BEER STYLES
with 10hL earthenware amphorae to see whether oxygen uptake can be controlled although the green beer does tend to leach iron from the walls. He also has a 50hL coolship with the end 10hL partitioned off for smaller batches of spontaneously fermented products. The walls of the room are untreated white pine which are sprayed with inoculating beers which gave the right nished avour. A turbid wort boiled with aged hops is collected, after natu- ral cooling for 12 hours, the wort goes straight to wooden casks. With farmland on one side and an industrial estate on the other, data on barometric pressure, temperature and humidity is collected to decide the best time to collect. It seems a cool night with low humidity is best, the wind direction being deemed less important as the famous Cantillon brewery is slap bang in the middle of Brussels with the nearest eld some miles away! Down in deepest Cambridgeshire Elgood at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire has produced a series of lambic-style beers originally called Cambic but now Coolship English Sour ale. Two 45hL coolships were made redundant in 1994
but removing them would have left a big hole in the oor beside the hop back. Brewer Alan Pateman was enthused by lambic techniques on two IBD Southern Section visits to Brussels and took the plunge spurred on by his US distributor who knew the style was more popular in the US than the UK. Since then he has discovered that just about everyone is doing sours in the States at the moment and the marketplace is very crowded, particu- larly for imports. Not discouraged, he has sawn up a fallen oak tree from the brewery botanical gardens and put it in the rafters above the coolships. Hops are aged beside the boilers, lambic brewers need the preserva- tive properties but not the bitterness. The rst brew after cooling went into stainless vessels with 146g/hL of wood chips and a touch of brewery yeast. pH came down to 3.11 and some was then put in barrels at a PG of 11.4. Brew two had some Brettanomyces added and the PG came down to 1005. The brews were blended and some fruit was added. He has tried a dark sour and a mango fruit version has been released. The biggest problem, he said, was having to disregard everything he
optimum pitching rate, temperature and reaction time can be known leading to more consistent nished beer avour proles. The OverWork way Primary fermentation takes place in six horizontal 120hL tanks complete with racking arms which can be rotated to ensure the top and bottom crops remain in the vessel after a four-day fermentation. This peaks at 33°C using a blend of Brettanomyces and wild Saccharomyces which attenuates to about 85-90%. Green beer is then transferred to seven 150hL conicals for a two-week secondary fermenta- tion period – usually in the presence of macerated fruit as well as herbs, spices and even honey. During this second- ary fermentation, the mixed culture of Pediococcus and Lactobacillus is added if sour beer is to be made. Typically the temperature is in the high 20s. After fruiting, the beer passes to a tertiary stage in cask or foeder (large casks, sometimes called foudres in other parts of the world). The 2500m 2 building contains 1200 x 225L casks mainly of French and Hungarian oak which have already been home to red wine – which tends to strip unwanted tannin avours. There are eight 100hL wooden foeders and another ten at 50hL. Typically, the foeders are used for sour beers as they tend to allow the development of acidity in a much more tempered manner. This is due to the lower relative surface area to wood contact and thicker staves which result in a reduced induction of O 2 during the slow barrel maturation. Thus there is less activity from aerobic bacteria such as Acetobacter which can sour a promising beer past the point of no return, but just enough oxygen for a long, slow Brettanomyces fermentation. Average barrel matura- tion time for a sour beer is six to eight months and a Brett only is around two months. The oft forgotten ingredient in this operation is time. Many metabolic pathways are overlapping, symbiotically building upon one another in a delicate but predicta- ble pattern. This interplay of organisms allows mixed culture beer to continue developing for months or even years. Varying times spent in contact with wood or different organisms result in vastly different avours. Richard is also playing around
AGEING IN CELLARS
Rodenbach at Roeslare in Belgium has 294 300hL foeders
The cellars do not have to be dark and covered in cobwebs. This is Boon in an airy warehouse…
...and another at Lost and Grounded in Bristol
…and even more. New Belgium at Fort Collins in Colorado
october 2019 I BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL ● 29
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