knowledge.
Speaking of knowledge, you possibly don’t know what first-wort hopping is. The truth is that I didn’t until relatively recently. But you’ll know exactly what it is, along with endless other vital bits of information, by the end of this book. The aim of Beer School is to take you on the same journey that beer has gone through, whether that’s literally through the pipes of a brewhouse or through the chronicles of time. All the while, we’ll pick apart the science from the art of brewing, using our experiences and those of some of the world’s greatest brewers.
But we’re not going to stop there, because the journey doesn’t either. Understanding beer is vital to enjoying it – not only how it’s brewed but how it should be stored, served and drunk. We’re going to get totally lost in all that – what glassware, what temperatures, and how to pour. It’s not being precious or nerdy to say that tiny decisions can massively change how we perceive flavour. After all the hard work that went into brewing, we should do the brewer justice.
What happens to the beer after it leaves the brewery is almost as important as what happens before. A beer’s journey doesn’t end until you’ve drunk it, smiled and reached for another. Each one is another step towards enlightenment. And so is every chapter in this book. Welcome to Beer School, the best days of your life.
All beers start in a brewer’s head. It could be a craving for grapefruit, a weird idea about peanuts, or the ambition to make the best pilsner ever. Their skill as a brewer is how he or she translates that ambition into liquid.
But before we get to that we must recognize that the original idea has to be a great one. Even if no one else thinks it’s great, that conviction and clarity of concept is hugely important. This is the first lesson in brewing.
When you look back at the breweries that have made the biggest impact, it’s clear to see that the concept was sound. Let’s take America’s meteoric rise in the beer world as an example. It was started by just a few people, in some cases in their living rooms. Humble beginnings but big ambitions. Jim Koch of Boston Brewing Company decided that lager didn’t need to be dumbed down to be enjoyable. Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada discovered the power of American hops and set out to show everyone what they could do. Goose Island’s Greg Hall wanted to combine the big-flavoured beer with the American traditions of barrel-aging whisky.
All three of these ideas are brilliant – the kind of ideas that make you wonder how they had never been done before. The kind of idea that leaves you kicking yourself because it wasn’t you that came up with it. They had the power to change the course of brewing, and they created three cracking beers that prepped the market for thousands of others to do the same.
With the brewing world blown wide open there are ideas cropping up all over the place. What started as a very American revolution has spread across the globe. That’s been fantastic for the quality of beer we can drink, but it’s made standing out a lot harder. Now the ideas seem much more subtle, while setting yourself apart has become even more important. It could be dry-hopping at an unusual time to create a new style, adding ingredients no one has thought of using, or reverting back to fermenting in slate and wood like we did centuries ago.
I’m alluding to a lot of famous breweries here, but none of these guys were the first to think of these things. If you want to see future trends in beer, look to the home brewers. They are the guys experimenting in their garages with no commercial or time pressures. They make beer just for themselves, and they can experiment without the worry of wasting huge amounts of ingredients, time or money. There’s not a brewery in the world that doesn’t have at least one brewer who started at home with a massive pan, a plastic spoon and a head full of dreams.
HUNDREDS, MAYBE THOUSANDS
Jim, Ken and Greg probably had their ideas at the same time as a thousand others, but these were the guys who managed to convey that great idea in a beer. They took a concept and by chance or design made it look, feel and taste special. The beer in their heads became the beer in the glass, which is a much harder process than your average drinker realises. Even before you get to the art of it, the science is tough enough.
The Brad and I are often asked what makes a great brewery. It took years to find a satisfactory answer and, sadly, it wasn’t either of us who first said it. It was Sam McMeekin, the cofounder of Gipsy Hill Brewing Company, who noted that a great brewery does everything 1% better than its nearest rival. I love that idea.
While brewing, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of touch points where decisions have to be made and actions taken. It could be the mash temperature, the hop regime, the time in barrel or anything else along the brewing timeline. What your decisions are and when you enact them is the difference between a great idea and a great beer. The first touchpoint is the ingredients, and that’s where the idea starts to take shape.
You can make beer without hops, you make beer without cultivated yeast, and you can make beer without water (oh yes). But you can’t make it without grain.
Grain was the key to the discovery of beer and, in fact, alcohol. A stone tablet chiseled in Sumeria (now Iraq) shows the world’s first hipsters enjoying a beer through straws from a single communal bowl. We think they’re using straws because their beer filtration techniques weren’t exactly up to scratch, so essentially they were sucking on old porridge.
Historians believe beer was discovered when these people were making bread and left the spent grain or leftover dough out in the rain. A few days later some hungry fellow decided to eat some, and suddenly he found that he could dance better and his self-esteem issues had gone away. I jest, but he would have certainly felt a little light-headed and rather good about himself. It must have been a feeling quite unlike any he had ever experienced – a feeling they put down to a gift from god – so it’s no wonder the Sumerians tried to replicate it.
Their grain recipe – or “malt bill” – was very simple: one kind of grain, crushed by hand. It’s hard to know which grain it was because any cereal with starch has the ability to be turned into alcohol, but archaeologists have found evidence from the time to suggest it was barley. This grain remains the most important in brewing.
The myriad reasons for this will make you marvel at the wonder of barley. There are two ways in which it is perfect. The first is that it has the best combination of enzymes and starch concentrations, which allows for greater utilisation and extract of sugars. To put that in English, barley has lots of sugars that are easy to turn into alcohol (we’ll talk more about that process later).
My favourite reason is that barley has a husk – a tough outer shell that protects it from damage. That makes it easy
