Taking Delight in the Ordinary

In North America, the low-gravity Bitter — what pub-goers in the UK tend to call the “Ordinary” — remains a neglected style.(1)  I suspect that this is due in no small part to the fact that the typical characteristics of the Ordinary conflict with the aesthetic that dominates North American craft brewing:  while North American brewers strive for ebullience by designing beers with bold and aggressive flavours (like the hoppy burn of American IPAs, or the assertive roast character of robust porters, or the flavours imparted by barrel aging), the Ordinary Bitter emphasizes drinkability and balance instead.  Yet the Ordinary can be astonishingly complex in its own right, since its balance can be weighted subtly in any number of directions:  toward malt (often toasty or biscuity); toward hops (often, but not exclusively, of a traditional British character); or toward the esters produced by distinctive strands of yeast.

A Sample of Landlordish drawn directly from my fermenter on bottling day.

Because the style permits so many variations, and because most recipes are simple enough that mistakes in the brewing process translate into noticeable flaws in flavour, it can be difficult to brew Ordinaries consistently and well.  At this point, I’ve brewed roughly a dozen different batches; while none of them have fully captured the flavour of the best examples of the style that one can find on cask in the UK, many have nevertheless been quite good.  For my most recent effort, I used a recipe inspired by one of the most exceptional Ordinaries ever produced — Landlord, brewed by Timothy Taylor in West Yorkshire.  The grist consisted overwhelmingly of Golden Promise, supplemented by a touch of dark crystal malt for colour and flavour, and by some acidulated malt to control the pH of the mash; the hops included equal charges of Fuggles, East Kent Goldings, and Willamette, in enough quantities to nudge the beer firmly in the “hoppy” direction; and the yeast, Wyeast 1469, was a strain that originated form the Timothy Taylor brewery itself.(2)

The resulting beer — which, for lack of imagination, I’ll simply call Landlordish — was tasty enough that it did not occupy space in my fridge for very long at all.  With a nice amber hue and orange highlights, it certainly looked like an Ordinary, even though it ended up somewhat stronger than I had anticipated (4.4% ABV rather than about 4%).  More importantly, the aroma and flavour of the beer really did remind me of some of the pale ales I’ve had on cask in England and in Scotland.  The nose was dominated by a light aroma of malt, with a hint of some fruit — peach, I think, along with Seville oranges.  The first impression on the tongue was semi-sweet biscuit, which gave way almost immediately to a noticeable and refreshing bitterness, and then to a nice and subtle finish that struck me as spicy and floral.  While I certainly wouldn’t want to put this beer it up against Landlord in a taste test, I definitely wished I had more as I drained away the last of the eight bottles I harvested from my one-gallon fermenter.

Recipe Specifics:

LANDLORDISH

Vitals

Batch Size:  1 Gallon

Target / Actual OG:  1.044 / 1.046

Target / Actual FG:  1.014 / 1.012

Target / Actual ABV:  3.97% / 4.40%

Target Colour:  9.3 SRM

Target IBUs:  41.4

Mash Profile:  Single infusion, mash temp 154

Boil Time:  60 minutes

Grains

28 oz. Fawcett & Sons Golden Promise (94.28%)

1.2 oz Fawcett & Sons Dark Crystal II (4.04%)

0.5 oz Best Malz Acidulated Malt (1.68%)

Hops

0.28 oz Fuggles (4.5% AA) at 60 minutes for 26.66 IBU

0.28 oz East Kent Goldings (5% AA) at 15 mins for 14.7 IBU

0.28 oz Willamette (5% AA) at 0 mins for aroma

Yeast

Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire

Notes:

(1) The only easily available North American example of the style that leaps to mind is Goose Island’s Honker’s Ale.  Left Hand’s Sawtooth is also widely distributed, but at 5.3% ABV it’s really an ESB (Extra Special Bitter) rather than an Ordinary.

(2) Timothy Taylor seems to use Styrian Goldings rather than Willamette as the aroma hop, but my local homebrew shop was unfortunately out of Styrians.

A Belgian Beer Pilgrimmage

Some say this road is paved with gold...

