Not many people would admit it, but
things don't always go to plan in a brewery. Beer is a living thing
and so many variables can effect it, and every so often a beer is
brewed that just doesn't want to behave. I could name several very
successful beers out there that were born out of error; I won't
though.
Back in March our head brewer took the
day off, leaving our very competent team to brew the next batch of
Black Perle. This happens from time to time with no problem, but on
this cold morning the wind must have been coming in from the wrong
direction or the planets had aligned badly as we overshot our
efficiency. This means we made way more sugar in the wort than usual,
which in turn means the yeast is likely to produce more alcohol.
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| Picture courtesy of Matt Curtis |
Our problems did not end there though;
the yeast seemed to really like this beer and did not want to stop
consuming the sugars. Usually with a stout you would create lots of
long chain sugars that yeast don't like. These sugars are left in the
beer giving it a thicker body. This time round, the yeast wanted to
eat almost everything and so the beer tasted a little thinner than we
would like.
To recap, we had an over efficient
brew, meaning more sugar, and yeast that just wanted to eat
everything. So after fermentation we were left with a version of
Black Perle that is over 1% higher ABV and with a little thinner
mouthfeel than we would have liked. At this point, decisions have to be
made: can the beer be fixed and released as normal? Is the beer
releasable at all? Do we do something a little different with it?
Well, we could have added some water to dilute the alcohol and bring
it back to the right ABV, but this would thin the already lacking
body even more and it just wouldn’t be Black Perle. The beer tasted
great, as it always does, so we weren’t going to ditch it. This is
where our creative juices start to flow and we get excited. What can
we now do to turn this into an interesting new beer; make a positive
out of a negative; find the up side of a down day? We tasted the beer
and decided that with the addition of some choice dry hops this would
be the perfect Breakfast Black IPA. So we chucked generous amounts of
Bravo, Apollo and Cascade hops in the fermenter with all that lovely
Has Bean Coffee, and gave it some time to take shape.
We think the end product is great. And hope you all enjoy it. But not too much, really don't fancy trying to brew this one again.