THE BREWING PROCESS

ETHOS

Our beer making process is founded on the belief that care taken in the selection and processing of the raw materials will be repaid in the beer flavour. Beer can move from being an alcoholic commodity to a sensory product as worthy of the name as any wine, tea or coffee.

Our motivation

The trouble with us is we have a passion and something to prove. Just like flowers and fruits, we know that hops contain Terpenes. These Terpenes are what give grapes their varietal aromas and indeed give fruits and flowers their smell. With the right raw material and attention to detail in the brewing process these hop derived fruity or floral varietal aromas can show in beers.

Taste our Yankee and look for aromas of lychees, Muscat grapes or roses. Try our Oyster Stout (when it's in season) and look for the coffee, liquorice and chocolate aromas.

In our pale coloured beers, we do this with our hops selection and usage. Flavours of grapefruit, tangerine, peach and Muscat grapes are not uncommon in our beers. But just as in wines, the intensity of these aromas will vary according to the quality of last year's harvest. Our job is to get the very best out of the hops we have selected. With our darker beers, the principle of preserving the best of what is in the raw materials holds true here. Aromas of toffee, roast coffee, dark chocolate and liquorice are quite common. Richness and smoothness and as many of the aromas above are what we seek. Brewlength (brew batch size) 25 barrels, we now make about 80 barrels a week. We also have a small 2 barrel experimental plant. Brewhouse We use a 25 barrel continental brewplant imported from Cleveland USA. It has a steam fired kettle and mash tun, a lauter tun, hot and cold liquor tanks.

BREWING MATERIALS
We use only the best raw materials we can find. Hop harvests and barley harvests vary from year to year. In the case of hops, like grapes, some vintages are great and others just good.

Hops:

We use hops from all over the World. We buy from a variety of hop merchants and other sources. We travel to Yakima Valley in Washington USA each year to select our hops from dozens of samples. In common with other brewers we store our hops cool and Vac Packed.

Hops on the bine

Malts:

We use Maris Otter and Golden Promise Malt from Simpsons of Alnwick. Coloured malts such as crystal, chocolate, black, roast, amber malt, melanoidin malt, smoked malt, wheat malt etc.come from a variety of suppliers. Some of the specialist malts come from further afield.

Field of Barley. Courtesy of Simpsons of Alnwick

Water: We treat our water according to the style of beer we are about to make. Harrogate water is very soft so contains very few salts. Our soft water comes from the Yorkshire Dales and is perfect to adapt to make any kind of beer we want. We don’t take anything out, just add the salts we need.

Making the beer

The Mash
We mix water and crushed malted barley together to make a porridge called a 'mash'. At 63c - 65c the enzymes in the mash convert the starches into sugars that will eventually be turned into alcohol during the fermentation. When all the starch has been converted to sugars, the mash is over. The conversion/'mash' lasts an hour or so. When the mash is over, the sweet liquid called 'wort' is drained from the mash and pumped to the boiling kettle. While this is happening the mash is rinsed or 'sparged' to remove the remaining sugars. This liquid is also added to the boiling kettle and heated.

Floating mash as seen through the top manway.

The Boil
The wort is boiled for several reasons, to sterilise the wort, to halt all enzyme activity, to drive off unwanted smells in the 'wort' and to coagulate insoluble proteins. The boil lasts for between 1.25 - 1.5 hours. During the boil the hops are added. These are added in two, three or multiple portions. Those added in the early part of the boil give mainly bitterness and those added at the end of the boil give both aroma and bitterness. The exact timing and quantities of hops added are what are a big part of what determines the final character of the beer.

The Fermentation
When the boil is over the 'wort' is cooled through a plate heat exchanger to around 17c - 20c so that yeast can be added to start the fermentation. This chilling happens as the wort travel from the kettle to the fermentation tank. The beer ferments for 4 - 5 days before being allowed to rest for 48 hours and then cooled to 9c -10c. 24 hours later the beer is barrelled and will be ready to be drunk in 7 to 10days. Isinglass finings are added to the beer before despatch. The beer is clear to drink within 24 hours of being delivered to the pub.

Fermentation head after 12 hours in the fermenter.