Nestled in the farmlands of West Flanders, not far from the French border, is the monastery of St. Sixtus.  It is, essentially, in the middle of nowhere (at least, to the extent that any place in Belgium can be in the middle of nowhere).  The nearest town, Poperinge, is about four miles away, which makes either for a pleasant bike ride, or for a lengthy walk though the Flemish countryside.(1)

Most people (especially in North America) have never heard of the monastery of St. Sixtus.  Among those who fancy themselves beer connoisseurs, however, it's famous, because it's here that brothers of the Trappist order brew the fabled Westvleteren XII.  Not only is this often described as one of the best beers in the world, it's also notoriously difficult to come by:  although the monks occasionally release gift sets for distribution, for the most part the only way to get hold of this delicious elixir is to phone and reserve a crate for pickup, or to visit the monastery's café and gift shop, where they serve it by the bottle (along with other beers in their lineup), and -- if you're very lucky, and if it's in season -- sometimes sell it by the six-pack.(2)

So it was that I found myself taking a trip from Ghent to the monastery on a blustery Monday in May.  In the face of a wind that gusted at times up to about 20 miles an hour, I made the four-mile trek from the train station in Poperinge through farmland rippling with green cereal crops, through hop fields in which young vines were just beginning to creep up their strings, and through the earthy scent of fresh manure wafting over the countryside.

Young hop vines just beginning to crawl their way up the lines

My reward, of course, was the opportunity to try some Westvleteren beer at in de Vrede, the café attached to the monastery.  And, having legged out four miles in the face of that nasty wind in only a little over an hour, I was definitely thirsty.  I settled down for some lunch — a ham tartine, followed by ice cream made from some of the monastery’s beer — and sampled the three fine beverages they had on offer, all conditioned naturally in the bottle.  The first was the Westvleteren Blonde (5.8% abv), the second was the Westvleteren VIII (a traditional dubbel, 8% abv), and the third was the pièce de resistance, the XII itself — a dark, luscious quadrupel, weighing in at 10.2% abv.

Two-fisting, Westvleteren style.  On the left, the VIII; on the right, a delicious goblet of beer-flavoured ice cream.

The blonde and the VIII are both fine beers in their own right, although to my taste there isn’t much that really makes them stand out above the offerings of some of the other Trappist breweries in Belgium.  The Blonde was straw-coloured and hazy, with an aroma of grainy malt and fresh yeast; the taste essentially followed the nose, although it did have a little bit of honey-like sweetness and some citrus on the palate, balanced by a moderately bitter and dry finish.  The VIII, like most dubbels, was a dark brown beer with ruby highlights, an aroma dominated by dark sugar and toffee, and a strong malty flavour layered with hints of toffee, some kind of fruit, and finished off with a good, balancing bitterness.  Both were delicious, but of course so are comparable beers like Orval and Westmalle’s Dubbel, which are much easier to find than the Westvleteren beers.

The Holy Grail

The XII, though, really is in a different class altogether.  I’ve tasted it once before, thanks to a friend who snatched up one of the gift packs that were released into the US market last year, and who was generous enough to bring a bottle over to my place one Sunday morning for brunch (thanks Paul!).  That bottle had aged a bit — from what I recall, the flavour was almost entirely malt-driven, with hints of chocolate and dates, and a tiny bit of roast character.  The bottle I drank today was much fresher, and the character of the beer was quite a bit different.  The underlying malt character of the older sample was still there, if not as intense, but it was accented by a lot of interesting yeasty phenolics and a nice, lingering bitterness.  In short:  yum.  I’m not sure that it’s necessarily the best beer in the world, but it was definitely worth a total of three hours on the train and a round-trip hike of eight miles.

As a final bonus, the gift shop today just happened to be selling six-packs of the XII.  I arrived early enough to buy the first pack on the pallet, and I’m glad that I did, because by the time I left the shop at 1pm they were virtually all gone.  Now the challenge is to get my bottles back across the Atlantic in one piece!

The loot.

Notes:

(1)  Renting a bike can be problematic, depending on what day you choose to visit.  The main rental place is the Belfort hotel, but the office is typically closed on Sundays and Mondays.

(2)  There is a rather vigorous black-market trade in bottles of Westvleteren XII, which you will sometimes find in certain pubs in Bruges or even Ghent, albeit at a rather generous markup.

A Taste of 1834 -- and it was delicious.

Brewing porter in the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century was a complicated business, as was drinking it.

Pubs in England, it seems, typically stocked both “stale” and “mild” versions of porter, which by that point had already become a staple of sorts among working- and middle-class drinkers.  Customers could opt for one or the other, or — more typically, perhaps — they could ask the barman to mix the two as he pulled their pints.

“Stale” porter was porter that had been aged for several months, often at the brewery.  During that process, it went through a long secondary fermentation as populations of brettanomyces and lactobacillus living in the holding vats slowly worked through the sugars that the brewing yeasts had left behind.  Alas, we’ll never know exactly how a period and properly-aged “stale” tasted, but we can make some imaginative and informed guesses.  It was probably mostly still, since the carbon dioxide produced during primary fermentation was unlikely to remain in the beer during its transfer to a conditioning vessel and during the long conditioning process, and since the brettanomyces and lactobacillus cultures were unlikely to produce enough to make up the difference.  On the other hand, thanks to the combination of distinctive esters and acids that the brettanomyces and lactobacillus populations would have produced, it was likely vinuous and tart, perhaps even sour — possibly something like a modern dark Oud Bruin.(*)  While I do have grand plans to make something similar, I unfortunately need to wait until I have enough space to let a fermentor stocked with oak chips sit somewhere dark and cool while a culture of brettanomyces and lactobacillus works it magic.  (Happily, Will over at The Perfect Pint has done this already, so you can read all about it here.)

