Light surprise

It's always nice to see a new beer on the shelves, especially when it turn turns up in an unlikely place. I spotted Wolters Pilsener in my local Spar convenience store while wandering around on mundane domestic duties. The green bottle frightened me right off, as all victims of noxious light struck beers will no doubt understand. But on closer inspection of the stock I spied six packs of the beer, with the bottles huddled tightly inside, shielding themselves timidly from the skunk inducing light. I grabbed a pack and made off home.

It is very light for a traditional pilsner - only 4% abv and sadly this comes through in the palate. While the classic lager malt and slight DMS are present it has none of the malt fullness usually found in such beers and all flavour is rinsed from the mouth far too quickly.

Perhaps I am scrutinising this beer to closely. In different conditions, a long, cold draught of this stuff would hit the spot nicely and the low alcohol content might tempt you to try another. It sure beats most of the other light flavoured lagers that we all turn to on holiday in sunny climates, but knowledge of its country of origin sets you up for a fall. Perhaps it would make a good mystery beer.

Spanish concentrate

I can't say I've had much luck with Spanish beer. My recent trip to Barcelona introduced me to some interesting craft beer, but on the whole things aren't that inspiring when it comes to Iberian offerings. While snooping around the Playa del Ingles I stumbled upon the fancy part of their supermarket, a small section full of very expensive chocolate, pasta sauce, cold cuts and various other treats. In amongst all this was a very small beer selection, mainly consisting of strong lagers that no one in their right mind would drink while enduring Barcelona in August. I grabbed a few bottles and stashed them for consumption in a more suitable climate. Dublin in November fits the bill.

The heavy alcoholic nature of these beers suits a colder climate but alcohol is about all you get from them. Both taste damn near identical, with perhaps more sweetness from Legado de Yuste - likely stemming from the corn mentioned in the ingredients, and a slight cardboard note from Cerveza Especial, but there is little else going on. If I wanted to be cruel I'd say that these beers could be arrived at by taking a measure of the standard Spanish lager, be it Estrella or San Miguel and concentrating the solution through thermal means to produce a lager of just under double the average strength. As a result the beer would be more alcoholic, sweeter and fuller bodied, but that's about it.

Bringing that Belgian funk from Brooklyn town

This bottle of Local 1 has spent the best part of a year in my beer fridge. Not for any reasons relating to maturation and such, merely a matter of waiting for the right moment. Monday evening last week fitted the bill; it had been a mother of a Monday in the workplace and I had some tasty cheese and cold cuts left over from the weekend. The popping of a cork from a generous bottle of beer such as this is always very satisfying. The hazy golden beer eagerly filled the glass only to retreat rapidly again leaving little foam, but the lively effervescence brought a distinct Belgian funk to the nose along with a malt sweetness that translates into a honey sweetness on the tongue.

I suppose this beer is a take on the Belgian Tripel - the label speaks of raw sugar additions from Mauritius which serve to thin out the body and make the beer very drinkable despite the hefty 9% abv. It works very well in this sense. The '100% bottle refermentation' make this a lively beer and I imagine the cork cage has its work cut out containing the pressure. The carbonation sits nicely, and carved through the heavy cheese and other oily treats I had with it.

As an aside, you might have noticed yet another dark, flash washed out, shadow strewn picture of a beer bottle accompanying this post. It's not ideal, but at the time of drinking I just want to get the beer in the glass and enjoy it. I usually throw down a few notes, but breaking out the camera and taking a picture often ruins the moment for me. Does anyone else who indulges in this beer blogging lark feel the same, or am I just shamefully uncommitted?

Death in the northern hemisphere

Summer is reluctantly giving way to autumn in Dublin. The weather is still pleasantly mild, but the state of my wife's once glorious sun flowers tell a different story. They are sorry sight but the only clear sign to me that we are careening towards less temperate weather. To my mind it isn't quite time enough to break out the winter warming beer and don't really feel like committing something dark, rich and alcoholic to a glass is fully justified.

