Sunday 31 December 2017

Golden Pints 2017

Golden pint it speaks to me,
denying my reality. 
Lose my body, lose my mind.
Blow like wind,
I flow like...err...beer


It's that time of year again, when the best beers and stuff get blogged about. And it's all thanks to Andy Mogg and Mark  Dredge, who've both gone on to bigger and better things than blogging. I haven't though so here goes:

Best UK Cask Beer:
Thurstons Unamerican Pale Ale. You move to the middle of the Irish Sea for six months and what happens? Your local brewery makes a cracking beer using all English grown hops (Endeavour, Jester and Chinook) but with an intensity of flavour you'd expect from American hops. Dead good it is.



Best UK Keg Beer:
Goose Island IPA. OK, I'm not sure where it's brewed now but probably America. It's back on form though and I drank it in England so it's the winner for me.

Best UK Bottled Beer:
Still Old Dairy Tsar Top, and my stocks still haven't run out, though annoyingly a couple have been wasted on job interviews recently.

Best UK Canned Beer:
Stone IPA was canned beer I bought most this year. But it's definitely brewed in Germany so I can't claim ignorance on that one. So I'll go with Moor Hoppiness. It would be even better if someone could come up with some sort of transparent beer container so you could see when yeast is pouring.

Best Overseas Draught:
The Pilsner Urquell from a wooden barrel and drunk in the brewery cellar was glorious.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:
Orval's losing its top spot this year as I've renewed my love for Liefman's Goudenband. I really must brew more with lactic acid bacteria next year.

Best Overseas Canned Beer:
I'll put Stone IPA here.

Best collaboration brew:
The Fuller's and Friends boxed set was great fun, and good beers too.

Best Overall Beer:
Thurstons Unamerican Pale Ale

Best Branding:
Also Thurstons Unamerican Pale Ale

Best UK Brewery:
Thurstons

Best Overseas Brewery:
Liefmans. They'd be even better if they brought the old brewhouse back into use.

Best New Brewery Opening 2017:
Can't think of one whose beer I've drunk but I'm sure Sophie de Ronde is making great beer at Burnt Mill Brewery so them.

Pub/Bar of the Year:
The Crown, Horsell again. It's good to be back.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2017:
Not that it's actually open yet. And I'll probably never go to it. But the two fellas behind Two Fellas micropub in the Isle of Man are such fine fellas I'll give them a plug.

Beer Festival of the Year:
GBBF again. It was a vintage year for me this year.

Supermarket of the Year:
On the strength of their Fuller's boxed set Waitrose knocks Booths off the top spot this year.

Independent Retailer of the Year:
It is part of a chain but Wine Rack is so good it's got to win something from me.

Online Retailer of the Year:
Haven't bought any beer online this year. I do need to get more Goudenband though so could well end up buying beer online soon.

Best Beer Book or Magazine:
The best beery book has been Pete Brown's Miracle Brew. Slightly oddly a couple of people said my post on it was nitpicking. Which does make me wonder what part of anal retentive they don't understand. And to be honest the bloke who taught me proof reading would have said I was being sloppy and made me do the whole thing again more thoroughly. But anyway, the book's a great read.

Best Beer Blog or Website:
I'm a bit twitchy about putting things behind a pay wall, it seems like a virtual version of the enclosure act to me. So I was wary when Boak and Bailey set up their Patreon page, even though their beery ethics are much more scrupulous than mine. But they're still making lots of great stuff freely available and this side of libertarian communism we've all got to make a living so I'm going with them.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer:
Boak and Bailey pulled a blinder in the tweet stakes too:
They like my beer and do hand knitted beer mats! They're not getting two awards though. Instead it's going to @jan_marble, whose slagging off of people from a company account never fails to get me reaching for the popcorn.

Best Brewery Website/Social media:
Can't think of one. I only really notice things about brewery websites when they're horribly clunky and I'm not sure I regularly read any brewery blogs.


Wednesday 27 December 2017

A visit to Liefmans Brewery

The last brewery on the IBD study tour was Liefmans, and it was a case of leaving the best till last. Which makes it all the more annoying that I lost my camera on the way home, and I haven't been able to scrounge any pictures of the brewery from other people.

