The Shotover Brewing Blog

Shotover India Pale Ale - rediscovering the fuggle

2011-10-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Our Shotover/Plot 16 6% IPA has been in the bottle for 30 days now and is showing tremendous character. Completely unprimed when bottled, the beer is showing a moderate carbonation with the head rising slowly to form a thick cream like top and a wonderful hop aroma. I don't feel that old but the aroma and taste of this beer must be a bit like stepping back in time. It is a clear copper colour with a striking but smooth bitterness on a big malt base which I expect to subside into one complex integrated flavour as the beer ages. It will go on sale from the brewery door from the end of the month. The Plot 16 batch is already on sale in the cafe at Modern Art Oxford in Pembroke St.

This beer contains masses of Oxfordshire fuggles and one of the big surprises for me is the character these traditional hops have delivered. In common with many young microbreweries we use several "big flavour" hop varieties from South Island New Zealand and NW Pacific USA albeit always combined with English hops. Jens Eiken (former technical brewer at Carlsberg and Molson Coors Burton) visited the brewery a few weeks ago and kindly sent me an article he had written on hop bitterness for Brewer and Distiller International Magazine with particular attention to the type of bitterness that different varieties of hops deliver (all to do with the hard resins.) Amongst Jen's "super premium" category of hops that deliver a smooth bitternes is our old and trusty friend the fuggle. The hopping rates we used in this IPA would deliver a theoretical IBU in the 70's. The beer is indeed bitter but not in an unpleasant way and should develop nicely over the coming weeks.

All experiments deliver something useful. Apart from brewing a characterful and unique limited edition beer it has given me a new respect for one of the oldest hop varieties around - and it grows right here in Oxfordshire!

Modern Art Meets Brewers Art

2011-09-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

Modern Art Meets Brewers Art - Plot 16 Green Hopped India Pale Ale 2011
Last year we made a beer in collaboration with Modern Art Oxford's Plot 16 community art project at the Rose Hill allotments in Oxford. The Plot 16 project involved growing fuggle hops over a steel framework made in the shape of the victorian tower brewery building which houses the Modern Art Oxford gallery. Unfortunately most of the 2010 hops were destroyed by a fire at The Berkshire Hop Company and so the rescue plan was to use what fresh green hops were left on the bines to "dry hop" a batch of our standard Prospect Ale. Very nice it was too with a big aroma and it has sold well in MAO's cafe throughout the year.

This year we had the opportunity to design a beer around the hops and build an Oxford provenance into it from the outset. I have always thought that brewing IPA's (authentic ones that is) is something of a brewer's vanity - they are special but are they commercial - what is the point of brewing the best beer you can make if it has no market? So brewer's vanity hit Shotover and we set out to make a beer that was the best we could do. As a hobby brewer I had made a couple of "authentic" IPA's including one using an 1880 recipe from the historic records (thank you The Durden Park Beer Circle) but I wasn't satisfied with the "hoppiness" of either of them. The hoppiest Durden Park historic recipes (see Whitbread's India Export Pale (1864) used a hopping rate of around 3kg per barrel (36 imp galls or 163.6 litres) though many had less. In contrast a typical 4% modern commercial bitter might have less than 0.5kg (17oz) per barrel. Prospect (3.7%ABV) is hopped at 750g (26oz) per barrel.

We decided to combine authenticity and provenance with 2011 Plot 16 India Pale Ale - a strong (6%ABV) pale beer using a large quantity of all Oxfordshire Hops. A total of 18kg of hops went into the copper of a 5 barrel (820 litre) brew in four additions - 5kg each of Fuggles and Challenger from The Berkshire Hop Company at Kingston Bagpuize and 8kg of freshly picked green fuggles from Plot 16. This gives a like for like weight of the equivalent of about 12kg of dried hops or 2.4kg (85oz or over 5lb) per barrel. The theoretical bitterness is around 70 IBU compared to 35 IBU for strong bitters (eg ESB) and 32 IBU for Prospect. A further 3.3kg of Plot 16 green hops were added to the conditioning tanks for a week after the primary fermentation was over.