I made do the other night with something rich and alcoholic, yet crisp and full of  fresh hop character. Unsurprisingly from the West coast of America, Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale is very bitter and bursting with hop flavour. It is satisfyingly full bodied and thanks to all those floral, spicy hops it holds onto rich foam all the way to the bottom of the glass - a characteristic that always pleases me greatly in any beer. Plenty of sticky body and malt holds its own against the hop onslaught resulting in a well balanced, all too easily drinkable warming ale. A few more of these will do the job nicely until such time I can happily hit the the more traditional cockle warmers.

How to make your taste buds disappear completely

Damn this stuff is bitter. I mean coat the top of your mouth make you pull a funny face, still in the back of your throat an hour later bitter. It makes even the most intense American hop bomb taste like a pint of mild. It's hard to see the point of it. I read a while back that plenty of rich malts were used to balance the intense hopping in this lightweight beer, and at the time this intrigued me. Was it possible to add that much hops to a beer of a mere 3.5% and make it any way balanced? The answer's no. The hops are so intense they burn, and the body gives up long before it has a chance to contribute anything. It does smell amazing though, and the pungent hops would make you think that you are in for a big heavy hitting alcoholic hop bomb.

Care should be taken when drinking this beer. After I finished the bottle I was ravenous despite having my dinner shortly before. The intense bitterness stimulated my appetite ferociously, and I found myself raiding the fridge before bed for just about anything I could get my hands on. Not one for the diet conscious.

I didn't enjoy it, but as an experiment this beer is superb. It highlights everything that is right with the new breed of craft brewer at work today.

Hardness and alkalinity Part 1

Water hardness and alkalinity are some of the trickier aspects of brewing to get a grip of but the benefits and improvements it can bring to your brewing make it well worth looking into. Suitable water improves every step of the brewing process. I already outlined the importance of calcium in a previous post. This post is a guide to assessing the hardness of your water supply and its suitability for mashing. First we need to get some definitions straight as it is these phrases that often cause the most confusion:

Hardness: This is essentially the concentration of calcium and magnesium in the water. It is divided into two further sets of terms:

Permanent hardness also called non-carbonate hardness. This cannot be removed from the water by simple means. It is made up from calcium and magnesium compounds such as calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.

Temporary hardness also called carbonate hardness or alkalinity. This can be removed through the various treatments that brewers use, and is responsible for the lime-scale on household appliances. It is made up of calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate.

The significance of the distinction is seen when we consider what the two types of hardness bring to brewing. Carbonate hardness increases mash pH by neutralising the natural acids contributed by the mash, dragging the mash pH away and above the 5.4 that is optimal for malt amylases to work. Non carbonate hardness lowers mash pH and is beneficial to meeting the optimal mash pH.

The contrasting action of these differing forms of hardness leads us to another important term in brewing water chemistry: residual alkalinity. This is the net effect of the water hardness on the mash, and the extent to which the water will have to be treated to meet requirements. For most Irish water supplies carbonate hardness will out-weigh non carbonate hardness and the water will require a degree of treatment to lower the alkalinity.

Water reports state water hardness in 'equivalents' of calcium carbonate or bicarbonate. This is necessary in order to compare the different types of hardness in the water on a equal footing. When compared in this way it is seen that 3.5 equivalents of permanent calcium hardness or 7.5 equivalents of magnesium hardness is required to offset the pH raising effects of 1 equivalent of carbonate hardness. It is clear from these figures that carbonate hardness is very potent at increasing mash pH. If your water supply is low in carbonate hardness it might be possible to offset the residual alkalinity through the addition of calcium sulphate or calcium chloride, which is likely to be added at any rate in order to increase the calcium concentration to a more suitable level. However, if the carbonate hardness is very high, adding calcium to the water will not be sufficient to overcome the residual alkalinity and the carbonate hardness must be removed.

In my next post I will provide some simple methods for estimating alkalinity, and how to remove it.

Bigger than planned

I haven't brewed nearly enough over the last few months. It was time to remedy this with a bang, so last weekend I planned to brew an American IPA. It got away from me a bit  thanks to some overly zealous hopping (is that possible in an American IPA?) and a better than expected extraction of sugar from the mash.

