April News “Home” brew for Stef At the beginning of April, I will have the priviledge of speaking at a Craft Brewing Course for brewers in Milan. The course is organised by Unionbirrai. I would like to thank Agostino Arioli, responsible of Unionbirrai courses, for the kind invitation. After the course, I will be spending a couple of days with Agostino and the friends at Birrificio Italiano (Check out Zak Avery’s video tasting of two great beers from Birrificio Italiano here) brewing a Barley Wine (6th April) as a collaborative effort. The beer will be named Sparrow Pit in homage to the hamlet in the Peak district National Park (see map here) where Birrificio Italiano regularly get lost on their way to Thornbridge! The beer will be brewed at Thornbridge with a similar recipe at the beginning of May and both brews will age in wood for nearly twelve months. The Italian version will ripen in Ramandolo wine barrels, the British in three-years-old barriques that Nyetimber Vineyard had used to experiment with barrel fermentation for a possible future special cuvée. Birrificio Italiano and Thornbridge Brewery will release their joint efforts after twelve months from the making, in April 2010 and May 2010 respectively. This is an ongoing collaboration. Each year will see a single batch of the beer being made at the two breweries, and twelve months after that there will be a special presentation night where the public will have the chance to taste the new release alongside the past years bottlings. How exciting! Will keep you posted. Ciao for now Stef http://www.unionbirrai.com/http://www.thebeerboy.co.uk/150309.htmlhttp://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=sparrow+pit&rls=com.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7%3B&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=uk&ei=17jKSejyFtuLtgfXor3jCQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=titlehttp://www.ramandolo.it/http://www.nyetimber.com/shapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4
Epic Halcyon
The end of May saw another Thornbridge collaboration. After previous brews with the US (Brooklyn Brewery), Italy (Birrificio Italiano) and with England (Dark Star), it was time to go a little further afield and join forces with New Zealand brewing wizard, Luke Nicholas from Epic Brewing Company. Luke was visiting to promote the release of his Epic Pale Ale that had been brewed with Everards Brewery in Leicester as part of the International Beer Festival that the JD Wetherspoons pubs were running. Epic Pale Ale was voted Supreme Champion Winner at the 2006 New Zealand International Beer Awards as well as winning Gold and Best in Class awards at the 2008 BrewNZ Awards. We decided to brew our Imperial IPA, Halcyon, but with a bit of a New Zealand twist! At 7.7%, this beer is all about showcasing hops and we weren’t about to muck about! We decided on a massive amount of Chinook, Centennial, Hallertau Magnum and New Zealand Nelson Sauvin as our additions and really wanted to make this one a bit of a monster, so instead of our usual 80-90 IBUs (bitterness units), we decided to go for over 100 IBUs, making this the most heavily hopped beer ever produced at Thornbridge. To add a bit more New Zealand flavour, a precious bottle of New Zealand water (www.goodwater.org.nz) was added to the fermenter. In fact, all brewers had a New Zealand connection that day, with Dave having brewed for a few years in New Zealand, Stefano’s mother having grown up in New Zealand and Kelly and Luke being New Zealanders. It was a true Kiwi brew! Already getting close to 1kg of hops per barrel, the next step for us is to dry hop it and get even more hop character into the beer over maturation. The beer will be available in cask only and be officially released at the Beer, Blues and BBQ’s Festival at the Coach and Horses in Dronfield on May 24-25th. There will be only 25 casks available for sale, so if you are keen for some Epic Halcyon, go and beg your landlord to order some now! http://www.goodwater.org.nzshapeimage_3_link_0
It’s all about passion... We are happy to announce the arrival of our latest employee to the Thornbridge team, James Kemp. JK spent the first 13 years of his life in Staffordshire, before his family saw the light and moved to probably the best country in the world, New Zealand (I wonder who is writing this piece...). James completed a Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Conservation and a Post Graduate Diploma in Resource Management before joining the NZ Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Biosecurity Division, first as a quarantine officer and working his way up to senior adviser. A stint back in his home country saw JK working in pubs and as a sample technician at Fullers Brewery, where he was involved in laboratory analysis, setting up tasting evaluations and stock control. His taste for a good pint grew and he began homebrewing. 2008 saw JK win three of the five major awards at the New Zealand Homebrewing Championships and he was crowned the NZ Champion as well as winning the Liberty Award for best malt balanced beer and the Brewcraft Award for best beer. A keen sportsman and musician, JK is keen to impart his passion into Thornbridge and help us out as we embark on the next stage with the installation and commissioning of a new brewery and laboratory!
Something Old and Something Blue!
There’s a couple of beers being released at the moment which I am sure you will enjoy! One of them is a beer we haven’t brewed for 4 years and the other is a brand new one. Craven Silk makes a happy return and was a great fun beer to make. The brew started with the brewers spending an afternoon in the Derbyshire sunshine picking lots of Elderflowers, over 3kg of them! The flowers were then added for the last 15 minutes of the boil and the beer is truly great. The other is Seaforth, an English India Pale Ale. This is an English version of Jaipur using all English hops and i am sure you won’t be disappointed. When we were thinking of a name for the beer we thought ,who better to ask than esteemed IPA writer Pete Brown. He named it Seaforth which was an East Indiaman, one of the giant, beautiful ships that took bullion, people and provisions to India when it was ruled by the English East India Company. One of her main cargoes was beer – brewing was impossible in the harsh Indian climate, and thirsty troops and civilians needed something refreshing that was safer to drink than water, which was polluted, and arak, a fierce local brew that often proved fatal. The earliest beer known as India Pale Ale was brewed in London, and while it survived the journey and built up a fanatical following, the brewer got greedy and started to apply extortionate terms. The East India Company came north, to Burton on Trent, to try to find a competitor to enter the market. Samuel Allsopp of Burton on Trent brewed an India Pale Ale in 1822, and transported it to the docks in Liverpool. There, his cargo was laded onto two ships, the Bencoolen and, just behind her, the Seaforth. They arrived in Calcutta in April 1822. The cargo on the Bencoolen sold at auction, but for a much lower price than that belonging to George Hodgson, the greedy London brewer who dominated the market. But when the Seaforth arrived, everything changed. The consignment of Hodgson’s beer on board had spoiled on the long journey, was rejected by the Calcutta clerks and sold off with the following notice: REJECTED BEER To be sold by Public Auction, by Messrs Taylor & Co, on the CUSTOM HOUSE WHARF, by permission of the Collector of Sea Customs, at eleven o’ Clock precisely, on Saturday next, the 28th Instant, 48 HOGSHEADS of Hodgson’s BEER, and 17 empty HOGSHEADS, landed from the ship Timandra, and 30 hogsheads of Hodgson’s BEER, landed from the ship Seaforth. Allsopp’s beer had surivived. Whereas the consignment on the Bencoolen sold for twenty rupees a hogshead, the Seaforth cargo of Allsopp’s ale sold for forty. And when it was drunk, thanks to the unique qualities of Burton water, it was found to be of infinitely better quality than Hodgson’s, which by comparison had a “thick and muddy appearance” and a “rank bitter flavour.” Allsopp’s ale was deemed “a most delightful beverage during the hot season” And in the years that followed, Burton style IPA conquered India, and then the world, while Hodgson faded into obscurity. And all because of that stroke of luck on the Seaforth. Thanks Pete! To buy Pete’s book with a full history of IPA and his journey re-creating it go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0230706355?tag=manwalksintoa-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0230706355&adid=0HPRKKGDF8VPXV4DRSZB& http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0230706355?tag=manwalksintoa-21&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0230706355&adid=0HPRKKGDF8VPXV4DRSZB&shapeimage_5_link_0