Splash It All Over
Next up in our exciting series of collaboration brews, we are very excited to introduce “Splash It All Over”, our first ever Brut IPA, brewed with the wonderful Haand Bryggeriet, whose brewer Kacper Kulpa joined us all the way from Norway.
The Brut IPA is an emerging beer style in the current UK market, named for its bone dry nature which emulates that found in drinks such as champagne, with the lingo itself swiped from the wine world. These beers tend to be aromatic, with a lovely effervescence which dances across the tongue to work in harmony with the dryness on the palate.
In terms of the recipe, we kept this one fairly simple. We kept the base of the beer relatively straightforward, selecting a low colour malt base, with added rice in the grist to keep the beer light and crisp without the addition of the potential for any further sugars. The brewday itself however required a few amendments to our norm to ensure we were going to hit the brief on this up and coming new style. The main differences being a longer mash stand (120 minutes instead of our usual 75) at a lower temperature (60.5 degrees C instead of around 66) with the addition of the enzyme amyloglucosidase (AMG). This enzyme is capable of breaking down the more complex sugars found in wort which would otherwise not ferment (and as such has for many years been used in the brewing of styles such as imperial stouts, to help avoid them having too high a final gravity and too sweet a flavour). In breaking down the starchier sugar chains, the yeast is able to find more munchies and act upon the wort for longer, thus producing a very low final gravity – we were aiming for 1003.5 and hit 1003.0.
AMG is denatured at high temperatures – as such, some people choose to add it to their wort along with the yeast at the start of fermentation. We took the decision not to do this to avoid the risk of cross contamination, as we have a house yeast which we continually re-use and re-pitch. We were conscious that the enzyme could also act slower than our yeast, and so would have had potential to lead to continued fermentation after packaging and thus have a less stable product in can. The longer mash stand allowed the enzyme to have sufficient time in the right environment (including pH) to cleave as many sugar bonds as we desired, create enough simpler sugars for the type of fermentation we were aiming for and therefore have the effect we were going for, without any added risk.
We co-fermented with Saccharomyces Brux Trois and US-05 which allowed for a low final gravity, another element which helps to obtain the dry character associated with this beer style whilst also adding a hint of fruitiness.
The subtle malt character allows the hops to really shine, and so Splash It All Over has been brewed and copiously dry hopped (at a dry hopping rate of 12g per litre) with Ekuanot, Enigma and Eureka, for a delicate bittering level, a resinous character and a smooth mouthfeel.
The fantastically colourful artwork for this beer has been created by the amazing Lewis Ryan, and forms part of the same series started by Creeping Brett. Keep hold of those can labels as you’ll be starting to see a little puzzle starting to solve itself very soon… big clue below!
Splash It All Over is due to be released in keg and can only (to make sure you’re always getting the characteristic fizz associated with the Brut IPA style) from the 8th October – eager beavers can come to our Tap Takeover and Meet the Brewer event at Tilt in Birmingham this Friday 5th October for the first pour!
Cheers,
Team Abbeydale
