This past year, I won the Wichita Homebrewers Organization's "Homebrewer of the Year" award, which gave me the opportunity to brew a beer at The Leprechaun’s Lab with brewer / owner, Patrick Root.
Each time I get the opportunity to brew something scaled up, I want to do something a little different, and this was no exception. I had played around with a recipe from Ron Pattinson’s Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog, an 1896 brew of “AK” Light bitter from Rose's Brewery in Malton, Yorkshire, England.
This recipe has a few oddities. Normally, English bitters are seen as caramelly, sort of rich, only using classic English hops, but some things jumped out to me about this beer:
- There is no Crystal malt whatsoever, it’s very pale - this was very typical for pale ales of this time, crystal malts weren’t really used in bitters until around WW2, once many beers became far weaker.
- It uses hops from Hallertau, Germany - between that and the flaked rice its sounding a bit like an ale version of a rice lager in some ways. Familiar, but with a twist.
- It uses invert sugar syrup (aka artificial honey) - A common ingredient in British brewing after the Inland Revenue / Free Mash Tun Act (1880), and something I’ve experimented with at home.
- It uses Flaked Rice, and quite a bit of it at that, as an adjunct - these days corn is the far more common adjunct. Grain adjuncts were legalized for brewing in Britain with the Free Mash Tun Act. I'll dive further into the history later on.
The nice thing is, with the smaller system at the Leprechaun yielding 1.5 bbl per batch, I was able to make invert sugar syrup for this beer. Pat had expressed interest in making invert sugar in the past and I thought this might be a good excuse to do just that.
The brew day started early, I brought in my induction burner to make the invert sugar, and some citric acid to do the inverting.
The Liminal Leprechaun at dawn...
First, we figured out substitutions, since it isn’t an exact recreation, it’s more of a “riff” on an 1890s light bitter. Instead of the Fuggles hops, we used Styrian Bobek, a reasonable substitute. The original recipe had Fuggles but Ron Pattinson notes they were hops from Sussex and Worcester, and may have been Golding-like. Instead of the classic Hallertau, I requested Hallertau Saphir, definitely a favorite variety of mine, used in a number of favorite beers, such as Firestone Walker Pivo Pils and Free State Lager.
Saphir is a Hallertau derivative with notes of lemongrass, juniper, strawberry, and black tea.
For the base malt, we went with Gambrinus ESB malt. In the old days, a beer like this could have used barley from all over the world, but malted in England, and may have included 6 row. We omitted 6 row for this brew, but I’ve been known to use it in such adjunct-laden brews for an additional grainy character.
Then the rice: Pat had Jasmine rice in stock, so we decided to go with that to give a little bit of a twist with an extra slightly floral character.
So we round off the quantities to be convenient, go to the grain room, and weigh it all out. I had never seen the rest of the building behind the brewhouse before, so it was fun to see.
We mash in and I stir, taking care not to blast the temperature probe with the paddle, then I get to work making the invert sugar.
Living large and in sparge...
While there are a number of approaches to making invert sugar, we opted to do a fairly modern one: use cane sugar with a measured amount of cane molasses, plus 1 pint of water and 1g of citric acid per lb of sugar. I combined these in the stainless steel pot on my induction burner and started heating it up. And we’re off!
Domino golden sugar and blackstrap molasses for the invert sugar.
Oh wait... The circuit just overloaded and tripped the breaker! Turns out the circuit I was plugged into is shared by the glycol chillers. No problem, we move the setup out into the taproom on a different circuit and then we’re off.
I bring the solution to a boil and then evaporate the water until it reaches 235 degrees Fahrenheit. In candy making, there are different stages: thread, soft ball, hard ball. 235 is the thread stage. The idea is basically, heating cane sugar in the presence of an acid causes the sucrose molecules to turn into fructose, making them taste sweeter, and even more easily fermentable for the yeast.
After boiling it between 235 and 240 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes, the sugar has been “inverted” and is ready to go in the boil.
Inverting... Inverting... Inverted Sugar!
Now on to the hop additions, weighed out in a plastic cup and then added to what is basically a giant hop sock.
Cleaning out the mash tun at the Leprechaun was a little bit different than at the other breweries I’ve brewed at. Rather than the usual mash tun door, the mash tun was mounted such that it can be tipped in place, and then held forward with a piece of wood, allowing me to scoop out the spent grain. As Pat said repeatedly, “we only use the most sophisticated equipment”.
Cleaning the mash tun, always a glamorous job.
After adding the invert sugar, we find we are one point from the intended original gravity. Not bad at all. The wort is transferred to the fermentation vessel, and we pitch a completely measured amount of Lallemand Windsor yeast. And by that, I mean I eyeballed a specific fraction of the big dried yeast brick.
Transferring to the Fermentation Vessel, always a fun sight.
As usual there’s a lot of waiting around during the brew day. I love how the camera in the taproom was clearly lagging and showed me both there and in the brewhouse at the same time.
Who says you can't be in two places at once?
And with that, all that’s left is to wait on the fermentation. I break out some homebrews to share: my Solar Wind White Belgian Witbier with fresh ginger, Neublator Weisse, a pale Weizenbock, as well as bottles of my Mission from Mars Biere de Mars, and Weisse Dwarf Berliner-style Weissbier.
It’s always fun watching people file in to a brewery after you wrap up a brew day. I chatted with some folks at the bar for a while, and then went over to a perennial favorite restaurant of mine, Public at the Brickyard, for a victory steak.
Now, the beer is on tap, and on nitro! It's very smooth, slightly floral and fruity, a delicate classic hop character, with biscuit and very slight dark fruit notes.
First pour for me off the nitro tap while I draw the sign.