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Brut IPA

The latest IPA craze sweeping across from the US sees a new type of IPA, this time its a bone dry champagne like aromatic hoppy beer, but why is it called “brut”, simple it’s the terminalogy to rank sweetness in champagne.

The creator and Californian brewer Kim Sturdavent (Social Brewing) has made it pale, super dry and highly effervescent. The weapon of choice to create this unique beer is an enzyme & Geterbrewed has sourced this so you can create your own homebrew Brut IPA’s. The enzyme Glucoamylase 400 to put it simply takes the complex sugars and breaks them down into fermentable sugars.

Hop bittering levels are low in this style as hop bitterness is usually balanced with the sweetness of the malt bill, on this style the sweetness from the malt is fermented out so you need to keep the IBU’s down. New world fruity and tropical hops seem to be the hop flavours of choice

I love experimenting at a home brew level and when brewers innovate and create something special it makes other push the boundaries too and then we in turn get to enjoy awesome beers.

The enzyme isn’t a new creation it has been available in the brewing supplies catalogue for sometime, previously being used by brewers to reduce sweetness in big imperial stouts.

I’ve been following some American brewer blogs on the style and they are using new ingredients for an IPA, for example adjuncts, now this doesn’t appear to be to try and save money, its to keep the beer pale in colour, some brewers are using flaked rice and corn.

When yeast is working this hard it may also be important to look at yeast nutrients. Also be aware that if you are reharvesting the yeast it will carryover the enzyme.

You can add the enzyme to the mash directly but what temperatures or to the fermenter during fermentation, as the style is still very much in its infancy there is scope for experimentation.

What i personally want to see is brewers releasing well made batches of Brut IPA taking their time to experiment and be creative now just getting one released to be seen to be setting the trend in the local beer scene

Designing a Brut IPA recipe, your standard IPA base malt bill may be the first place you start but be aware that the crystal etc that you add for body will be totally fermented out. The complex carbohydrates and dextrines will be converted to simple sugars and fermented out. Also watch the abv this is going to almost completely ferment out so you don’t want to create something that is going to blow your head off.

Adding this enzyme goes beyond dryness and you don’t need to do anything special during the mash to try and create a dry beer.

My understanding would be that all hop bitterness is going to be best acheived after the boil with a good hop stand, I would feel that the aroma acheived would be a perfect addition to this dry style of beer

Yeast used predominantly in the style to date is a neutral ale yeast but it’s open to experimentation.

Time to get experimenting with this enzyme, we have adding some buying options to the Geterbrewed website for home brewers and if you are a pro brewer we also have stock in our warehouse for larger scale brewing too

We would love you to share your recipes and experiences in brewing this style with us, the team at Geterbrewed will be trying a few recipes out in the coming weeks we’ll let you know how we get on..

 

 

 

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NI Craft Beer Scene

At Geterbrewed we like to think that we have our ‘finger on the pulse’ so to speak within the industry

We have not only supplied the equipment for a number of breweries throughout Ireland but we now service the large majority of them with their brewing ingredients and we own our own small brewery Hillstown.

So why is the craft beer scene in NI so far behind the rest of Ireland and even further behind the rest of the UK?

There is a number of reasons, the main reason I believe is the strong hold that large macro brands like diageo and tennents have on the draft taps.

Many bars are given financial incentives to stock macro brands and have exclusivity deals that stops them from offering a draft tap from their local brewery

This is anti competitive but the local breweries can’t seem to do anything to fix it, it’s not for the want of trying i might add…

Another issue in NI is our out of date licensing laws that stops craft breweries from selling direct to the public, recently in the South of Ireland the legislation was changed to allow them to sell direct but with NI not even having a sitting assembly it’s difficult to see this changing anytime soon.

There is a few exceptions that are free houses and offer draft options away from the grip of the macro brands but there is even difficulty there, depending on what distributor they use usually affects who gets on tap too. Our local breweries need to see this sort of support to allow them to grow

Let’s be honest craftbeer hasn’t really taken off yet locally, we need alot more knowledge of what a great beer is. Less volume and more quality!! Some of the macro beers are awful tasting bland fizzy rubbish, why not try a beer with actual real flavour brewed by your local brewery

Owning a brewery always takes investment to grow and brewers either have the capital or they need to use their sales revenue to grow this. Without volume keg sales this affects revenue and in turn growth

Another issue is we don’t have a cask beer scene worth talking about here either. Pop over the Irish Sea and you will walk into bars with 10 cask beers on offer, this leaves breweries fighting it out for bottle sales and now cans.

