, even though many of us had never met before. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Colorado, go, meet the people and most above savour the many world class beers that are available!

Farewell, sweet Hull

I had kindly volunteered to be the advance party with my partner Janine, and had decided to get the Hull-Rotterdam ferry (an overnight service, and very comfortable too) so I didn’t have to drive too much.  Once arrived early Wednesday morning, we made straight for Kamperland, a small town in Zeeland.  This was so we could pop in our friends Kees and John, at the Emelisse Brewery and Restaurant.  Emelisse are one of an increasing number of Dutch microbreweries who make world-class beer.  I first encountered their beer at Borefts 2009 and from then they’ve gone from strength to strength.  Kees, the head brewer, kindly fed and watered us with Pilsner and Rauchbier and then showed us round his brewhouse, half of which is on display in the restaurant, and the other half underground.

No dark mild then lads?

As most Dutch people don’t really like beer, or prefer drinking Heineken, it  was interesting to learn Kees is exporting about 50% of his beer, but this figure is declining gradually as he manages to convert the non-believers in his own country.  Downstairs in the fermenting cellar, we got a taste of his new Winterbier, several barrel aging projects involving Imperial Stout in Laphroaig casks, spiced beer in Jack Daniels casks and a few other bits and bobs Kees has on the go.  All of them were wonderful – even the black IPA with Brettanomyces, currently working away ready for In de Wildeman’s Dutch Brett fest next year.   Emelisse are definitely one to watch out for over the coming years.  It is always a pleasure to see Kees, and he was clearly looking forward to Borefts as much as we were.

The miserable and unwelcoming Kees Bubberman

After some brief respite in Zoutelande, a very pleasant holiday resort by the sea, completely lacking in ‘common people’, we drove to Bodegraven to set up our Thornbridge stand.  We were the first brewery to arrive, and after a tour of the new brewery, and with a lot of help from volunteers, we soon had our casks up and vented and banners proudly displayed.  Menno had even lent us some really cool decorative hops, for the icing on the cake.

This meant we could nip to Utrecht to go to Café Derat.  This is a great bar, with Dutch craft beer on tap and in bottle, but also a secret lambic list for which you must pester the Cafe’s owner, Eric.  Another great thing about Café Derat is that it is home to 2 nice cats called Josephine and Spot.

Draught beer list, t'Arendsnest

But you can’t come to the Netherlands without visiting Amsterdam, so we left Josephine, Spot and Eric and met up with fellow Thornbridge colleagues Rob and Caolan for a couple of drinks in Amsterdam’s finest bars, In de Wildeman and t’Arendsnest, which has 30 taps but only serves Dutch beer such as the great Jopen and SNAB, as well as plenty of De Molen of course.  Unfortunately, we were to be up early, so it was off to bed before 2am for all four of us.

Come the morning we got ourselves to Brouwerij de Molen and tapped our casks. We’d brought Alliance Reserve 2007, Thornbridge/Kernel Burton Ale, our version of the Courage Russian Imperial Stout, Alchemy XVI (a dry hopped barley wine), Evenlode Brown Porter, Halcyon 2009 and Geminus.  Along with De Molen, Struise and Mikkeller, we were situated in the brand new automated brewhouse (nearly as shiny and nice as ours, but not quite), 100 yards from the windmill and original brewhouse, where Emelisse, Marble, Kernel, Amager, Nøgne-Ø, Närke, Loverbeer and St. Christoffel were.  We left our stand to say hello to our international brewing friends, and were greeted by a growing queue, 1 hour before opening.

Pushing our way through, we had a quick beer with the Kernel boys, who had arrived in force with the lovable Andy from Redemption brewing/young Zak Avery lookalike winner 2010 too. But soon it was back to the stand and to serve beer to thirsty punters, many of whom this year had travelled great distances, like Mexico, Canada, USA, Australia, South Africa and all over Europe to taste the beers we and the other 10 brewers had brought.  These aren’t your average beer-drinkers; they want to know everything about every part of the recipe for each beer.  Which, when you’re proud of you’ve brewed, is utterly fantastic.  Every beer served came with a question about ingredients, mash times, and in the case of our Kernel collab beer, (adopt poor foreign accent) “zo, what iz dis ‘Burton?‘”.