All I've got is this picture from my phone of the wonderful woman who used to run the place:

She's the one on the left
She still calls in regularly for a glass of Goudenband.

The brewery has had a financially troubled history and is now owned by Duvel Mootgat. The current brewery was built between 1928-1930, though since 1991 it's been used for fermentation only with wort being brought in from other breweries. At the moment it comes from De Koninck and bottling is carried out down the road from Achouffe.

The product range has "commercial" (like Fruitesse) and "traditional" (like Goudenband ) beers. My personal preference was for the latter, but it's the "commercial" beers that make up the vast majority of sales.

Cold, aerated wort is trucked in from De Koninck and sprayed though a fish tail into the fermenting vessels. The yeast contains lactic acid bacteria. It's perhaps not surprising they stopped brewing at Liefmans as it was a long winded process: mill on Monday, brew on Tuesday, grain out on Wednesday. They had two mash tuns, two mills, two grist cases, two Hot Liquor Tanks and three coppers. The brew length was 440hl and the boil went on from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning.

10% flaked maize is used in the grist, as well as some dark malts (caramel and black?). The hops are mostly Saaz, though some WGV is also used.

It's a shame I've got no pictures as they have cracking coolships, with a trough below in which the trub would be strained though a cloth to get more wort. The wort was cooled to 60°C in the coolships before going to a Baudelot cooler.

The two 440hl Fermenting Vessels are open copper rectangular vessels equipped with scrapers for cropping the yeast. When the yeast head is scraped from the top it slides down a chute to open and uncooled round vessels where it says until it's repitched. Fermentation is carried out at 22°C for six days. 

We did have the process of making their fruit beers explained to us in great detail (and they've also started a barrel ageing programme). I was bursting for a piss at this point though so my notes are a little lacking. It's hard to take notes when you're hopping from one leg to another and thinking arid thoughts.




Tuesday 19 December 2017

The flavour benefits of S. cerevisiae & B. bruxellensis mixed culture fermentations

I've been catching up with some of the excellent Master Brewers Association of the Americas podcasts recently. I was delighted to spot one that involves Brettanomyces: Co-fermentation Trials with S. cerevisiae & B. bruxellensis and the Organoleptic Benefits of Mixed Culture Fermentations


The Orval Brett.getting ready for mixed fermentation
Here's my notes:

Nick Mader of Freemont Brewing Co. carried out a series of fermentation trials using Saccharomyces cerevisiae BSI 565, a highly attenuative Saison strain and BSI drie a Brettanomyces bruxellensis strain isolated from a lambic beer.


They were cultured in a wort of 13.4° Plato (1.054) and 5.2 pH which was oxygenated to 10ppm O2

Five trials were each carried out in triplicate. The cultures used five trials were:

  1. Pure Sacch.
  2. 75% Sacch. /25% Brett.
  3. 50% Sacch. /50% Brett.
  4. 25% Sacch. /75% Brett
  5. Pure Brett.

Only 2.5% difference in apparent attenuation was found in the mixed cultures, so mixed culture fermentations had similar attenuation to pure Sacch.

Pure Brett. had 77% apparent attenuation (3.1°P FG)

Fermentations were carried out at 20°C



Laboratory (GC) and sensory analysis was carried out.

Esters:

Ethyl acetate (in high concentration solventy taste, in medium conc. fruity). Highest conc. in pure Sacch. Decreased at first with Brett. in mix and then increased as Brett. conc. went up, so at 75% Brett. it's almost as high as pure Sacch. Ethyl butyrate had negative linear relationship with % of Brett.

Ethyl hexanoate, oxanoate and decanoate similar. Decanoate 3x higher than anything else in pure Brett. fermentation though

Iso amyl acetate high in the pure Sacch. fermentation but even 25% Brett. is enough to hydrolyse it immediately. Not detectable in pure Brett. fermentation.

Negative correlation in higher alcohols with Brett. conc. so really low in pure Brett. fermentation.

Phenolic compounds:

4 Vinyl Guiacol, 4 Ethyl Guiacol and 4Ethyl Phenol (barnyard, horse blanket) were measured.

4VG lower in mixed cultures. 4EG and EP increased with Brett. conc.