Now cans are on trend in the Craft Beer scene but if a brewery wants to can locally they have to use a mobile canning service. At the stage of writing this no local brewery has their own canning line. We know that is soon to change but what you don’t realise is the expense is huge for this type of contract packaging.

So again the local breweries are struggling to achieve a solid profit margin to allow them to grow their brewery. Economies come with scale and while lots of local brewers are willing to work hard their efforts may not be visible If they can’t grow their output. You have no idea just how hard our local brewers work to earn a living, I don’t want to sound like a broken record but they do need your support to survive.

Some people say the local beers aren’t good enough. I can assure you that some of our local brewers are consistently producing impressive beers but yes we have some that are producing beer that simply isn’t good enough. If someone was to try an infected craft beer for the first time are they likely to try another craft beer ? Personally I don’t think they will, so we need education on what great beer tastes like

It’s also super competitive on price as the larger breweries are able to produce product for a much lower production price and when tenders come available for export channels or supermarkets, some brewers aren’t able to compete on price.

The demand from the specialist off sales and bars that do stock a range of Craft are also looking for something new, experimental pilot brews and small scale batches of specials are expensive and time consuming so again brewers aren’t generating a high revenue to allow them to grow.

Some of the local independents stock an offering of local craft but why isn’t there more local?

Some specialist off sales refuse to stock local beers if they feature in the supermarkets, I do get that if there was promotions in a supermarket they wouldn’t want to compete but that has to be balanced with why do they stock the macro brands that are also in the supermarket, it’s double standards and our local brewers need all the support they can get. Some need the supermarket sales to survive.

Our local breweries don’t have large marketing budgets and can’t compete with the bill boards, marketing material and adverts for macro beer.

We have local breweries so disheartened with the local craft beer scene that they only focus on export.We have a few new additions to the market in recent times and have a few breweries in planning but it’s inevitable we are going to have a few casualties. One local brewer recently converted his brewery into a distillery as he felt he couldn’t make a living from his brewery and needed to diversify.

With so many breweries competing for such a small market share of Craft Beer consumption we need to see change to see the local beer scene grow.

There is some local breweries producing awesome quality beers , we need more people to recognise what great beer is, there is a massive giant out there that is makro beer and it feels threatened by the global growth of Craft Beer. It wants to protect its market share in Northern Ireland and is willing to ‘fight dirty ‘ you know the tap ties I mentioned earlier that’s only some of it.

We know the millions Diageo ploughed into Hophouse 13 well now they have turned on Coors and they have launched Rockshore as they want to take away from their grip. It’s getting messy they are selling a huge volume of it but look at the quality of the liquid.

The makro beer brands also have sudo craft options that they have created to con the consumer into thinking it’s a craft beer.

I love this industry it’s my livelyhood and as a small family business we all are driven to see it succeed but sometimes it feels like in up hill battle for us and the amazing passionate local brewers that we work with.

Can I ask you to try and grow this movement, support your local brewery, go to their events, ask for their beers in your local off sales and bars. Give them honest feedback to help they improve and grow and continue to put quality before volume.

Share a few local beers with your friends, talk about them, the ingredients they used, the styles and ingredients that you enjoy. Pair a local brew with a beautiful meal, what I’m saying is create a moment that you enjoy the beer for its flavours and if this supports a local brewery they be happy in the knowledge you made their day and mine !!

Rant over! Its not all bad by the way we have some brewers locally that are holding their own and growing well but a little knowledge about whats going on sometimes can help. We need some more independent bars, what would be awesome is some more Brewpubs, the potential for a brewery that sells direct here is huge!

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Leaf Hops at Geterbrewed

Geterbrewed have been able to use their growth to drive down the price of hops in the microbrewery and homebrew industry.

We now have direct at source buying power and refrigerated storage to ensure we are correctly caring for the product. Our hop farmers actively seek perfection so we want to ensure we provide the correct service when handling, storing and repacking the hops

Leaf hops are only offered in 100g foil vac packed pouches for the homebrew market and 5kg foil bales for the microbrewery market. We offer a much larger variety of hop pellets in various quantities but experience has told us to repack leaf hops in one set size.

The quality of the leaf hops are the best we can possibly source, as we buy direct from the hop farmer and pay a fair price we know the hop product is premium quality.