“Mild” porter, on the other hand, was porter that was served young and fresh, after the saccharomyces had finished its work and the beer had conditioned a little, but before other organisms had the opportunity to begin chewing up the remaining sugars.  Historic mild porter is therefore much easier to reproduce (and, more importantly, to taste) than historic stale porter.  Conveniently enough, this years’ International Homebrew Project, organized by Al at Fuggled, focused on a porter recipe brewed in 1834 by St. Stephen’s brewery in Norwich, and rescued from the the brewery’s old archives by Ron Pattinson.  It’s a delicious-looking recipe, loaded with brown and black malt, a ton of Fuggles hops, and the problematic-yet-often-delicious Fuller’s yeast strain.  I brewed up a one-gallon batch of this beer on February 16^th, fermented it at 68 degrees for three days, then turned off the temperature controller and let it condition at room temperature for another 12 days before bottling it with enough sugar to carbonate it to a modest 1.5 volumes.  It had an original gravity of 1.064 and a final gravity of 1.019, which means that it is now a full-bodied beer of about 5.9% ABV (I narrowly missed my targets — 1.067 OG, 1.021 FG, 6.0% ABV.)

The final result is a bold, delicious porter.  It’s deep, deep brown and so opaque in the glass that it seems almost black, but if the light catches it from just the right angle, it shows some ruby highlights.  The aroma is full of dark malts, some chocolate, and a hint of toffee.  The flavour — ye gods, the flavour.  What I notice first is a luxurious mouthfeel, full of smooth, dark espresso, bitter chocolate, and some toffee.  Almost immediately, though, that’s complemented by a bracing and spicy, earthy bitterness, which lingers on and on in a gloriously long finish.  It’s really, really good.  So good, in fact, that I’d probably even be tempted to choose it over a world-class stalwart like Fuller’s London Porter — unless, of course, the Fuller’s was being served on cask in a Pub that knows how to do cask well.  Wow.

This is the sort of moment when I really notice the big disadvantage of brewing in one-gallon batches:  I’ve only got nine bottles of this wonderful stuff, and it’s going to go fast!

St. Stephen's 1834 Norwich Porter, resting comfortably (if incongruously) in a Delrium Tremens glass.

(*) For lots more on historical porters, see Chapter 4 of Martyn Cornell, Amber, Gold, & Black:  The History of Britain's Great Beers (The History Press, 2010), or his comments here.

Brewday Report: The International Homebrew Project

This, my inaugural blog post, marks my return to homebrewing after a hiatus of several months.

That hiatus was imposed mostly by work (although my decision to stop brewing will probably prove to have been counter-productive in the long run — brewing is, after all, meditative and relaxing in its own way).  On the other hand, my decision to break the hiatus and start brewing again at this specific moment in time was prompted specifically by my desire to participate in this year’s International Homebrew Project.

The International Homebrew Project, managed by the inestimable Velky Al at Fuggled, is an opportunity for homebrewers to make a batch from the same recipe and to compare brewing and tasting notes.  It often features a historical recipe.  This year, we brewed a Porter based on a recipe used by St. Stephen’s brewery in Norwich, ca. 1834, lovingly researched by Ron Pattinson and recreated for homebrewers by Kristen England (their comments can be found here).  The recipe is deceptively simple.  The grist includes pale malt, brown malt, and black malt; the hops are Fuggles; and the yeast is a characterful English strain (in this case, the Fuller’s strain, Wyeast 1968).

The recipe (detailed below) features two particularly interesting features.  The first is a long boil time of 120 minutes, which is double the standard boil time of most homebrewers.  Historically, the main purpose of the long boil time may have been simply to concentrate the wort to the desired gravity, but as a side-effect the long boil likely produced a lot of maillard reactions and possibly some caramelization in the wort; hopefully those will have an impact on the flavour of my version as well.  The second is a very high hopping rate, which will undoubtedly add not only a lot of bitterness, but also some interesting flavours, even though the hop additions are all relatively early.  In all, this looks like a tasty beer for toasting the end of winter, and I’m looking forward to sampling it in six weeks.