Pure Sacch. had high 4VG, Pure Brett no 4VG detectable.

All mixed culture fermentations had all three (4VG, 4EG and 4EP)

Mixed fermentations: wide array of ester and phenol concentrations. Pretty pleasant taste.

Pure culture fermentations had compounds in high concentrations but fewer of them. Mixed fermentations had more compounds in medium concentrations which gave a more complex taste.

I thought that last point about mixed culture fermentations really interesting: less intensity but more variety in flavour compounds giving a more complex taste. It looks obvious now, but it was useful to hear it stated.

Friday 15 December 2017

A visit to Brasserie de la Senne

Help me!
The forth day of the IBD study tour of Belgium started with a visit to Lambrechts to hear about keg washing and filling. It was interesting stuff, and I did ask them for a quote on some equipment, but I know you're only here for the beer so I'll move swiftly on to our next stop Brasserie de la Senne.

We were shown round by one of the owners, Yvan de Baets. He is a big fan of British beers, and mentioned his fondness of Harvey's Best. The brewery was originally started in 2004 using kit made from old dairy tanks. After two years they moved to cuckoo brewing  at De Ranke until they were able to re-start in Brussels in 2010. At the current site they brewed 9000hl last year and are planning to move again to a new site soon.

The beers are brewed for balance and drinkability with hop, malt and fermentation flavours coming through so he doesn't use new world hops: 95% of the hops used are German or Slovenian. One Saccharomyces yeast strain is used (though a Brettanomyces strain is also used in some beers).

To get the right ester profile in the beers flat, wide fermenting vessels are used. This keeps the hydrostatic pressure low. He also said this means less amino acids are used during fermentation so the beer has better mouthfeel. The large fermenting vessels are filled to a depth of 2m, and the smaller ones to only 1m.


The mashing temperature profile is 45-62-72-78°C, though the times are varied for different beers. Some beers are re-fermented with a Brettanomcyes bruxellensis strain found in the wild by a homebrewer in Brussels. Some beers are also barrel aged.

They have a 20hl brewlength and brew twice a day, six days a week.

Pelleted hops are used, as he says whole hops lose their aroma quickly as they age. 10-15% crystal sugar is added to the copper for beers over 6.5% ABV. This raises the alcohol but keeps the drinkability. The also use liquid invert sugar for the secondary fermentation in bottle and keg.



The yeast is used 30-35 times then re-propagated as after this flocculation decreases. The yeast is a top fermenting strain but it is bottom cropped. The beer spends five to six days in the fermenter and two weeks in the maturation vessel. The collect wort at 21-22°C, with weak beers the temperature is allowed to rise to 26°C to encourage ester formation, for strong beers the temperature is kept to 24°C to limit higher alcohol formation. Secondary fermentation is carried out at 23°C for 15 days and carbonation of 5.5g/l is aimed for in bottles. The Bretted beers have an additional three months conditioning at 15°C.
Not sure how balanced 4.5% ABV and 60 IBU is mind



Thanks to Richard Rees for the brewery pictures.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

The Portman Group

The canned version of Tiny Rebel's Cwtch has had a complaint against its branding upheld by the industry watchdog The Portman Group. As is usually the case when things like this happen twitter has been aflutter with people outraged, though over at Boak and Bailey's blog there is a more measured response.


The Portman Group do come across as rather po-faced, but they don't seem to be being vindictive in their judgement. And it's worth bearing in mind that The Portman Group is an industry body, and it's the self regulation of brewers that stops state regulation coming in. I'm not sure what the people howling with outrage think would happen if self regulation collapsed. Do they really think we'd be left alone to get on with things as we fit? As Malatesta put it:
"... these institutions cannot be usefully destroyed without replacing them by something better."
So until such a time someone comes up with a better alternative to The Portman Group I think we just need to suck it up and be grateful it's not state imposed.

Saturday 9 December 2017

Ancient Brews by Patrick McGovern

Patrick McGovern is a biomolecular archaeologist who has been researching ancient beers and brewing beers inspired by them with Dogfish head for many years. His research and details of the beers made are recounted in Ancient brews.