I’ve covered the pellet vs leaf debate in previous blog entries but some systems are only set up for use with leaf hops, you can try using nylon hop bags as a work around to use pellets in these systems

Leaf hops or whole hop cones are usually kiln dried and pressed on the farm that they have been harvested at and usually within hours.

I have seen this in action, the hops are harvested and brought in on the back of a trailer and the vines are stripped to leave just the whole cone. The cones are then kiln dried to a moisture content of around 10%.

Leaf hops are never processed they are simply dried and packed. The farmers we buy our whole hops from cold store their hops, we keep that level of preservation up with the correct cold storage at our warehouse and then when we repack we use quality foil myler pouches which are nitrogen flushed.

During the drying process in the kiln the farmers are acutely aware that this is a delicate drying process, you don’t want the room filled with aroma believe it or not as you want to preserve that.

Usually hop farmers don’t have a pelletising plant so if they want pellets created they send the dried leaf hops/ whole comes to be processed into pellets.

I’ve held freshly kilned hops in my hand straight out of the hop kiln and they are definitely beautifully floral at this stage.

leaf hops, whole hops

To add to our catalogue of extensive brewing products we have again added a large range of the finest leaf hops.

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Kettle Sour Brewing

Geterbrewed did some experimenting over the weekend with new beer recipes and we wanted to try and use the new lallemand wildbrew sourpitch.

sourpitch & belle saison

Our friend Rob Percival from Lallemand kindly gave us some samples of the wildbrew sourpitch freeze dried bacteria. Now I’ve always been very dubious about introducing bacteria to my homebrew system but with a kettle sour you don’t need to worry as after the souring has taken place you bring it to a boil and it kills off the bacteria

We decided to run this test batch on the grainfather, so the brewday was split over two days, day one being the mashing to create the wort then cooling that wort to souring temperature of 36 degrees and holding it at that temperature for 24 hours to drop the ph. Day two is the boiling process and hop additions etc before cooling and pitching the yeast.

thumbs up for kettle sours

In recent times i’ve become a huge fan of sour beers, i’ve gave them to friends and family to sample and they would have never tried them unless encouraged now i have created a whole new group of sour beer fans, people that normally don’t like beer are becoming sour  fans, its definitely growing in popularity.

crisp malt in grainfather

In this recipe I wanted to achieve something super fruity and delicately tart. With most sours the best base is a traditional malt bill for a berliner weisse, so i went for a 50% Pilsen & 50% wheat base, I use Crisp Malt exclusively now as i think they are the best malt producer.  For hops they don’t normally feature heavily in sour beers, I plan on adding a fruit addition so I went for Citra hops to compliment this. I bought 2.5 kg of blueberries and as I like to push the boundaries a little when brewing at home I plan to ferment this all with lallemand’s Belle Saison yeast and add a ‘dry hop’ with a difference, this time i’m going to add gin soaked juniper berries on day 4 to create a really impressive sour beer.

lallemand yeast starter

I mashed the malt at 67 degrees for 60 minutes and then cooled the wort through the grainfather chiller to acheive a temperature of 36 degrees. I rehydrated the freeze dried bacteria ( Wildbrew Sourpitch from lallemand) and added it to the wort and then sealed up the grainfather and set it to hold the temperature for 24 hours.

wildbrew sourpitch

24 hours later the ph had dropped so I brought the wort to a rolling boil, just prior to the boil I added the blueberries and boiled for about 15 minutes at the end of the boil I added citra hops and then chilled the wort via the grainfather chiller to 26 degrees. I had prepared a Belle Saison Yeast starter the day before when doing the initial mash so I pitched the yeast and it got off to a healthy fermentation immediately.

Blueberry fruit sour

I had a starting gravity of 1032 so I’m aiming for a super sessionable 2.9% abv packed with flavour

There is so many options with the new wildbrew sourpitch to create amazing sour beers, we are really impressed with it and hope you try it.

 

 

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Cryohops – Luplun2

Cryohops are designed for enhanced flavour, aroma and yield

Cryo hops

Geterbrewed have a fresh batch of Cryo Hops landing into our warehouse at the start of this week. Not many suppliers are trusted with these hops as you have to handle them very carefully to ensure they are stored and subsequently sold in optimium condition.

We have a purpose made distribution centre for storing all our all grain brewing ingredients, in the hops section all the hops are cold stored at 4 degrees, we then nitrogen flush and foil package all hops that are repacked into smaller amounts, this level of careful packaging and cold storage ensures we offer the best hops on the market and can be trusted as a reseller of cryohops.