On Friday we bottled it and last night I tasted it for the first time after three days in the conditioning room. This beer is quite special. I thought the hops would be overpoweringly bitter but they balance the malt quite well. I think it will need a hundred days of aging to really know. MAO are taking 800 bottles under the Plot 16 label. We will sell the other 1000 bottles under our own label as Shotover India Pale Ale. We also have two nine gallon casks in the cold room which we will save up for a speccial occasion. Roll on Christmas!

Plot 16 fresh green fuggles

hand bottling Plot 16 IPA at the brewery

Beer Design and Evolution

2011-02-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

One of the great advantages of brewing a small range of beers is the opportunity it offers to develop a beer. Prospect is our best selling beer and went through five small scale pilot brews before the first commercial batch of 1300 litres. Apart from experimenting with different yeasts and a temporary swap out of an unavailable hop last summer the beer remains exactly the same with a big flavour profile and complexity for a 3.7% beer. Prospect is made three malts and five hop varieties - whole hops added in three stages.

Scholar is a different story. The base design for this beer was "Black Cat Bitter" a recipe I used to make as a craft brewer. We started with all English hop varieties but just couldn't get the flavour profile we were looking for. The intention was to make a "big" mid strength dark copper coloured bitter reminiscent of the Ruddles County of 30 years ago - a beer to go with roast beef and mustard but not overly strong in alcohol. And so every time we make Scholar there has been a single adjustment to build its colour, flavour profile and complexity. The beer is on it's third yeast strain and now has five malts and five hop varieties including one NZ and two NW Pacific USA hops added in multiple stages. The development of the flavour profile has been quite profound (for me as the brewer anyway - I do wonder if anyone else notices!) I think Scholar would now hold its own in a blind tasting against beers over a percent stronger in alcohol. It also works well as a craft bottle conditioned ale. I think that opening one compared to a mass produced beer is like trying crusty french bread fom an artisan baker compared to a white sliced loaf - perhaps it's the slight aroma of yeasty hoppiness.

Brewers Weekend

2011-01-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

What do Brewers do on a weekend? Go away with other brewers to talk (and drink) beer! Pip and I spent last weekend at Llantrwrtd Wells near ...... well it's not near anywhere really - maybe 20 miles north of Brecon. We stayed at the delightful Neuadd Arms Hotel which has what all good hotels should have - its own microbrewery. Recommended for a weekend of complete relaxation.

Anyway it's amazing what you learn in brief conversations with other brewers about yeast, heating elements, hopping rates, prices, maturation times, the SIBA DDS scheme - anything really. We always keep our beer for two weeks to mature/condition before release but quite a few brewers seem to sell it as soon as it's in the cask. Some pride themselves on producing an enormous range - black, gold, brown, black, weisen, copper, chestnut - you name it. Makes one feel rather inadequate with two!

The first time we went on one of these weekends last year we had only been brewing for about six weeks and I asked how people got the brown staining off the inside of their coppers as I was spending about an hour after brewing scrubbing it with caustic soda solution to get it bright. The answer I got was "what on earth would you want to do that for?" so my copper is now the colour of the inside of a well loved teapot - clean but a nice shade of brown. That piece of advice has probably saved me a week of work since.

All In A Brewer's Day?

2011-01-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 12th January started as an ordinary brewday at 7.00 in the morning putting the mash on for an 8bbl brew of Scholar. This promised to be interesting as we are swapping a hop out to build the flavour profile (Scholar uses five hop varieties introduced in three stages). Somehow it turned into a media day with BBC TV South Today filming bittering hops going into the copper at 13.00 and carrying out a news interview. Then quite separately I was called by the BBC Radio Oxford Drivetime show at 2.30 for an interview. Was this a new upsurge in interest in local brewing? No.