Because I have space in my tiny little fermenting fridge for two one-gallon jugs, I like to brew two one-gallon recipes alongside one another.  Generally, I’ll brew two recipes that can use the same yeast, or at least two recipes that use yeast strains capable of fermenting at the same temperature.  This time around, I’m pairing the porter with a Golden Bitter that will also use Wyeast 1968.  The recipe for this beer too is fairly simple, but it features a bit of a twist in the sense that it uses two varieties of New Zealand hops, Nelson Sauvin and Motueka.  The first can produce a flavour reminiscent of white wine, alongside some tropical fruit notes; the second adds a hint of lemon-lime citrus.  Together, those hops will hopefully complement the Golden Promise that makes up the bulk of the grist, and produce a beer that evokes far-off tropical places.  With luck, it will help conjure winter away.

Each of these two recipes did pose some technical challenges at the one-gallon scale, especially since I try to do full-volume mashes whenever possible.  The gravity of the porter and its long boil time demanded a lot of mash liquor, which stretched the capacity of my 12-quart mash pot to its limit.  Since I had neglected to account for the drop in efficiency that comes with increasing gravity, I unfortunately ended up with less extraction than I wanted, and the wort that went into the fermenter had a gravity of only 1.064 instead of the planned 1.067 — not a significant enough difference to cause a real problem, but noticeable enough to be bothersome from a craft standpoint.

My past experience with Golden Bitters, on the other hand, prompted me to make a major change to my brewing process for pale beers.  To make a long story short, I had been experiencing unpleasant and astringent off-flavours when brewing pale beers, all of which went away when I brewed a Czech Pilsener using 100% distilled water.  Most likely, this signals a problem with the pH of my mashes — generally speaking, because dark grains lend some acidity, the mash pH for a pale beer will tend to be higher than the mash pH of a dark beer, and perhaps high enough to deviate from the ideal range (which lies somewhere around 5.5).  Chicago water, which is moderately alkaline, tends to exacerbate this problem anyway, as does the relatively high water-to-grain ratio I use in a full volume mash.  So, from now on, when I mash the grist for pale beers, I’ll compensate by using all distilled water, by adding some brewing salts to compensate for the lack of minerals in the water, and by tossing in a little acidulated malt.  Hopefully, this technique will produce a noticeable payoff in this batch.

Finally, the yeast strain I’m using here is known to be highly temperamental.  When it cooperates, it produces fantastic beer:  not only does it emphasize the flavours of the malt, it also produces some interesting citrus esters.  The problem is that it has a tendency to quit early in the fermenter, only to reawaken in the bottle, at which point it produces some unpleasant off-flavours that remind me of bad cider, and overcarbonates the beer.  In the hope of avoiding these problems, I plan to let both batches ferment at 68 for about three days, give them both a swirl to rouse the yeast, and then let them condition at room temperature.  Ideally, this will encourage the yeast to attenuate fully in the fermenter, not in the bottle!

And now, the recipes:

ST. STEPHEN’S PORTER, ca. 1834

Vitals

Batch size:  1 Gallon

Target OG:  1.067

Target FG:  1.021

Target ABV:  6.02%

Target Colour:  50 SRM

Target IBUs:  82

Mash Profile:  Single Infusion, mash temp 156

Boil Time:  120 minutes

Grains

30 oz TF& Sons Maris Otter (72%)

8.75 oz TF & Sons Brown Malt (21%)

2.92 oz TF& Sons Black Malt (7%)

Hops

0.60 oz Fuggles (4.5%) at 120 minutes for 61 IBUS

0.30 oz Fuggles (4.5%) at 30 minutes for 21 IBUs

Yeast

Wyeast 1968 London ESB

“WINTER BEGONE” GOLDEN BITTER

Vitals

Batch Size:  1 Gallon

Target OG:  1.047

Target FG:  1.015

Target ABV:  4.24%

Target Colour:  3.9 SRM

Target IBUs:  40

Mash Profile:  Single infusion, mash temp 154

Boil Time:  60 minutes

Grains

30 oz. Simpsons Golden Promise (95.2%)

1 oz Simpsons Golden Naked Oats (3.2 %)

0.5 oz Best Malz Acidulated Malt (1.6%)

Hops

0.04 oz Nelson Sauvin (11.8%) at 60 minutes for 9.8 IBU

0.08 oz Motueka (7.8%) at 60 minutes for 13 IBU

0.06 oz Nelson Sauvin (11.8%) at 15 minutes for 7.3 IBU

0.12 oz Motueka (7.8%) at 15 minutes for 9.7 IBU

0.06 oz Nelson Sauvin (11.8%) at flameout for 0 IBU

0.12 oz Motueka (7.8%) at flameout for 0 IBU

Yeast

Wyeast 1968 London ESB