Whilst the customers say it’s the brewers who make the festival, it’s also them who give the place such a great atmosphere, talking and enthusing about all the beers, all with ‘got to try this one next’ attitudes.  As well as the ratebeerians, there’s distributors, bar owners, shopkeepers and plenty of other brewers of the world there with which to chew the fat. The day flew by as the crowds drank beer and socialised in the glorious sunshine, eating sausages off the barbeque and greeting old friends.  Soon it was evening and we had barely been to see the other brewers’ stands, who were equally snowed under.  A dash round brought us some samples of other brewers’ wares, but inevitably we had to get back to it as there were more questions to be answered.  We shut the stand exhausted but happy after a long day.  After a beer with the other brewers, it was all agreed we’d save ourselves for the day after and hopped off back to our B&B.

Chillaxing with the Kernel crew and Zak Avery (sorry Andy) before we opened again

The sun shone brightly once again on day two, with some speculating that De Molen head brewer Menno had had a quiet word with God, swapping a bottle of his Rasputin for yet more summer weather.  Many of the customers returned from the previous day, unable to get through the hundred-odd beers available, despite some good efforts.  But now the festival got really busy with others too, and the organisers looked on as people flooded through the entrance, eager to get stuck in.  It’s often said that beer should just lubricate conversation, but it did that, plus became the talking point, with so many amazing beers on offer and so many old friends to greet – a key to what makes the festival so magical.

In full flow - Rob and I waxing lyrical about our beer

All of our beers were big hits, especially our version of Courage Imperial Stout, but Geminus Deluxe edition Double RyePA was the true star of the show, selling out first. However, time began to run out for the hundreds of visitors, and as they drifted off, we brewers soon began to loosen up and get round to catching up properly.

Gene, Urbain and James. James is a real life fighter pilot from the good ol' USA.

It was about time we got down to some serious ‘networking’.  Struise, our next door neighbours, had brought tears to people’s eyes, with 3 different versions of Pannepot, and various other stellar projects such as Black Messy 39%abv (where were Mes & Sim by the way?) and the legendary S.H.I.T. (don’t ask). Much silliness ensued as Urbain attempted to load his bar and keykegs onto a waiting van WITH UNDRUNK PANNEPOT.  Luckily, my good friend and Brewing Warrior, Christoffer from Närke (a somewhat decent brewery from Sweden), was on hand to stop the wastage and prevent lots of people from being upset.

Christoffer saves the day

It was all back to the Windmill for a little get-together, where we all got the chance to drink the best beers available to humankind.  With company like Christoffer, Nøgne-Ø’s Kjetl, the Loverbeer guys from Italy (probably Italy’s most innovative and exciting brewers at the moment), the Mikkeller crew, the lovely couple from St Christoffel and of course Menno, the night was one to remember for a long time.

Can anyone remember who these two are? Only joking -It's Menno and Mikkel!

This really is probably the most fun beer festival I’ve ever been to, and you’d be either mad or ‘not really into great beer’ to not be there next year.  The success of the event belies the amount of organisation that goes into it.  It’s very easy to get to by train and there is of course lots of accommodation nearby in the neighbouring cities.  You’re guaranteed the best beers in all of Europe. And you may make some new friends.

It thus leaves me to say a huge thank you to Menno, John and Bea for inviting us and making us feel so welcome, and for all their volunteers who work bloody hard to make it happen – Mark, Cees, Stuart, Marcel, Peter, Vaisha, Colin and the rest of you, who’s names escape me (sorry) – we won’t forget how you looked after us and we would love to see you in Derbyshire so we can return the favour.  Proost!

Some months ago, the list of brewers started to appear on the De Molen brewery website for Borefts, their annual beer festival, .  For those who haven’t heard of this beer festival, now held annually at the brewery in Bodegraven, it is a celebration of innovative craft beer from what is described on their website as the ‘best of the best European breweries’, with geeky favourites such as Alvinne, Struise, Mikkeller, Emelisse and the legendary Narke usually there.  The beer list contains more crackers than a Prince ‘Greatest Hits’ album.  Now some brewers like to get their prestigious awards, such as the World Beer Cup, World Beer Awards, Solihull CAMRA Beer Festival Gold Medal etc.(we’ve got a few in the bag ourselves), but to me personally, the highest honour in brewing is an e-mail from the De Molen team asking if we would like to exhibit our beer at their bash. We already knew we were invited – Matthew had bribed Menno Olivier, the Head Brewer, with a case of Jaipur the year before.

