I was asked what is happening with all the blog brews today. At present because I have less time than is safe to have each day so the blog brews are simply piling up in casks in the cellar at the brewery awaiting bottling or fining. When I get a pair of minutes to rub together I will remedy this situation. My mainstream beers were also called boringly-consistent. That's the highest form of praise you can give to any commercial brewer so bless you, you beautiful person.
So to this week's 52 brews brew. I bet when you read savoury you thought, here we go, Howe’s at it again, what is it this time? Is he going to try to drown a pheasant in a cask of beer or ferment a brew inside a pig on a life support machine? While these are both sensible ideas, the savoury to which savoury in the title savoury ale refers, is the savoury relating to winter and summer savouries Satureja hortensis Satureja montana and not the savoury epitomised by the Ginster’s Badger Tikka SliceTM. Never has the word savoury been used so numerously in a sentence.
Winter and summer savouries are herbs which have a similar aroma to rosemary and thyme. Garfunkel left them out of the popular song because they didn’t scan, the curly haired fool! Herbs can, if used sparingly add a kind of “back tickle” to beer flavour which enhances the notes from the hops and the sweetness of the malt. That’s what I am attempting to achieve on this brew, whether on this scale sparingly is ever an option remains to be seen.
Tech spec:
Malt: Pale Ale, 140 crystal
Hops: Galena, Brewer’s Gold
Yeast: Sharp’s
Spices: Summer and Winter Savoury
OG: 1080
3 comments:
Nice! Did a version of our Wild Swan with Summer Savoury from the Thornbridge gardens a few years back. Tasty, but intense! Would have worked better with some plaice...
Kelly
You can blame Martin Carthy rather than Artie G for not including savoury in the Scarborough Fair recipe.
Must learn to research my blog more extensively. If I was feeling combatant I could have argued that Garf was still at liberty to upgrade the status of the savouries to included in the song but that it is Saturday.
Must also admit to not knowing about your experiment with the savoury Kelly. I've put a pinch of each into half of the brew and brewed the other half without. I am going to blend the two together to a proportion which gives just the right amount of the herb. Every other time I've brewed with herbs on this scale I've just got a liquid pot pouri.
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