For quite some time, we’ve thought it likely that our Cashmere Brut IPA would be gluten free, but as with all things that could be harmful to anyone, we had to make sure. Along with many of our other beers, Cashmere is treated with Brewer’s Clarity, which contains a highly specific fungal endopeptidase enzyme to help remove haze from beer. One of the things that is cleared out by the enzyme is gluten – reducing the residual gluten in the beer is effectively a side effect of reducing the haze and trying to make our beer clearer.
As all our beer is vegan, we don’t use isinglass finings in our beers, meaning we have to find other ways to make them clear. We use Brewer’s Clarity as part of that process meaning that a beer being both gluten free and vegan is no coincidence.
We recently sent off a sample of our bottled Cashmere Brut IPA to Murphy & Son for testing and today we received the results: the beer has less than 10 parts per million gluten, meaning it’s well within the 20 ppm legal limit to call it gluten free.
We’re always looking for ways to make our beers more accessible. Making them all vegan was an easy first step, but we’ve been dragging our heels on taking on the gluten free world because we’ve had so much else going on – but now we’re proud to say that our Cashmere Brut IPA is gluten free and we’re thrilled that this means that even more people will be able to enjoy it!
Last week we took a look at how we at Beerblefish design our range of Heritage Ales. This week, we’re moving onto how we create our contemporary beers. The current trend for drinkers wanting new and exciting beers all of the time means that we do a lot more of this than we do designing new heritage brews. It’s led us to creating a couple of series of beers where we only change one variable.
The first of those series to come about was our Hoppy Pale Ale series. The brews are simply numbered in sequence and are designed to showcase hops and not the yeast or malt. The malt bill is 100% extra pale malt and we stick to a one hour boil time, pitching at 20 degrees Celsius for a clean fermentation – unlike our heritage brews, we’re not looking for the funky yeast flavours we can get by experimenting with fermentation temperature.
We usually select two or three hops to include, carefully deciding (by smell) which of the hops we have in stock work well together. If there’s an exciting new hop out that we haven’t tried before, we might order it in and include it.
Following on from the success of the Hoppy Pale Ale series, we’ve got its first younger sibling, Hoppy Little Fish No.1, in the fermenter at the moment – this will be the first of our new series of table beers, still showcasing hops but at a lower ABV. Look out for it in a week or two!!
Our contemporary range isn’t all about hoppy pales, though. James Atherton, Beerblefish founder and MD, has an eclectic palate and likes to make a variety of styles, including stouts and milds. He says, “I generally don’t like to use roasted malts in dark beers. I prefer using chocolate malts for the softness they give in the flavour and mouthfeel.” He thinks this is a particular benefit when making a fruity stout, where it’s better to have chocolate and coffee notes, not burnt bitter notes.
Beerblefish occasionally ventures into lager, too. In that regard, we’re very traditional, and like to observe the German beer law, the Reinheitsgebot, even though we’re definitely not required to! We use German lager yeast, lager malt and we always use noble hops for bittering and at flame-out. We normally brew our lagers in winter, not summer, because the lager yeast is resilient to the colder temperatures and will still finish fermenting even when it’s freezing outside.
One part of the design process that James (and the rest of the team) always enjoy doing is grabbing 20 examples of the style of beer being created and sipping through them while making tasting notes. We can usually tell within a few minutes what malt bill, flame-out hops and style of yeast have been used and sometimes the rough temperature it’s been fermented at. However, sometimes there will be an enigma of a beer that’s more difficult to work out and there has been more than one time that James has woken up in the middle of the night with a Eureka moment, having realised what the hop he’d missed was.
This isn’t to say, of course, that beer design should be simply about copying other beers, but it would be a foolish brewer who ignored the best examples of a style when trying to create a new recipe. It also helps to stimulate the imagination, so that new styles can be created and new variations on older types of beer can be tried.