This year I was delighted to see another UK brewery had been invited too – the miscreants at the Kernel Brewery- perhaps the most celebrated of all the current London microbreweries, of which there are now many (and all producing the best beer that London has seen for many years).  After sending him a brief message of congratulations, I got to thinking it might be a good idea if we did a couple of beers together to be launched at the festival.   E-mails fired back and forth, and thus it came to pass – it was time to get our thinking caps on.  Both Thornbridge and Kernel are famed for our hoppy pale ales and imperial stouts; surely we would produce a big, crowd-pleasing hop monster, or chewy, tear-jerkingly awesome Baltic Porter? Er, no.

Evin O’ Riordain, the Head Brewer at Kernel, and I share more than a passing interest in historical beer recipes.  Before I met him, I was disappointed to learn he’d already brewed an Export India Porter, a beer made in huge quantities by the London brewers of the 19th Century.  I’d always wanted to make this, as whilst India Pale Ale (IPA) is the big famous export beer much brewed, copied, bastardised and written about today, it was India Porter that London’s great breweries, including Whitbread and Barclay Perkins exported the most. Brewed to a standard strength of around 5-5.5%abv, the recipes I have seen contain a frightening amount of hops in the recipe. Black IPA anyone? But any recreation of EIP now would simply look like I was copying the Kernel.  I shouldn’t be angry though -Evin is just keen to preserve and celebrate the great old beers of the Capital.  Amongst others, they’ve also done an Imperial Brown Stout from 1856, and an Export Stout from 1890.  It was clear one of the beers had to be a historical recipe, and seeing as Thornbridge hadn’t done one yet, this was the plan for the Derbyshire end.

His first suggestion was a Courage Imperial Double Stout Porter, surely the greatest of all old beer names. Alas, it decided that, as Stefano had just brewed the old Courage Russian Imperial Stout recipe (with Brettanomyces), and this was bubbling away in the fermenting room,  the recipes were just too similar and we decided to think of something else (Evin may still do this recipe at his place, but don’t tell him I told you).  So it was back to the drawing board.  Not for long though. ‘How about a Burton Ale?’, asked Evin.

Now THERE’S a good idea, I thought.

So what is a Burton Ale?* Burton Ales began life as the beers Burton breweries such as Bass, Worthington and Allsopp made and exported in great quantities to Russia and other Baltic states from the 1740s. This beer was not Porter or Stout, but was a style of beer unique to Burton – very strong, dark and sweet. In 1822 the Russian Government imposed a deliberately high import tariff on British goods, so the trade was effectively stopped.  The Burton brewers needed a new market and none of them had thought of sending Pale Ale to India yet, so they toned down the sweetness, made it more bitter, and, once left to mature a bit, the style was thus decided more suitable for the English palate.  The new and improved beer was sold to an even more exotic market – London, via the newly built railway.  It wasn’t long before the rest of Britain’s brewers started brewing a ‘Burton Ale’, (as they eventually did with IPA too) and so it was that the style of ‘Burton Ale’ became a staple on the bar for well over one hundred years.  Indeed, in ‘Back to the Local’, a book from 1949 detailing London pub life, it was said that there were three types of beer to be found – Mild, Bitter and Burton Ale.  Expensive, warming, and hearty, always dry hopped and given time to mature in the cellar, these beers became a Winter favourite with British beer drinkers.

The Bass Diamond advertised their Burton Ales, as opposed to the more famous Red Triangle, which advertised their Pale Ale.

However, public tastes changed away from dark and sweet beer towards lighter, more dry beers like Bitter.  Burton Ale disappeared off the bar very quickly – By the end of the 1960s it simply wasn’t being brewed anymore.  Fullers had replaced theirs, Old Burton Extra, with a new strong pale beer called ‘Winter Bitter’, soon to be renamed ESB (note to Americans – just one beer name, not a ‘style’).  Unlike other beers like IPA, Porter and Mild, Burton Ale wasn’t a style revived by the new microbreweries born after CAMRA was founded in the 1970s.  The ‘other’ Michael Jackson, famous beer writer, never mentioned it, Burton ale having died out before he published his books.  It’s almost as if the style has been erased from collective memory.