It was because we responded to a BBC South Today item on the previous evening concerning late/missing post in Oxfordshire. They asked anyone who had suffered from this to email in which we did because we have had letters taking weeks to get to us since November - it's a bit embarassing to chase money from customers to be told they sent it weeks before. Anyway, before you could say "crap royal mail" we had a media invasion

Well, I did enjoy my 15 seconds on telly as "grumpy old man" at 6.30 which I just got home in time to see. And the beer? Well the late hops went in a bit later than usual but hey, what comes first, telly or beer?

Media Tart Brewer

Digging Out The Separation Tank

2010-12-29T11:03:00.000-08:00

I used to think the most unpleasant part of brewing was digging out the mash tun and boiler hops after a brewday but you get so used to it it's just another part of the process. Today, on a quiet holiday week Wednesday after a year of brewing I decided to clean out the separation tank.

The separation tank is something demanded by Thames Water and The Environment Agency. It is a 1.2M deep plastic tank in the floor with a vertical separator in it. All the brewery waste water flows into the receiving side and it gently "waterfalls" over the separation wall into the outlet side where it can be treated if necessary and then pumped by submersible pump to the sewer. All solids fall to the bottom of the receiving tank and relatively clear water overflows and gets pumped out.

I had no idea what would be in the bottom of the receiving tank. Only water, yeast and malt/hop debris goes in there and we always neutralise the ph and kill the yeast sediment with caustic soda in the fermenters before cleaning them out (live yeast leaches Oxygen in river systems). After pumping the water out with a submersible pump I uncovered about a foot deep layer of pretty stinky sludge at the bottom of the receiving side. I suppose big breweries pay for a tanker to suck it out but as we are small I laid on my stomach on the wet floor and emptied it with a bucket into a plastic dustbin. All I can say is that it reminded me of the look and smell of a pit latrine in West Africa! It's all organic though and stinky or not, it will find its way onto our veggie patch.

The tank now smells as sweet as violets though I don't. Clothes straight into the washing machine and shower is required. At least it's only once in a year.

Prospect Wins an Award

2010-11-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well it was actually for joint Runner Up in the Champion Locale competition at The CAMRA Oxford Beer Festival which took place in October. It was a blind tasting by a panel of judges of over twenty beers brewed within 35 miles of Oxford. We were invited to judge and declined as we had a beer in the competition. A posse of CAMRA members came to the brewery on Saturday morning to present the award and a rather nice hour and half was enjoyed by all, together with a tasting of some interesting limited edition bottled beers. The version of Prospect dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin hops seemed to go down particularly well. There is a pic on our facebook page.

Brewday

2010-11-17T11:25:00.000-08:00

We brewed 1300 litres of Prospect today. Brewday really starts two days before when we prepare the liquor (water) and pre-set the automatic temperature control to strike temperature. The malt is usually prepared the afternoon before but we did it Monday evening this week as we snatched a day off on Tuesday. A brewday starts at about 07.00 with a pre-heating of the stainless steel mash tun with hot liquor followed by the hand hydration of 200kg of malt. This a steamy business! The mash is usually "on" by 09.00. Hitting mash temperature is something of a brewers art given the changing temperature of the malt and ambient through the seasons but we usually get it within 1degC of target. Transfer to the copper (boiler) starts at around 10.30 and takes about 2.5 hours. Boil is on by 13.00 with the primary hops; late hops go in 5 mins before the end of the boil and at "heat off" followed by a nice long soak (infusion). The wort is usually in the fermenter and yeast pitched by around 17.00. After clear up there is usually time for a quick pint round The Queen's Head (which conveniently opens at five) on the way home. Now it's time for a hot bath!

Collectors

2010-11-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

Having just seen one of our beer labels for sale on ebay for the second time has caused me to reflect on collectors. We receive quite a few requests from people claiming to be collectors. The UK ones sometimes enclose a self adressed envelope but a massive number come in by email - usually from Russia or Ukraine. We sometimes send out unused bottle labels if a SAE is enclosed but does irritate wnen a plausible letter from a clergyman or market researcher turns out to be from a trader wanting to make a quid by flogging them on ebay. And then I wonder why be irritated? It doesn't cost us anything. I suppose it's because of the duplicitous nature of the letters. If someone said that they were a trader trying to flog stuff on ebay I probably wouldn't send anything. Maybe we should try and flog our own labels on ebay - might be more profitable than flogging beer!