It starts off covering some of the same ground in Uncorking The Past, though this time it's definitely written more with the beer geek in mind. Brewers will be pleased to hear that calcium oxalate plays an important role in the story as an indicator a vessel contained a fermented malt beverages. So next time you're descaling a fermenter think happy thoughts about the historical importance of beer stone.

Each chapter covers a beer from a different time and place, and comes complete with a recipe for the beer and historically appropriate food to go with it. The research is fascinating, but the recipes are a bit of a let down. After using the best modern analytical techniques they could to identify ingredients used to make drinks from residues found at ancient sites they then had to come up with recipes for Dogfish head. Due to legal, commercial and availability reason the recipes are more beers inspired by the research than attempts at genuine recreations. Surprisingly considering how advanced American homebrewing is they all start with a malt extract base too.

So modern malts and hops, as well as modern brewing techniques (e.g. everything is boiled) and pure cultures of yeast strains are all used. I found this a shame as homebrewers don't have the constraints that Dogfish head do so could go further in trying to be historically accurate. As it is you're given information about ancient brews but will have to go a lot further with the materials and methods that would have been used if you want to truly try and recreate something ancient. The book is certainly a big step in that direction though and it's definitely given me a few ideas about things I'd like to try.



Tuesday 5 December 2017

Why did no one ever tell me about Wine Rack?

Not since the whole Chiron incident have I felt so much that people are deliberately keeping me in the dark. After having popped to the shops in West Byfleet (walking distance from my mum's house) I went to a cash machine near a shop called Wine Rack. With a name like that it obviously held no interest for me. And saying "wine and spirit specialist" on the sign did nothing to help.


But as I walked past it I noticed it had some beers in the window so thought it worthy of investigation. Once I'd got inside I was delighted to see it was an Aladdin's cave of beers:


They had the new Trappist beer from America, as well as classic Belgian ones like Orval and Westmalle. The American offerings also include beers from Crooked Stave, and there's a fine German selection too. Not to mention the British beers. I can't believe there's such a great range of beers for sale so close to my mum's. Or that no one told me about it. The shop's name doesn't help but surely someone could have told me? Oh well, at least I know now.

Thursday 30 November 2017

A visit to Dingemans maltings

Dingemans is fairly small compared to some maltings I've been to, but I was delighted to see it had a malt roaster. Steeping, Germination and Kilning vessels can produce white malts (e.g. lager, ale, Vienna and Munich). But if you want to make crystal and roasted malts (e.g. amber, brown, chocolate, black) you need a malt roaster.

The grains are dried before storage and rehydrated in steep tanks. They have six 30 tonne steep tanks and two of 20 tonnes:



They do two steeps: five to six hours wet, eight hours air rest, five to six hours wet, ten hours air rest, before ending with the grains wet. The air rests stop the embryo in the grain, which needs oxygen, to thrive. Chalk is added to the first steep to bring the pH up to 10. The aerate the steeps by pumping compressed air.

They have 50 and 110 tonne Saladin boxes they use as Germination and Kilning vessels. The turners are moved through the grain bed to stop the rootlets tangling.

He was a Kurd you know

Only joking, the malting one was French
They are filled to 80cm deep. Germination is at 15 to 20°C. When kilning they run the turners through the bed five to six  hours into kilning to give good homogeneity. They can go up to 50 EBC colour in the Saladin boxes. They also have 25 tonne kilns for speciality malts.

It was the roasters that impressed me the most though. Having only seen pilot plant sized ones before something with a 20 tonne capacity was in another league. And they emptied it whilst we were watching.


It was pointed out that they can do three very different malts with 150 EBC colour, using the kiln, a crystal malt and a roasted biscuit malt. Which shows some of the limitations of malt analysis. They can make cara or crystal malts with colour of 20-350 EBC, the darkest Special B malt is roasted twice, the last 50 EBC of colour added after the first roasting and cooling.


Annually they produce 30,000 tonnes. 60% of their production is speciality malts, with only 40% white malts.









Thanks to Richard Rees for the pictures

Friday 24 November 2017

Searching for clarity on unfined beers

At this year's Woking beer festival a number of unfined cask beers were available. Though some impressive claims have been made for the improvements in flavour that come from not adding finings to beer I'm rather dubious about them. As far as I know there's only been one paper published which compared the taste of fined to unfined beer and it found no difference. That's not to say there isn't any effect, but I suspect it's a minor one. To investigate this further I took the opportunity to do some more research.

