Brew day at Grain Brewery: report

I arranged for Tim to visit Grain's microbrewery in Alburgh on the Norfolk/Suffolk border for a day learning how to brew beer. Well it was his birthday and thankfully he did bring a few bottles back and also agreed to blog his experience!

"I managed to get lost on the way to Alburgh but what a beautiful place! On the North side of the Waveney valley which runs along the Suffolk/Norfolk border this is unexpectedly rolling English countryside. When Phil Halls and Geoff Wright were looking for a home for their new brewery in 2006 they saw and rejected lots of potential sites including a range of different farm buildings and (thankfully) characterless premises on industrial estates at a much higher cost. When they found their current site at South Farm they knew it was right for what they wanted to do.
What I learned between 9.30 and 4.00 is that the life of a craft brewer is physically demanding, full of sensory (particularly olfactory) stimulation and occasionally repetitive.

All brewers develop their own unique recipes. Today we were brewing Grain's session bitter Oak and throughout the process we referred to a sheet listing the precise weights of ingredients.
The first part of the brewing process is to combine hot water (called liquor in brewing terminology - it just sounds better doesn't it?) with malted barley which comes in big sacks.
This lets the heat release the natural sugars in the barley (which will later be turned to alcohol by yeast) in a big open barrel called a mash tun. The clever bit at this stage as we learned at Beer Academy is combining different types of malted barley: pale, crystal, chocolate in different proportions to create beers of very different flavours and colours. Oak majors on pale malt - Maris Otter to be precise.




The sweetest cup or two of the resulting 'wort' is discarded and then the rest is transferred to a copper tank where it is boiled with hops. Two types of hops are added in two stages: first bittering hops which add bitterness; and then at end of an hour or so aroma hops which 'spice' the brew adding a wonderful, heady aroma. These aroma hops are an expensive ingredient (by weight) but really contribute character and zing to a beer like Oak.

While the 'boil' takes place we get our hands and boots dirty shovelling the spent barley out of the mash tun (see below) - it's oddly satisfying and we just finish in time for Jimmy the farmer to come and pick up the sacks of waste barley husks to feed to his sheep. How about that for thrift and sustainability?



The brew is then transferred into a fermentation tank where it will, with the addition of yeast the following day, begin to become beer as we know it with the malt sugar converted to alcohol. The beer we brewed will be ready in a few short weeks and Phil is going to give us a call when it's ready!"

We really like Grain's beers and are impressed with the way Phil and Geoff are working to bring their beer to new audiences : check out their classic session bitter Oak which has some lovely aromatic hops on the nose, the Ruby Porter which is full, sweet and creamy with that 'Ovaltine' flavour from crystal malt and the Strong Pale Ale which has quite a serious drink with a kick.

Report: Beer Academy

How does the choice of ingredients and brewing process affect flavour and style? Why does beer get such a bad press while its supposedly more sophisticated cousin wine is seen as the natural choice to partner with food and growing steadily in popularity? How can beer find new audiences beyond lads and lasses swigging Stella on a big night out or beardy real ale drinkers?

These were some of the question that last week's Beer Academy course sought to answer. Aimed at people in the booze trade as well as beer enthusiasts looking for more of an educational experience than a typical brewery tour. I wasn't the only girl either!

The course was run by George Philliskirk, a beer expert who lives in what is apparently one of the epicentres of the beer universe: Burton on Trent (why - it's the high mineral content in the water there that gives the beers a refreshing edge apparently). George is a very charming, relaxed tutor with whom we'd had the privilege of dining with the night before in the company of Suffolk and Norfolk barley growers Teddy Maufe and Roger Middleditch of The Real Ale Shop. He knows his stuff from years in the industry and was about to head off to Australia to do a spot of beer judging. Nice work if you can get it.

The day covered the whole beer story in enough depth to come away with a much richer understanding of the topic:

• Beer ingredients (water, malted barley, hops, yeast are all you need for classic English real ale but you will find other grains like wheat and rice used for some styles and also herbs, spices and fruit added)
  
• Brewing process
  
• How to taste beer (just like tasting wine except you're not supposed to spit it out!)
• Beer and food matching
• History of beer and beer styles (what's the different between a stout and a porter?)
• Industry info: beer and health, the UK beer market

Some highlights for me included tasting some different types of malted barley: pale malt (just like Ovaltine or Grape Nuts), crystal malt (darker and more intense) and chocolate malt (the darkest of the three with a roasted coffee/chocolate aroma and flavour).

Beer and food matching was really interesting: try teaming chocolate with a Belgian Kriek (cherry) fruit beer - it's delicious. However this part of the course was a bit rushed and would merit a longer session. There are three key aspects to consider when teaming beer with food are:
1. Complement (a strong bitter with cheese)
2. Contrast (e.g. Kriek with chocolate)
3. Cut (think of a cold beer with a spicy curry)

Of the beers we tasted, those from the Meantime Brewery in Greenwich stood out as did Bluebird Bitter from the Coniston Brewery.

Now my months in Suffolk have confirmed a few things: that we are blessed with wonderful local producers, that there are plenty of good places to eat, and that I love a pint of Suffolk Ale be it Adnams or our local Earl Soham Victoria or Hektor's Pure which went down extremely well as the house bitter at the Latitude Festival last summer. It's probably fair to say that I was getting a bit complacent about beer. But Beer Academy revealed a whole world of different beer styles and ranged far and wide around the globe in search of good beers. We came away feeling much better informed about this amazing drink and with our tastebuds zinging.