Developed by Yakima Chief – Hopunion, Cryo Hops™ represents the most innovative technology in hop processing. It uses a proprietary cryogenic separation process which preserves all components of each hop fraction, producing two simultaneous co-products, LupuLN2™ and Debittered Leaf.

LupuLN2 is the concentrated lupulin of whole-leaf hops containing resins and aromatic oils. It is designed to provide intense hop flavor and aroma, enabling brewers to dose large quantities of hops without introducing astringent flavors or vegetative cone material. During early R&D trials, brewers specifically cited ‘juicy’ and ‘resinous’ characteristics.

LupuLN2 offers twice the resin content of traditional whole-leaf and hop pellet products, and should be dosed at approximately half the amount by weight.

Cryohops Luplun2 boast;

  • CONTROLLED, NITROGEN-RICH PRODUCTION
  • SOLVENT, HEAT AND PRESSURE FREE PROCESSING
  • INTENTIONAL PRESERVATION OF LUPULIN GLANDS
  • INTENSE HOP FLAVOR AND AROMA
  • COLD-PRESSED PELLET PRODUCTION
  • INCREASED EFFICIENCY AND SUSTAINABILITY
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NEIPA All Grain Recipe

NEIPA All Grain Ingredient Kit

Geterbrewed NEIPA recipe

Geterbrewed have been experimenting and we have designed an amazing new NEIPA, this beer has a pillowy mouthful and has some seriously beautiful hop aroma and juicy hop flavour. This brew came out at 4.46%

The Malt Bill
4.5 Kg Crisp Extra Pale Maris Otter
500g Crisp Naked Malted Oats
500g Crisp Dextrine
250g Crisp Crystal 150

The Hop Schedule
A layered hop schedule to provide a depth of hop flavour
Topaz
Ella
Vic Secret

45 Minutes
5g of each Ella, Vic Secret & Topaz

30 Minutes
5g of each Ella, Vic Secret & Topaz

15 minutes
5g of each Ella, Vic Secret & Topaz

0 minutes
55g of each Ella, Vic Secret & Topaz

Dry Hop x 2 occasions
30g of each Ella, Vic Secret & Topaz

Yeast
Lallemand’s New England 25g
Ferment at 21 degrees

Instructions

1. Fill 29 litres of water into your brewing kettle and add your water treatment
2. Heat to a few degrees above your mash temperature as the temp will drop when you add the malt
3. Mash at 67 degrees for 60 minutes
4. Sparge after Mash to achieve pre boil volume of 28.5 litres (check gravity 1046)
5. Boil for 60 minutes
6. Add Hops as per hop schedule at 45 mins, 30 mins, 15 mins, 0 mins
7. Cool after boil to 21 degrees and pitch the yeast (aiming for SG 1046)
8. Ferment at a steady temperature
9. Dry Hop on day 3 90g
10. Dry Hop on day 6 90g
11. Check for final gravity of 1012
12. Package in bottles or kegs as normal

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Hops Supply

The hop industry is changing and rapidly, we now have the onset of a stable market in the craft beer industry in America, that means that the growth and spike is starting to settle down, the hops that have been planted 2-3 years ago  to allow this upword trend to continue are starting to become available and we have an excess of some varieties.

American hops still tend to be the most popular and most sought after, plus we have some desperate need for the super sought after australian hops too

We have contracts for hops that we agreed at a higher rate than we can now buy on the hop spot market but we have to honour them, hop merchants don’t want to drop the price at the same time as all it will take is a poor harvest this year to throw the whole industry on its head, some say this would be welcome to teach brewers a lesson who don’t honour contracts.

We had a traumatic hop harvest in Germany last year for example which has seen  some difficulties in sourcing quality German hops this year for some brewers, we have been able to step in and resolve these supply issues as we had contracts in place with the German hop farmers. There is a value on hop contracts when things go wrong you see!

The hop politics that goes on in this industry is unreal, you guys have no idea the complexities we face when sourcing hops, the tactics employed by our competitors and the large hop merchants.

Thankfully we deal direct with many hop farmers who have left their buying co operatives as they want to achieve a higher price for their product, we pay that higher price, it’s a fair price, we do still have to contract with them but because we have built a relationship we do so that it is mutually beneficial for both of us

What we find is we need a premium quality product and we then need to transport it and store it correctly, there is a cost involved with handling these hops correctly, keeping a product at 4 degrees especially during a heatwave isn’t cheap.