So what do you do when you need to replicate a beer style that everyone has forgotten about and no-one has brewed for nearly 50 years? Luckily, I have the fortune to know Ron Pattinson, a beer historian based in Amsterdam.   To call him a beer historian is selling him a bit short actually.  To see what I mean, have a look at this or this next time you want to know anything about beer, beer styles, the history of beer, beer tourism etc. Quite frankly he’s one of my heroes.  Anyway, Ron has amassed piles of data about Burton Ale, including numerous recipes transcribed from Brewing logs that he let us look at.  So we weren’t short of a recipe.  But which one to go for?  The Kernel brewery is based in Bermondsey, London, a stone’s throw away from the old Anchor Brewery, home of the famous Courage & Co.  It was obvious we had to base our recipe on theirs. Fortunately, Ron had a good few from them, so we stole the best bits from the 1920s versions and merged them into one recipe.  It is also fair to say we had a good bit of influence from a Fullers recipe, and what Burton Ale recipe would be complete without a bit of guidance from Barclay Perkins?

Time to source the ingredients.  We used a mix of Fawcetts’ Mild ale malt, Maris Otter, a bit of Crystal and a sprinkling of Black. The hop grist required all Goldings, and lots of them, so I called one of Thornbridge’s best friends, Will at Farams, Hop Merchants, and he sent me the very best Berry Farm and Pridewood Goldings (Kent and Worcestershire respectively – exactly what we needed).  For the yeast, we needed an authentic British Ale yeast.  The Thornbridge house British yeast would be perfect – the right fruity profile, a hint of Sulphur, medium attenuation etc.  This was shaping up to be an easy affair.

No!

Sugar was also essential for an authentic recipe. Not just any old sugar – Invert Brewing Sugar No.3.   This was going to be a bit more difficult.  I tried the sugar manufacturers, who said the minimum order was a tonne.  Try the Bakery wholesalers, they said. I spent an hour phoning them all.  Minimum order – 1 metric tonne.  I know, I thought, I’ll phone Mr Prentice at Fullers. He’ll know where to get it from. Despite being great fun to talk to, he didn’t have any to spare.  ’Try asking Mr Jenner at Harvey’s', was his advice, ‘they are quite traditional’ – which appears to include having 4 hour lunch breaks.  Time to phone the old family brewers of Manchester: they always looked after us when I brewed at Marble.  No luck.  I was starting to get desperate. Internet searches revealed nothing. Without Invert Sugar No.3, we wouldn’t be sticking to our chosen recipe, which, when recreating an old style, is pretty essential.  There could be no throwing in of granulated  sugar, as it was necessary for the right colour and flavour of the beer.  I wasn’t having Martyn Cornell annoyed with us.  Eventually, after a week of sleepless nights and worry, I found a supplier (I’m not telling you where).  We were now ready to brew our Burton.

Evin and I turned up at the Hall Brewery on the morning a bit bleary-eyed following a ‘couple of halves’ at the Greystones the previous evening.  Thankfully, Giada was going to lead the brew and we would just be required to do a bit of donkey-work and make sure we got the recipe right.  We weighed out the malt and sorted the hop additions, prepared the yeast and did a few calculations to ensure we were going to be ‘in spec’.

Weighing those fantastic Goldings out

Thanks to Giada, the brew went swimmingly, and we all shared a couple of bottles of beer, a bit of cheese and some fennel salami. An excellent Monday’s brewing had by all.  I must say ‘Cheers’ to Stefano too, for cleaning up after us and giving us help with the recipe execution.  Rumours that I nearly died digging the vast amount of hops out of the copper after losing my ability to brew without an shiny automated brewplant are completely unfounded.

'Er, Stef, where's the button that removes these hops?'

You’ll be delighted to hear the fermentation went beautifully and we hit our attenuation target with ease.  It was racked by my own fair hand last week, and is now sat maturing in our cellar with dry hops.

‘So what’s it like?’ I hear you ask.  It’s 7.2%abv, a dark ruby red, with an orangey fruity malt character.  The spicy, resinous, lemony Goldings absolutely sing through the beer combining beautifully with the malt, and the bitterness is powerful and lasting, punching through the residual sweetness. It’s a momentous beer and I’m really pleased with it.  Those of you who are attending the Borefts Beer Festival at De Molen Brewery, Bodegraven (23-24th September) will be the first to try it, and after that a small number of casks will be appearing at various excellent drinking establishments, where Burton Ale will once again take its rightful place back on the bar.  Before I sign off, I’d like to thank Evin for spending the day with us and I implore everyone to buy his beers (if you can find them). And thanks to Mr Pattinson too, to whom Evin and I would like to dedicate the project. I’ll buy you a drink at the festival, Ron.

