BREWING
Matthias Seidl in the brewhouse
The Mad Squirrel: lurking menacingly in the undergrowth
the Chiltern Hills and hence is very high in bicarbonates, so alkalinity is adjusted by acid addition. All malt is supplied by Crisp and is mashed isothermally for ales and with a three-step (62 ° C - 72 ° C - 78 ° C) tem- perature programmed mash for lagers. All yeast is supplied dried with W34/70 used for lagers and the East Coast IPA strain used for ales. The yeast is cropped and repitched up to ve gener- ations for lagers and ten for ales. Typically for modern craft breweries, liquids and SKUs are numerous – ranging from Pilsner to milk stout in cask, can, bottle and keg. Mad Squirrel’s biggest- selling brand is $umo an American pale ale at 4.7% ABV and 34 IBU. Close on its heels is its new (and I think superb) Native Helles which is 5% ABV and 18 IBU. The table sets out a full list of regular brands. And because there are only 10 regular beers, there are of course always several seasonal offerings available! All lagers have a 42-day cold maturation, with tanks spunded * to preserve as much of the natural carbonation and protection against staling in the form of SO 2 . All beers are supplied un ltered and some of the cask beers are ned. Beer is canned on an ABE linear four-head can- ning line and kegging and cask racking undertaken manually and direct from tank. The plan for the business is to con- tinue with the current strategy pushing for growth. *Spunding is a process often used by lager brewers to naturally carbonate a beer. A device called a spunding valve is used to adjust and release pressure on a pressure-capable fermenter such as a Unitank.
school in Munich he decided not to risk seeing if third time really was lucky and considered an alternative career. As someone keen on food and drink who dabbled in homebrew, the brewing engineer course at Weihenstephan was of interest, the only downside being the physics and engineering theme of the course. Or as Matthias puts it “Everything I didn’t like at school”. The rst year of the Weihenstephan course was almost exclusively mechanical and chemical engineering. Rather like chemical and process engineering at Heriott-Watt and Module 3 of the IBD Diploma in Brewing, this sorted the wheat from the chaff and saw half of Matthias’ classmates decide their future would involve drinking rather than making beer. The engineering emphasis on the Weihenstephan course means that as many graduates tend to end up working for equipment suppliers as progress into brewing operations. Of those who graduated with Matthias, more are now designing breweries and packaging lines than are designing beers. During his studies Matthias also worked at Brauerei Aldersbach in Bavaria. Matthias’ decision to pursue a brew- ing career in England was made for him by his wife who is from Leeds. They met at university in Munich but she was seemingly homesick for a decent cuppa and the opinions of Geoffrey Boycott, so they moved back to England. The current Mad Squirrel brewery was installed in 2017 and was made by American Beer Equipment. It is a semi-automated 30hL brewhouse comprising an MCV, lauter tun, kettle and whirlpool. Water comes from a borehole deep in the chalk deposits of
The Mad Squirrel cellar
Beer Name
Bitterness Units (BU)
ABV (%)
Zealous Pilsner
34
4.4
$umo American Pale Ale 34
4.7
Hopfest Pale Ale
27
3.8
London Porter
27
5
Dela Crème Mild Stout
25
4.5
Roadkill New England IPA 36
6.5
Illuminate Red Ale
26
4.5
Big Sea East Coast IPA
33
5.5
Mr. Squirrel Premium Bitter
32
4
Native Munich Helles
18
5
Mad Squirrel brands
Utopian Brewing and Jeremy Swainson Utopian is a new brewery. And I mean new . At only six months old, some breweries have stock older than their equipment! Utopian is different to a lot of start-ups in that it has a brand-new 35hL semi-automated brewhouse, 7khL annual fermentation and maturation capacity –
november 2019 I BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL ● 33
i bd.org.uk
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