Sometimes, though, the purpose of the beer is the driving force behind the creation. This time last year, I went to a dinner party and everyone was drinking wine. There were two or three elegant bottles with stylish labels sitting on the table and the other guests were drinking from their fancy wine glasses and having a great time. I’m allergic to grapes and can’t drink wine unless it’s sparkling (yes, I just have expensive tastes!!) so, although I had a beer, I felt a bit left out of the communal activity of sharing a drink with friends. I decided to do something about it and asked the team to make a beer that fills the gap that wine left on my dinner table.
We batted about a few ideas for styles – saison was on the list because it can have some Champagne-like qualities, and we thought about doing something with actual Champagne yeast too. I’d also briefed the team that the beer needed to be seriously classy and suggested that we call it Cashmere, which led us to then use the Cashmere hop as the primary flavour. Cashmere has a lemon-citrus note that pulled us towards the Brut IPA style, which is not too bitter and very dry on the finish – just like a dry white wine.
The resulting beer does exactly what I wanted it to – packaged into a 750ml bottle with a fancy label, it looks good on any table and the beer is up to the job. It’s light and fruity, very pale gold in colour and, at 6.7%, is strong enough to make you want to share a bottle or two with friends.
We hope you’ve enjoyed these insights into how Beerblefish beers are designed – there may be a part 3 at some point, looking at some of our seasonal specials!
In the second of our series on our regular stockists, brewery manager Glenn talked to Kate, the co-founder of Holtwhites Bakery & Deli in Enfield to find out about all things bread!
Spotlight On… Bready Beginnings
Kate told us that she can’t remember what her life was like before setting up the bakery with her husband, Richard, in 2011. She said, “Life was slightly crazy because I was running a micro-bakery from home, I had young children, I was working as a social researcher and Richard was a Spanish teacher.”
Kate and Richard were baking for friends and word got out. They would bake on Friday nights and it got to the point that they’d have 60 people lined up outside their house on the Saturday, waiting to pick up their weekend loaves. Having a deli was part of their original plan, as it made sense to serve tasty cheeses and other delicacies.
The couple lived just around the corner from the shop they set up in, so they knew the area and the space seemed perfect. As they lived on Holtwhites Hill, it made sense to use a local name for the new venture.
Spotlight On… Rising to the Challenge
Glenn asked Kate about the challenges she’d faced in setting out: “On opening day, I’d never operated a till!” On a more serious note, Kate said that being responsible for the livelihood of her staff is a massive responsibility, but there is a good network of support amongst bakers so she and Richard could ask questions when they needed to.
Spotlight On… the Proof of the Pudding
Kate and Richard pride themselves on only using the best quality ingredients and traditional, “slow” baking methods which means that their products look, smell and taste great naturally. They aim to delight their customers with great customer service and want their shop to be a warm and welcoming haven for people who love good food.
Kate said she thinks the business is such a great success because, “It’s a labour of love. We really believe in the product.” She thinks that regular customers would describe the bakery as a nice place with a lovely community atmosphere.
Spotlight On… Going Against the Grain
Of her products, Kate’s favourite bread is the sourdough rye and the 100% wholemeal. Portuguese custard tarts are very popular with the customers. She’s seeing a big interest in Scandinavian baking at the moment, along with a surge in interest in vegan products – Kate thinks that’s down to people converting to veganism (rather than the bakery attracting new customers who are vegan). Around thirty per cent of the coffees that Holtwhites sell are served with oat milk.
Spotlight On… Liquid Bread
Holtwhites started stocking Beerblefish bottled beers before Christmas to complement their existing line up of craft ales. So far, they’ve had 1820 Porter, 1892 IPA, Infinite Improbability Saison, Amarillo Single Hop and Cashmere Brut IPA.
Kate told Glenn that her customers love Beerblefish beers, saying, “When we first started stocking the beers, one customer noted that he was a fan already.” Apparently, the Cashmere Brut IPA has also attracted a core following!
Spotlight On… Blooming Romance
Glenn asked Kate if any romance had bloomed in the bakery: “Besides staff… I’m not aware of any customers getting together, although it is a friendly atmosphere in here so it may have happened!”
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