People who brew beer do so with a strong focus on flavour
and drinkability and those who are adept at brewing are in all practical senses
like chefs. Make them taste a dish (or, in our case, taste a beer) and they
start thinking about what went into creating that experience.
I have been a home brewer since 2006 and have brewed over
150 batches of beer and most of what you drink from Gateway Brewing Co., is one
of my recipes (obviously with contribution from our brewers) tweaked to suit a
1000 litre batch size. What is really important here is that we brewers create
beers that we like to drink as well! Having said that, how does one go about
giving birth to a new beer? Or, why?
Let’s start with the why as it is quite straight forward:
Boredom or a desire to create something new. Craft beer drinkers (those of us
who drink beer for taste rather than only inebriation) like to explore and
savour various flavours and after drinking the same beer for many months, we
want something new. Along these lines, there are many that like to experiment.
Be bold. Stay off the beaten path. Be different. Get it?
For us, at Gateway, it is the same thing. We want to keep
things fresh and want to change our offerings on a regular basis so that people
get a chance to explore new flavours. So, how do we do it? Simple. Get inspired
and let our thoughts run wild.
Recently, I was in Prague, Czech Republic, for vacation and
had the opportunity to drink the dark
lager that is widely available there. I wanted to brew this beer and make it available
to all the craft beer lovers because it is such a great beer - Sweet, malty with caramel and
subtle coffee notes. It goes very
well with their traditional bread and is simply divine.
Being a brewer (chef, if you may), thoughts started popping
into my head and a recipe was born. At first, it is only a thought. A few
tweaks and the final beer is born. Let me take you through the process of
creating the beer in a very non-technical manner.
Think about art & craft in school and about mixing
colours. Think about tea & toast.
Here goes…
- 1. The beer is dark so we will need some dark brown or black colours
Beer is made with barley malt that is a light beige in
colour. Just like the crust of the bread you eat at home. How do you make it
dark or black? Toast it, right? Exactly the same thing happens with beer. We
take a portion (say 5%) of the barley malt and roast it to a light-to-medium
brown colour. If we roast it further (or, burn it) and make it black, guess
what flavours we will get? Burnt and coffee flavours. We want some of that in
the beer so a light-to-medium brown colour will do.
Next time you are eating toast, try different levels of toasting. See if you can pick-up notes of caramel, coffee etc. in the toast.
- 2. The beer is sweetish so we need to have some sugar
We don’t really add sugar to the beer but we extract sugar
from the barley malt in the brewing process. This sugar (maltose) is then
fermented into beer and it contains alcohol and carbon di-oxide. A higher
amount of sugar will result in a beer that is sweetish.
Also, hops are bittering agents added to beer to ensure that
it is not overly sweet. So, if you add less of it, you will have a sweetish
beer. Finally, to ensure sweetness, you can add barley malts that have been
roasted wet. These malts add a caramel sweetness to beer. Think caramelised
sugar!
- 3. The beer is malty with caramel and subtle coffee notes so we need some of these ingredients
We can add cold extracted coffee that will give us these
flavours but it is not necessary. Roasting the barley malt and adding, perhaps
1%, of very highly roasted malt (think burnt bread), does the trick.
- 4. Beer has alcohol so, add alcohol
Just kidding. We don’t add alcohol to make beer. It is
produced by the yeast in the process of fermentation. We control that by
controlling the quantity of sugar (derived as maltose from barley malt)
available to the yeast. More sugar = more alcohol.
This is a simple take on how we create recipes at Gateway.
Feel free to read more about the hobby of making beer at home and how to create
recipes. It is truly rewarding. Or, at the very least, try drinking different
craft beer and start identifying flavours in them! Enjoy.
