It’s been a big and brutal week. Sales have been huge, stock is all but gone, problems have been numerous and experiences have been exciting. I have not had time to brew a blog beer this week because of the visit of Monsieur Rock. I will write more comprehensively about the unparalleled honour of brewing avec Jean-Marie when I get some more time but to save not brewing a 52 brews brew I’ll include our creation as one. I learned more on Tuesday than I have in the past couple of years.
The beer is something new to Sharp’s and I suspect something new to world. The boring technical details are as follows. To raw liquor, calcium sulphate and chloride were added to give a standard ion profile for a rounded Pilsner. This was used to mash low colour Tipple at liquor to grist ratio of just under 3/1. A mash of 68C was allowed to cool to 62 over an hour stand and then sparged at 75. All kettle hops (Saaz) were added as soon as the bottom of the kettle was covered. The wort was then boiled gently for 45 minutes to achieve evaporation of 2-3%. This wort was cooled to 10C as it was pumped to a sealed square FV. The wort is now being fermented by a lager yeast at 9C for 12 days before transfer onto dry Saaz (400g/hl) in a lagering tank for two months of cold maturation at 0C. It will then be sterile filtered primed and bottle conditioned to 9g/litre CO2. The beer will be available early next year.
Next week shows signs of being just as manic with a very full Monday culminating in the Food and Beer night with Nathan Outlaw. The food and beer menu for the event is listed below. As you can see, three of the blog beers have made the grade for the event. I am most excited about the Shellfish Stout, Beef and Oyster pie. The idea of a beer brewed with shellfish being used to cook with beef and shellfish and also served with the dish is the most complete beer and food love making I think you can get. It’s not hardcore super sex (Lynn) but its bloody close!
1. Canapés with beer Cocktails
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2. Mussels steamed in Cardamom Wheat
Accompanied by7 Peel Citrus Tripel
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3. Cornish Duck with Honey Spice Triple
Accompanied by Honey Spice Triple
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4. Porthilly Beef, Shellfish Stout and Oyster Pie
Accompanied by Shellfish Stout
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5. Chocolate Fudge and St Enodoc Double Ice Cream
Accompanied by St Enodoc Double
5 comments:
I've been meaning to ask you about temperature drop during the mash - presumably there is some ratio of time vs. saccharification whereby you can strike quite hot and let the mash cool to give a mix of sugars.
Quite a bit of detail there, so some extra questions popped into my mind. Are the hops whole cone? How do you ensure sterility of the lagering hops
Nice question Zak! The mash was such in order to cover the temperatures at which the operation of both alpha and beta amylase is optimum. The ideal way to achieve this is to range up through the temperatures as then you don’t risk denaturing the more heat labile enzyme. There is no facility to heat my mash tun so we had to compromise on the downward range. Whether it was necessary to cover a range of temperatures when using a well-modified malt was the subject of Howe Vs Rock debate. Rock won!
The hops were whole flowers Dr Brew, as indeed they always are with my brews. The sterility of the hops is not important as they are to be added to the beer in CT before crash cooling to zero. No beer spoilage organisms grow at zero. The beer is then to be sterile filtered and reseeded before bottling so if anything does come from the hops it will be removed before it can grow. Jean-Marie swears that in 27 years of dry hopping without subsequently pasteurising or sterile filtering he has never had a micro problem from the hops.
Sorry, reading that back, what I meant to say was, that sounds like a really interesting beer, and I look forward to trying it, but, like Colombo, I just have one more question for you...!
So did you just strike hot and raise the lids on both sides of the mash tun to achieve that temperature drop?
As Jean-Marie would say a point Zak!
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