The first beer I tried was certainly hazy enough that in normal circumstances I'd be eyeing it suspiciously.


There were no problems with the taste though. It wasn't outstanding, but there weren't any off flavours either. Another beer in the popular pale and hoppy style.

Much to my surprise the next one was crystal clear:



Some darker malts were used in the making of it but there was not the slightest hint of haze. Unfortunately it was a bit flat. Now I don't know it this was due to how the beer left the brewery or how the cask was handled at the festival. But I couldn't help but wonder if with an unfined beer this clear the yeast count was too low to get a secondary fermentation in the cask.

The last one I tried was a deliberately murky saison from a local brewery:


I've tried this one from the bottle with and without the yeast and I had to admit it tasted better with. It was also great in the cask and had plenty of condition.

So a bit of a mixed bag from this investigation. Not fining may improve some beers, it may make some worse, or it may make little difference. As ever more research is needed.

Friday 17 November 2017

CAMRA and cask beer quality

A hardy perennial in the world of beer is people saying that CAMRA should focus on cask beer quality. The owner of Magic Rock brewery is the latest pushing this line in a Morning Advertiser article.

He bemoans the cask beer "discount culture" but is it really the place of a consumer organisation to try and raise prices? He also talks of cask breathers, which might help in some places, but old cask beer kept under a CO2 blanket is unlikely to be as good as fresh cask beer managed traditionally.

So what exactly can a beer consumer organisation do to promote beer quality? I doubt CAMRA members marching up to publicans and telling them where they are going wrong with their beer would go down well. And anyway isn't something like beer quality best dealt with by the industry, not consumers? Perhaps there could be an industry body to assess and accredit cask beer quality in pubs.

Oh, hang on.

However, perhaps CAMRA members could give scores for the quality of beer in pubs and maybe register it online.

Oh, hang on.

CAMRA members could then select pubs that sell the best beer, and the national orgaisation could then publish some sort of guide to where you can drink the best beer.

Oh, hang on

As cask beer is something really only found in pubs maybe CAMRA should campaign to promote and protect pubs.

Oh, hang on.

Perhaps CAMRA branches could run competitions at their festivals for the best beers in various categories, and on a national level overall champions could then be declared.

Oh, hang on.

I suppose CAMRA could get its publishing arm to produce a guide to how to look after cask beer.

Oh, hang on.

Come to think of it, although talk of CAMRA and beer quality does crop up regularly I'm not convinced there's much more they could be doing.






Monday 13 November 2017

A visit to Westmalle brewery

I've read an awful lot of brewing text books and technical articles. I've also been to an awful lot of breweries. And I have to say the way things are done in breweries rarely matches with how things are written in text books. There are inevitably compromises that have to be made in production to ensure that beer can be made in the amounts needed and with the staff available. But not at Westmalle. The Trappist monks that have overall control of the brewery clearly don't skimp on investment and there was mightily impressed equipment, and an equally impressive commitment to quality from the staff.

The new brewhouse was shiny and automated:


They have a brew length of 200hl and brew four times a day, Monday to Thursday. They use three types of malt and six varieties of whole hops with some CO2 extract for bittering. An interesting point was made that it's easier to assess whole hops for disease compared to pellets. About 10% sugar is used and three hop additions are made during the boil. Three beers are made: Dubbel, Tripel, and Extra at 4.8% which is made for the monks. Triple now accounts for 70% of the 130,000hl produced annually. 

The brewhouse has an MCV and lauter tun. They also have an energy storage tank and a pre-run vessel and the wort is heated to 97°C before entering one of the two copper. Evaporation is 7%. As they use whole hops they also have a hopback.

The old brewhouse was also shiny but less automated:






The wort is aerated to saturation and the 400hl cyclindro-conical fermentation vessels are not too high so ester formation is not inhibited. The beer ferments down to 1004 and it is increased by sugar addition to 1008.5 on bottling. The beer is slowly clarified in 800hl maturation tanks: five weeks in vertical tanks or three weeks in horizontals. After maturation the beer is centrifuged and then re-seeded with the same strain of top cropping yeast.