Bottling Day

2010-11-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

We bottled 1170 bottles of Scholar this morning in pretty much record time - about 90 minutes preparation then filling and capping took three of us about three hours using our four head hand bottling and capping setup fed from the conditioning tanks. When we started last November it took us about ten hours to do the same work and I wouldn't have believed it could be done in half a day. As they say in manufacturing "repetition breeds competence". It then takes another hour or two to clean everything down afterwards and move the bottled beer. It's now in the conditioning room warming up nicely to around 21deg where it will sit for a week or two carrying on fermenting to become true bottle conditioned ale. Can't wait - there is something about a bottle of fresh Scholar that reminds me of newly baked bread. We also prepared the malt for tomorrow's brew of Prospect. The liquor (aka water) was prepared on Monday. 07.00 start. Mash on by 09.00 followed by a bacon sandwich.

Dry Hopping Again

2010-11-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

Since the Plot 16 project we have experimented with three other dry hopped bottled beers

a batch of Prospect finished with the hard to get NZ Nelson Sauvin hop (this hop is already part of the Prospect recipe) in 330 ml "limited edition" bottles. These are now on sale at Jacobs and Field in Headington and the Lassco cafe at Milton Common.
a batch of Prospect in 500ml bottles finished with English Challenger hops. Very distinctive and just about ready to go on general sale
a batch of Scholar finished with US Amarillo now ready for bottling tomorrow.

While the impact on the beer flavour and aroma profile is dramatic, dry hopping seems to introduce new issues. The beer seems to take longer to drop clear and head retention seems to be shorter than on our normal beers - this is probably related to the increase in hop oils present and we hope will improve with age as these beers are still young. It is certainly worth the experimentation as Prospect 3.7% takes on the character of an ESB. We can't wait to try the Scholar.

The Curse of Plot 16

2010-11-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

The green hopping experiment with Modern Art Oxford's fresh green hops was a happy accident. The Fuggles from the Rose Hill project were picked and taken to the Berkshire Hop Company at Kingston Bagpuize to be dried so they could be used as part of our normal brewing programme. Unfortunately they were destroyed by a major fire in the hop drier on Friday 17th September. The volunteers had to go back to the allotment and scavenge for what flowers were left on the bines on the Saturday morning. The 3kg of fine plump green cones they managed to gather were kept in a chest freezer overnight and introduced to the green beer (green hops in green beer!) on Sunday morning and had a two week infusion. After a tasting or two from the conditioning tank MOA decided that 330ml bottles were the right size for this special beer. Unfortunately the pallet of bottles collapsed in the delivery lorry and we ended up with 1800 bottles lying in wooden boxes outside the brewery. Another group of emergency MOA volunteers spent a half day cleaning, sterilising and crating them ready for filling and we finally got the bottles into the conditioning room by 5pm. This beer is truly unique. Will the drama come through in the flavour -who knows?

Dry Hopping

2010-11-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about running a craft brewery is experimentation. In September we created a limited edition beer of 1200 bottles of Prospect Ale dry hopped with fresh green fuggles. This was a collaborative project with Modern Art Oxford and the green hops were grown on a community allotment in Rose Hill, Oxford as part of the Art in Rose Hill project (see http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/about-us/art-in-rose-hill/)
We had never done this before and the advice within professional circles was conflicting - "don't be stupid unless you want rancid beer" to "no worries - give it a go". The result of a two week infusion of fresh fuggles in 400 litres of beer has been a revelation. The hop aroma and flavour impact is massive - Prospect is already a hoppy beer but it moved it to a new dimension. If brewers seek that elusive hop aroma then this is certainly one way of getting it. The beer is called Plot 16 and will go on sale at Modern Art Oxford in Pemproke St., Oxford on December 17th. We are currently experimenting with other dry hop variations