33. Stock Aerated Ale

Professor GG Stewart has helped fashion the brewing knowledge and attitudes of an entire generation of qualified brewers. Once said in a lecture he said “oxygen is death for beer”. He may have spent all of his adult life in search of knowledge about yeast and beer and been very successful in the brewing industry but Professor Stewart’s words would soon emphatically refuted by those who dedicate their lives to tasting different beers. Beers which the beer experts at Ratebeer have proclaimed to be the best in the world are made with no oxygen control and in the case of Striuse beers, pronounced oxidised flavours. Barrel-aged beers flavours are substantially derived from the action of oxygen and these are also widely revered amongst these connoisseurs. To Professor Stewart these beers are the undead, murderous brain-eating zombies from beyond the unholy grave.

Mainstream brewing has for centuries striven for clean, fresh, subtle and fruity tastes which appeal to humans on the basis that we have evolved to enjoy them because they offer sound nutritious sustenance. Humans shy away from old, bitter, sour and harsh flavours because they indicate that a substance will be dangerous to consume. Mainstream and for the most part, micro breweries are commercial organisations which need the money from customers to survive. In business it is safer to appeal to Mr Average than to Mr Enthusiast.

There are of course some innovators who have found an untapped market or breweries which have indulgent backers that can survive on the edge but the market for niche brands is by its very nature small and becoming increasingly crowded.

Beer, like love has different meanings to different people. To Professor Stewart it’s a cool crisp glass of high gravity brewed, post fermentation bittered Labbat’s Ice, to Mr B Geek it’s a 20,000IBU Imperial 45centigrade barrel-aged Indian Stout which is sliced rather than poured. Everyone else’s concepts are found somewhere on the continuum between the two. The painful truth is that the distribution of these meanings is log-normal and skewed towards Professor Stewart’s. There are two theories about why Mr Average and everyone he knows enjoy a clean tasting beer. One is a global conspiracy from those who shape the market, brainwashing people and prohibiting their access to extremely flavoursome beers. The other is that people are lazy and prefer simple, easy-to-enjoy things like McDonalds and Cola.

Maybe as we evolve we will desire to challenge our tastebuds rather than appease them and this distribution will shift across in the opposite direction. Or Maybe CAMRA and Ratebeer et al. will rise up in an unrelenting terror campaign against the capitalist fat cats, who for centuries have enslaved humanity’s tastes to their global fizz and free the world of this curse. Until then I will still enjoy both well made commercial and idiosyncratic beers while appreciating the science and art which goes into each. In my opinion beer’s not sick and anyone who claims to want to cure it needs a good going over. Anyone disagree?

This week’s beer is a celebration of the twisted relationship between beer and oxygen. Stock Aerated Ale goes further than just letting oxygen into the beer. With this beer it will be forced in warm through a sintered stone to produce vast dissolved oxygen levels and the kind of premature aging that would put Olay shares at the top of the FTSE and NASDAC. Care of course will be taken to not oxidise all of the alcohol to ethanoic acid. This beer is rotting flesh - walking death – a waking nightmare or an inspired oxygen-aged classic. It depends on where you are on the evolutionary ladder that leads from ape to geek. Sorry Professor Stewart.

Tech Spec:

Malt: Pale ale, peated and crystal rye

Hops: Apollo, Summit and Magnum

Yeast: Sharp’s

Spices: Oxygen

OG:1090

Porthilly Beef and Oyster Pie prepared with and accompanied by Seafood Stout

I have just received a picture from Nathan Outlaw’s people of one of the courses from our beer and food night. When I started messing around with the 52 brews I didn’t expect one to be on a menu created by a Michelin starred chef!


Behold Porthilly Beef and Oyster Pie prepared with and accompanied by Seafood Stout.

The event is about a month away now and I really can’t wait!

Orval Part Quatre

After nearly an hour of walking and impassioned discourse in a suit to which I am unaccustomed our arrival in the sample room seemed like the end of a pilgrimage. The keg in keg Orval was just like a big metal bottle. All the same fermentation processes occurred just in a keg.

As the beer was poured the room was filled with the smell of Orval. ATJ has Jean-Marie pinned to the wall with a barrage of questions. The KGB’s loss is the beer world’s gain. I was really pleased to have ATJ there at that point because I was struggling to take it all in. I am also informed that I can come across as bit ‘brooding and menacing’ when I am quiet. Adrian was doing a good job of lightening the mood. It became obvious from speaking to Jean-Marie that with the privilege of brewing a world classic comes the responsibility to stay faithful to its identity and also to provide a sympathetic ear to those who love the product even when they veer from the rational, a case of noblesse oblige.