*All this bit is based on what I learnt from Ron and also read about in Martyn Cornell’s book, ‘Amber, Gold and Black’, which is the Bible of British Beer.  You should buy it.  His blog is here.  You should read it.

The time has come for three of our illustrious team to depart to pastures new.

First to leave will be Nigel Dallas, who is unceremoniously dumping us to move back down South to our good friends, Dark Star Brewing Company.  Nigel has been at Thornbridge for about a year and a half, having changed career path from being an IT expert (geek) to fully-fledged passionate craft brewer.  Thornbridge Brewery was his first brewing job (imagine that? Talk about going in at the top…) after he completed a lengthy course at Brewlab.  When I first arrived here, Nigel was one of those who patiently took me through all the new procedures, never throwing a hissy-fit (as Matthew does) when he had to explain something for third or fourth time because I either wasn’t listening properly or just didn’t get it.  Since then, with Matt, we’ve developed into a brewing super-team, working well together to match the steady increase in production, divvying up work with ease, helping each other out and producing the best beers we possibly can.   As well as being a highly valued member of the ‘Riverside Boys’, Nigel is a bloody good homebrewer, and whoever gets a bottle of his Christmas Barley Wine this year is a lucky person indeed.

Remember how much fun we had Nige, when you hand out your Barley Wine...

With the surname ‘Dallas’, Nigel will never fail and we’d like to take the opportunity to wish him all the best.  He will undoubtedly have a great time in Sussex and, on a really positive note, it gives us all a place to stay in Brighton next time we want to go to the Evening Star.

The Talented Miss Simioni

Giada Simioni, Thornbridge’s first ever Brewster, became part of the team a few months back and joined Stefano to work on the Alchemy series and various other projects at the newly reopened Hall Brewery. Since then she has brewed some awesome beers, including her first brew, Evenlode, a stunningly good Porter at 6.2%, which has thus far picked up some rather favourable reviews.  I will be forever grateful to her for showing me how to do bits of  lab work and various other procedures that I now take for granted.  It was a pleasure to assist her in a brew at the Hall recently, (the forthcoming Thornbridge/Kernel Burton Ale) where her exacting methodology and professionalism helped us create exactly the beer we wanted.   It is obvious she has a bright future ahead of her and it’ll be very interesting to see what she gets up to next.

 There is also the small matter of Stefano Cossi moving onto pastures new.  Not much to say here really, other than him being one of the most integral parts of the brewery since it opened back in 2005.  He was here at the very beginning with Martin Dickie and Mr Corbey.  He was instrumental in developing Thornbridge Brewery from a little brewkit in a Country House shed to the most successful and awarded craft brewery in the UK.  There’s the fact that he set up the amazing Riverside Brewery complex having never worked in a big brewery, let alone operated an automated plant. Then there was the I.B.D. UK Brewer of the year award in 2010. He’s inspired countless numbers of brewers of the new generation, including me.  There’s so much more that can be said but I don’t need to say it, everyone knows he’s a seriously good brewer. What’s most impressed me is his quiet, humble demeanour and his scientific and precise approach to everything in the brewhouse.  Needless to say his methods and, of course, his recipes, will live on at Thornbridge.  He’s off to take a well-deserved break for a while from work.

So what now for the Thornbridge Brewery team?  Well it’s going to be an incredibly exciting time as we reorganise, regroup and continue to move onwards and upwards.  The Hall Brewery will continue to be used to make inspiring, experimental and innovative brews (although I’m not looking forward to digging out a mash tun again).  We already have two great brewery leaders in Rob Lovatt and Caolan Vaughan. We thus have already a ridiculous and unrivalled wealth of craft brewing experience and a real passion for great beer. We intend to give the gift of brewing (the greatest gift of all)  to one of the younger brewery operatives who has shown real promise -Matt Cruz, and we intend to invest in the other members of the team we’ve got.  Recent months have shown we can achieve pretty much anything we want here, and inheriting the Hall brewery to let off steam and get some of our ideas out just adds to the buzz round the place.  There has never been a better time to wear the Thornbridge shirt.