We got to drink some beer from the FV which I have to say was rather good.


We were also offered the chance to have a drink of the yeast. I declined though others were braver:


Note this is George drinking the yeast, not the beer
 The bottling line dates from 2007 and runs at 45,000 bottles per hour.



The carbonation is 4g/l on bottling, which rises to 8.5g/l after 18-21 days of conditioning at 22°C in a warehouse where 50% humidity is maintained.


There was beer and cheese laid on after the tour:


So I had to try the Extra:



And the dubble. Oh yeah, and more of the tripel too.









Thanks to Richard Rees and Toni Ryman for the pictures

Friday 10 November 2017

Brewing Microbiology for small breweries

An advantage of being back in civilisation is I get to go to IBD meetings. The latest one at HQ was on "Laboratories in the small brewery". Marilyn Seedhouse gave a detailed, if rather rushed, talk on brewing microbiology, and Lee Walsh of QCL touted his "BeerLab Analyser".

As the microbiology covered a lot in a short time here's the slides (well, most of them) with my comments.


I think we're clear here that microbial contamination is a bad thing for beer.


Ah, Bergey's Manual. That takes me back. Microorganism have names based on latin or greek and I never studied either. They can be awkward don't be intimidated and just press on doing your best. If it's any consolation apparently the latin or greek is often bad.


There are good points here like brewing there are a lot of steps involved in microbiological investigations. And also like brewing they can seem complicated at first but get much easier with practice. Aseptic technique and using a microscope might take some getting used to but it's worth it.



This is pretty minimal and you can even get useful results with less. I've seen small labs actually using a pressure cooker as an autoclave and you can incubate cultures at room temperature if needs be.


It seems a bit steep to have to fork out for methods, but if you can get help from someone they'll probably be happy to let you copy theirs.


The important thing is make sure you sample is not contaminated by anything else, or you results will be useless.


You can use 70% methylated spirits (70% actually works better than higher concentrations). Sadly HMRC don't seem keen on people using ethanol as a disinfectant nowadays.

We were shown how to take sample from a sample tap by spraying on alcohol and flaming first.



And how to use a long handled sample pot.


As well as how to sample though a rubber diaphragm (which are sometimes found for example on pipes).


Once the wort has cooled it becomes susceptible to microbial contamination, so samples need to be taken from the paraflow onwards.


Methylene blue staining can be used to determine the viability of yeast, but microscopy of yeast samples is of limited use for detecting contamination. With practice you can spot contaminants but it's not the most sensitive method.



Acid washing works wonders for getting rid of bacterial contamination, but won't help with wild yeast infection. Yeast academics tend to rail against the harm it does to your pitching yeast though this may be strain dependent and I've used it successfully in the past. After acid washing the yeast should be pitched immediately.




  Propagating your own yeast is a bit more involved than opening a packet and rehydrating.





Beer is actually quite inhospitable to most microorganisms.



Microorganisms are not very big and can grow quickly.


When looking for contaminating microorganisms just looking to see what grows is not very useful as in a brewery what you'll mostly grow is the pitching yeast. So selective culture media which suppress the growth of unwanted organisms (in this case generally brewing yeast) and encourage the growth of the contaminants are used. The suppression can come from adding things like cycloheximide (which will kill yeasts) or having limited nutrients available which only some organisms can use. The encouragement can come from optimising the nutrients for the organism you are interested in and providing optimal growth conditions (e.g. in an anaerobic environment provided by a gas jar).


You can get antifoam to add to culture media if bubbles are a problem.




Most types of culture media can be bought pre-prepared in dry form from companies like Oxoid.



Some more details of culture media used in brewery laboratories. 



You can buy disposable plastic spreaders too.


Other methods are also available. Membrane filtration is particularly useful when looking for low numbers of organisms in liquid, and she also mentioned that if looking for contamination in gas the gas can be bubbled though saline and the saline then membrane filtered.



Reading culture plates and identifying the organisms on them does take practice, but once you've got your eye in you can often be very accurate just looking at the colonies.


Some culture media will do things like change colour with pH which can help identify organisms.




I won't go on about the BeerLab analyser as there's a report by an ex-colleague of mine here.