The beer from keg was beautiful, slightly cleaner than the bottled Orval but with all of its refreshing appeal. The first glass was almost breathed in, such was my thirst and longing for it. I made sure the second beer was consumed at a more respectful pace but that did take most of my will power for the day. Orval is apparently one of those beers you either get or you don’t. I have to admit to not having been overly enamoured with the beer when I first tried it. The Trappist beers span a variety of attributes but if you are familiar with Chimay et al. there is an expectation of a full richness. By contrast Orval is uncompromisingly dry and refreshing. This coupled with the care home carpet notes conferred by Brettanomyces and 6 months in a warm beer shop left me wondering if something had gone horribly wrong with my bottle. Taking some time to understand Orval rewards the drinker with a truly unique beer experience, a beer which marries the seemingly conflicting facets of complexity and refreshment more completely than any other. What perhaps people don’t get is that beer has more dimensions than can be created by a 30 year old spirit cask or a trendy hop variety. This is of course just my opinion. My palate is not as sophisticated as some, it often fails to appreciate the complexities and subtleties of beer with a load of strongly-flavoured hops in it.

So why Brettanomyces? Jean-Marie points to a wild yeast infection in the pitching yeast back in the early years of the brewery. The drinkers became accustomed to the wild yeast flavour and when it was discovered and removed the beer was just not the same. The search was then on for the wild strain which conferred the Orval character. The strain was isolated and from thenceforth added to the bottle. Most people assume that all Brettanomyces produce the same flavours and carry out the same metabolic activities but there is as much variation in this yeast as the Saccharomyces that us mortal brewers use. It was therefore vital to find the right contaminating organism to make Orval, Orval again.

More to follow.....

Flavour Compound of Last Week - Butyric Acid

Death Vomit, they gave us some classics. I wonder what happened to them after X Factor?

This week sees an unwelcome return of Flavour Compound of the Week. We are looking through the figurative taste microscope at butyric acid (1-Propanecarboxylic acid). Butyric acid smells of vomit. It is also a component aroma in flatus, parmesan cheese and the French. Butyric acid is one of those flavours that seem to be studied in beer and brewing because it is easy to detect rather than becuase it is common place in beer. There are quite a few compounds which you very seldom get in beer but you encounter in flavour screening. When a brewer leaves university s/he has an armoury of knowledge about flavour compounds and their biosynthetic pathways to help troubleshoot beer. Call me a cynic but I can’t imagine that many will ever have to use their knowledge of the production of butyric acid by bacteria from the species Clostridium in sugar syrups. I have been drinking beer for about 20 years now (most of it legally) and I have never smelt sick on a beer. I have smelt beer on sick a few times but never the other way around.


Anyone out there had a sick flavoured beer recently?

West Country White Tasting

The West Country White (WCW) is 80% of the way through fermentation so it’s prime for the enjoyment of sampling. Unfortunately for my flavour panel, this has coincided with their arrival at the brewery for the Friday tasting. They are going join me in my WCW filth party! The WCW is more of milky beige than white. Very similar to tea that old ladies drink, where full fat milk constitutes 80% of the volume. It is still fairly actively fermenting so the contents of the glass are in a state of flux with an ever-increasing yellowish head. Lumps of coagulated egg white and gram flour move up and down in the column of liquid like plastic snow in a precious thing.

Here we see philippa engrossed in the intriguing aroma emanating from the WCW

The smell is not at all inviting, there is a sour note as well as an uncooked flour aroma (Harry Monk). It’s not very ale-like at all. One of the panellists is already refusing to drink any. “euorfff it smells like off homebrew!” Some of the panel are entertaining the idea that this could be a worthwhile drink but this idea is quickly rejected on first taste. The beer is thick, paste-like and saccharine bitter. The whole palate is wrong. WCW is a soup with no soupiness and a horrible unclean taste, a horribly-flawed beer. “Why would this have ever been made?” one panellist asks. Good question, so much for the good old days! That said, the lead time of only 3 days from mash to mouth is 2 days quicker than that of Stella and her cohorts so maybe AB-Inbred, SHAT-Miller and Hoerenken will have a West Country White in their portfolios before too long? By way of an apology I allowed the panel to sample some DW from the trial cask. They seemed to approve, so much so that this morning the cask is empty.

Update:
It is now 12 hours since the flavour panel departed and I am yet to receive any reports of unusual gastrointestinal performance. There’s still time! I have a table booked at the curry house tonight on the basis that if I’m going down, I’m going down in style!