We won’t stock and sell a variety of hops unless it is the best we can possibly source, we then care for the hops correctly, any hops that we repack are done so in our cold store distribution warehouse, we use quality foil packages and vac seal and nitrogen flush, again this is a cost.

We are brewers ourselves and we understand what a premium hop product is, have confidence we are supplying the best hops

We try to use our buying power to drive down the hop prices in the UK & Irish hop market, in recent years we have revolutionised the price and range of hops available, not only for the homebrew market but for the pro brewers, we have sourced a wide variety of the finest hops and maintained stock levels.

We don’t let our brewers down, we ensure they have the hops they need

 

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Indie Beer Week Ireland – Geterbrewed Official Sponsor

We are one of the Main Official Sponsors of Indie Beer Week in Ireland

It’s all about getting out and celebrating your local Irish Independent brewery, your local brewery will have events on running all weekend, get out and get amongst it!!

http://indiebeerweek.ie/

We are very passionate about the Irish Craft Beer Scene and genuinely want to see it grow into a huge success. This business is hard and the brewery owners and their staff really do have a difficult time promoting Craft Beer, there is alot standing in the way of growth of the small independent breweries as the Macro brands try to stop their growth, we ask that you support your local brewery and help grow the movement.

Geterbrewed supply brewing ingredients to Irish breweries and proudly represent Crisp Malt & Lallemand Yeast throughout Ireland as their exclusive distributors, they have contributed to the sponsorship of this awesome event too

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Brewing Malt supply for the craft beer sector

Geterbrewed visited Crisp Maltings recently to get a tour of the new speciality maltings and automated bagging line

Crisp Malt is investing hugely in the Craft Beer industry, with the spend on recent upgrades being in the region of 6.7 million

Crisp Malt is independently owned and run by a passionate team of genuinely driven individuals. A range of expertise makes up the team, we work closely with our brewers to offer full technical support and a first class service and are privileged to be the exclusive Crisp Malt Irish Distributor

There is alot of choice for the pro brewer and homebrewer now in terms of malt supply but you need to use a malt that you can trust.

Crisp Malt is consistently impressive, they understand the quality product that the Craft industry needs.

The catalogue of Crisp Malt products is one of the largest in the industry. It varies from a range of heritage malts, floor malted malts, a range of base & speciality malts plus flaked & torrified products

Crisp Speciality Malt

The new speciality malting plant is a game changer, it’s highlights include;

1. Highly homogenous final product for improved brewhouse performance

2. Improved roasted flavours as grains are toasted in a confined atmosphere

3. Able to process a wide range of raw materials

4. Massive potential for novel product development

5. Fine control of product temperature to allow exact repeatability of recipes

6. No gases of combustion in contact with product

7. Low emissions & energy consumption

8. Highly efficient heat transfer

The new speciality maltings is an impressive sight, it’s operated by off balance electric motors to generate the vibrations for the transport of the grain.

This new technology transports and mixes by vibration and is heated by direct contact with a hot surface. All treatment is carried out in a confined space with 3 independent heating zones processing an impressive 1500kg per hour

The malt we tasted fresh out of the maltings was quite simply beautiful and absolutely packed with flavour

Exciting times ahead for Crisp Malt.

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Hops

Have confidence in the hops we supply, the finest available and the latest harvests

Geterbrewed supply a large amount of hops to the homebrew and microbrewery community throughout Ireland and the UK

The key to our success and high quality starts from where we source the hops and they how they are transported to us and subsequently stored and re packed as necessary.

Geterbrewed have invested heavily in the correct equipment to correctly cold store hops, we store all our hops at 4 degrees. We use top quality foil bags for all repacking and they are nitrogen flushed and vac packed.

We have now built up strong relationships with hop farmers from across the globe, we pay a premium price but buying direct allows us to give the growers a little more and in turn they care about the quality of the product we receive.

You will hear nightmare stories about containers of hops being taken through the Panama Canal without correct refrigerated transport, this results in a poor hop supply when it arrives into the UK/ Europe. Recently we have new hop suppliers pushing this out at cheap prices making people think they are providing a saving.

We have our hops transported and stored correctly, we now have the expertise and experience to ensure we are providing the very best hops we can. We know our hop stocks are the best in the marketplace.

In recent years we have focused purely on t90 hop pellets for numerous reasons which I have covered on previous blogs but as our microbrewery business has grown we can now offer leaf hops to Microbrewers that have systems that don’t work with hop pellets.

We are proud of the quality of our hops and are pleased to have been able to drive down the price of homebrew  and brewery hops as we have expanded our buying power.