After spending the last eight months settling in at Thornbridge, I finally got round to brewing a beer style close to my heart – Weissbier.  In the early years of my brewing career, I had numerous trips to Bavaria with Meantime Brewing Company and was absolutely blown away with this particular style.  Every time I’ve brewed wheat beer,  I’ve always endeavoured to recreate those awesome bubblegum, banana and clove flavours I first encountered all those years ago.

Wheat beer is notoriously difficult to produce as it can so easily become infected, due to relatively high fermentation temperatures, which, combined with low bitterness rates and autolysis of the yeast, can result in a nutrient boost for any latent bacteria which may have survived through to the finished product. In addition, the high percentage of wheat malt in the grist can result in the lauter being particular troublesome.

There are many beer styles which don’t really suit cask dispense, and Hefeweizen is definitely one of them. It is my belief that serving Bavarian-style wheat beer from a cask is a big ‘no-no’ and shows a complete lack of understanding and appreciation of the style. Although I love cask beer, I think we are somewhat limited in the beer styles we can showcase in the cask format. We have therefore decided to package the whole brew in keykegs and bottles. We were fortunate that Jamie Hawksworth from Pivovar, operator of the Sheffield and Euston Taps, agreed to get involved as he is a good friend of ours.  We involved him right from the start – Caolan (Thornbridge Production Manager) and I spent an evening at the Sheffield Tap tasting a range of Hefeweizens to decide on the attributes for which we were looking.  He also came down for the brewday, but couldn’t quite make the full 12 hour day, thanks to a predictably difficult lauter!

After 5 or so litres of various wheat beers we decided on a burnt orange colour and an relatively low hopping rate – around 15EBUS. The grist was going to be 50% wheat malt imported from the Bamberger Malzerei, with pale ale malt, cara hell and pale crystal.  Bamberger Malzerei was my first choice for malt after spending time with Braukon Brewery Engineers in Germany.  Some of the best beers I tasted with them used this Malster.  On the hops front, for this style, the bitterness needs to be barely perceptible, so we went for Tettnanger, a fine noble hop with a mild aroma..

We wanted a medium body to the beer, which was a little bit of challenge as the brew kit here is not really set up for decoction, so we started with a 43°C step, then gambled on a 66/67°C step before going up to 72°C.  What we really wanted more than anything was masses of banana and bubblegum and clove. Any brewer worth his salt will strive for these flavours when making a Hefeweizen, a biproduct of yeast metabolism as fermentation progresses. The unique flavour of Bavarian-style wheat beer comes from fusel alcohols, esters, phenols as well as other compounds.  One of the main flavours is a compound know as 4 vinyl-guaiacol. which can be described as clove-like.   To succeed it requires as much wheat malt in the grist as possible and a 43°C rest prior to the main saccharification rest, to release the Ferrulic acid from the wheat malt, which is the precursor for 4-V-G.

Other important flavour compounds in Hefeweizens are esters, such as Iso-amylacetate which can be described as banana or bubblegum-like.  It is actually added in the commercial manufacture of Bubblegum in a chemical format.  With Hefeweizens it is produced naturally, a delightful characteristic of the enigmatic Bavarian wheat beer yeast.

The level of esters can be increased in numerous ways, one of which is adopting an open fermentation. This I can most certainly vouch for.  Indeed, Schneider Weisse Brewery have gone the full monty and chopped the tops off their cylindro-conicals, something I would love to do here at the Riverside but I don’t think my boss would be too appreciative!  It is also possible to under-pitch the yeast and play around with oxygenation levels, which we did to some extent with this brew.

I have to say we’re all really happy with the beer overall.  It has lashings of banana, bubble gum and clove, has a great mouthfeel and is thankfully bacteria free!  We also managed to Krausen it for lots of natural carbonation, producing smaller and gentler CO2 bubbles which come out of solution more slowly – a method eminently superior to forced carbonation. We also pushed the CO2 to around 3 volumes, typical for this style and a fairly good reason not to serve it from cask!

One final point:- Proper Hefeweizens need to be drunk fresh before the esters start to diminish, which is why we’ll be getting it out to you ASAP. So if you’re fortunate enough to get your hands on a bottle, don’t even think of ageing it – Get it drunk!

Rob sampling a small sample (2 litres) of Versa

 Versa will be launched at the Sheffield Tap, Platform 1, Sheffield Railway Station on Thursday June 3oth, at 7.30pm.  I can safely say the Brewery team will be there, drinking responsibly (as usual), and we would be delighted if you all came too and gave us your thoughts.