25 litres
5 kg Maris Otter
2 kg Munich malt
500g Cara Munich

35g Galena 13% AA 60 minutes
25g Centennial 10.5% AA  20, 10, 5, 0 minutes

OG 1.078

60 IBU estimated

Saf 05

I gave my mash tun a serious workout and it held up admirably. Once again I treated my water, bring the calcium up to around 160 ppm through additions of calcium sulphate and calcium chloride. I rid myself of around 130 ppm of pesky alkalinity using carbonate reducing solution and everything went very well indeed. I planned for 75% efficiency and an OG of 1.070, but achieved about 80% and ended up with 1.078. Very gratifying but the fact that my last runnings came in at 1.030 indicates that I just can't get the damn fermentable sugar out of the mash tun. The chemistry was perfect; the temperature held at 66 C and pH fell in a spot on 5.4, but the damn grain held on to the sugar. Not to worry. I'm not a penny pincher and have no problem dumping the grain. Perhaps in future I'll do some small beer.

I opted for some first wort hopping because Galena can be a little harsh,  and also the hop rate was quite liberal. I used pellets for the Centennial and had to break out some extra kit to cope with all the pellets. I planned to make a big beer with plenty of rich malt for quite some time, the hope being that the richer Munich malt will provide a decent base for the hops.

Below is a video of Saf 05 yeast hard at work. The wort looks like swamp water because my set up dumps all the break material into the fermenter, but the beer generally drops bright in the end with no ill effects.

Jack Russell not Great Dane

With all the hype around Brewdog's heavy hitting beers it's easy to forget that they produce beer of average strength too. Well, easy for me to forget at any rate because until recently I couldn't get my hands on any of it. This was happily remedied with a recent trip to The Drink Store of Dublin's Stoneybatter. A number of Brewdog beers have turned up there including The Physics and 77 Lager, both of which are lightweights compared to Brewdog's more potent beers, but they do not suffer in the flavour stakes and will stay in my memory just as long as their bigger beers. It is clear that the philosophy of packing in the flavour is avidly adhered to in these beers despite the pedestrian nature of the style, being far closer to the average beer on the street that Brewdog swore not to emulate.

77 Lager is unlike any other lager you will try. The hop choice is not one associated with a lager (Amarillo, I think) but the taste and aroma is very satisfying. I wouldn't class it as a lager on a blind taste and it likely only masquerades as a lager because of a period of cold storage that the majority of ales undergo anyway. It's certainly clean like a lager but the orange fruiy flavours probably undo the work of the lager yeast strain, if indeed one was used.

The Physics falls directly into standard British ale territory, but with more teeth in the form of a surprising bitterness. The malt that drives this beer is superb and probably the best I have tried in quite some time. Crystal and Caramalt is mentioned on the label. I will be seriously looking into this combination to get that juicy, chewy malt aspect into my own beer.

Proper, Proper Job

I knew when I read the back label on the bottle of St Austell's Proper Job I had tried the beer before. The front label tells us that it is 'powerfully hopped', but in general, unless it's BrewDog telling me that, I tend to ignore it, knowing that my idea of powerfully hopped and the average British brewer's idea are two quite distinct things. A further study of the label makes for very interesting reading; Willamette, Chinook and Cascade are listed as the hops employed and it is at this point that punters might have reason to think they have something quite special on their hands. As it turns out this ale is powerfully hopped in a very satisfying manner. Frankly, for a British bottled ale it is astounding, full of hop flavour and resins all wrapped around a satisfying malt base. I could drink this stuff all day, but at 5.5% abv it would take its toll.

I mentioned that I thought I had crossed paths with this beer before, well, I am certain that it is none other than the Marks and Spencer Cornish IPA I tried in London earlier in the year. In that post I begged M & S to unleash this beer on the Irish market, and I will once again reiterate this plea; Take back the Yorkshire Bitter and give us this wonderful IPA instead!