We’ve made it no secret we love history here at The Cebruery. We also love brewing very different styles, and using those styles to display the versatility of craft beer. Want something light? There’s a beer for that. Want something dark? There’s a beer for that. Love hops? There’s a beer for that. Prefer something maltier? Try a wee heavy.

Beer has been produced in Scotland for approximately 5,000 years. It’s possible that brewing in Scotland dates all the way back to the Neolithic period – you know, the new stone age. A Pictish Neolithic crock dated to 6500 BC was determined to contain residue of barley and oats, heather and/or heather honey, and assorted indigenous plants. The presence of the two cereal grains suggests that ancient Scots had a rudimentary understanding of fermentation, apparently developed around the same time as their contemporaries in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and Continental Europe. That’s quite a heritage.

Back then, humans were cultivating cereal grains, so we had access to barley, but we hadn’t yet really discovered hops, so early Scots probably bittered and flavored their primitive beer with meadowsweet or gruit. Gruit was (and is) a combination of herbs that included sweet gale (Myrica gale), mugwort (Aremisia vulgarism), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), horehound (Marrubium vulgar), and perhaps most importantly heather (Calluna vulgarism), though other adjunct herbs such as black henbane, juniper, ginger, caraway, anise, nutmeg, and cinnamon were used, too. It varied from brewer to brewer, with each one using a different combination of herbs to produce their own unique “house” flavors and effects.

Heather in particular pops up frequently in the annals of Scottish brewing history. Allegedly, pictish heather ale was so coveted by outsiders that the marauding Irish High King Niall obliterated the entire population of Galloway in the fourth century in part to obtain the closely guarded recipe. Legend says that the secrets were never divulged, even in the face of death.

Gruit was gradually phased out beginning around the 11th century as the use of hops became more widespread in Europe. Brewing without hops lasted a little longer in England, and up until the late 16th century, a distinction was made between “ale” (which was unhopped) and “beer” imported from Dutch merchants (which was hopped). Like so much of the history of beer, politics and global events influenced the transition to hops. As we mentioned in our previous post, part of that transition was borne out of health and safety concerns. Elsewhere, Protestant princes encouraged farmers to grow and brewers to transition to hops following the Reformation in an attempt to cut off revenue streams from the Catholic church, which had developed a monopoly on the production of many gruit blends. Some even suggest the transition towards hops was a result of Puritan influence, designed to keep people from enjoying themselves with aphrodisiac and stimulating gruit ales by imposing the sedative effects of hops instead.

Edinburgh Ale, 1844, by Hill & Adamson. Perhaps the earliest photograph of men drinking beer. Photo via Wikipedia.com

However, the dominating consideration was likely—as it is with so many things—economics. Beer brewed with hops lasted longer and resisted spoilage better than that made with gruit. This increase in “shelf life” enabled beers to be sent farther abroad, enjoyed by more consumers, and weather temperature extremes with greater ease. All these factors meant that brewers who used hops were making more money, and market forces eventually forced the abandonment of gruit.

The use of bittering herbs such as heather, myrtle, and broom persisted in remote parts of Scotland longer than the rest of the UK and Europe, however. Thomas Pennant wrote in “A Tour of Scotland” (1769) that on the island of Islay, “ale is frequently made of the young tops of heath, mixing two-thirds of that plant with one of malt, sometimes adding hops.”

Despite the ingredient preferences, however, the brewing business in Scotland developed similarly—if somewhat emulatively—to the brewing business in the rest of the United Kingdom. Breweries were generally owned and operated by monasteries or by “alewives.” In 1509, Aberdeen, Scotland had over 150 brewers – all women (compared to London figures from the same year, which could boast of 290 brewers, around 60% of whom were women). Commercial brewers in Scotland organized the Edinburgh Society of Brewers in 1575, not too long after the London Brewer’s Guild formed in 1342.

The Acts of Union 1707, however, provided new commercial opportunities for Scottish breweries. Tax on beer was levied at a much lower level than in the rest of the UK, and there was no tax on malt in Scotland. It was during this time that brewing in Scotland really took off, particularly in Edinburgh, with some of the breweries formed during that period still operating today (such as Tennents and Belhaven Brewery).

I say “particularly in Edinburgh” because Edinburgh’s strategic location upon a fault line gives it the perfect soft water for brewing the burly, malty, temperately-hopped beers. This is not to say brewers in other parts of Scotland didn’t have access to harder water more suited for brewing paler or more hoppy ales—they did, and breweries situated near other aquifers began brewing world class pale ales and IPAs. This, however, required the importation of significant quantities of hops from Kent in England—hops simply do not grow in Scotland—and this was something some brewers were often loathe to do, depending on the particular political climate at the time. So brewers in Edinburgh played the hand they were dealt, and began specializing in beers made with ale malt kilned a little darker than their English counterparts, lending their beers more overall depth and color.

So with brewing in Scotland was booming, brewers were keen to export their brews en masse to take advantage of the favorable production conditions afforded them by the aforementioned Acts of Union. In the 18th and in to the 19th century, Scotland was one of the world’s premiere brewing powers. The first photograph of people drinking beer was taken in Edinburgh in 1844 by David Hill and Robert Adansom.

In the 1870s, new legislation was passed assessing duties on beer based on their strength. These duties worked their way in to the vernacular, and to this day, a light Scottish Ale (under 3.5% abv, lightly hopped, malty) is called a “60 Shilling,” a heavy Scottish Ale (up to 4.5% abv, a little darker, a little hoppier) a “70 Shilling,” and an export Scotch Ale (deep amber to dark copper in color, up to 5.5% abv) an “80 Shilling.” The strongest of all Scotch Ales—assessed at 90 or even 100 shillings— was a barleywine-style ale known as a “wee heavy.” The term originated from a combination of the traditional serving size of these stronger beers—often served in 1/3 Imperial Pint “nip” glasses, which were admittedly “wee” when compared to the larger 20 oz glasses—and their alcohol strength—“heavy.”

These higher taxes and duties caused Scottish brewing to enter a period of decline: by 1970, there were 11 breweries remaining in Scotland, down from 280 in 1840. The brewing of traditional styles was in decline, with many breweries switching their output to predominantly lager (which, to be fair, the cool climate of Scotland is very well suited to produce). But since the early 1990s, the small, independent brewing scene in Scotland has come roaring back, and with it an interest in historical Scottish styles.

So at the heyday of the glory of Edinburgh being the capital of the brewing world, we have:

1) the perfect cool, maritime climate for sturdy, heavier, warming beers, and one that’s not so great for growing hops;
2) a history of bittering herbs in lieu of hops;
3) a political climate making brewers hesitant to import hops from their neighbors to the south with whom they often had an acrimonious relationship (England) and a brewing culture that evolved free of taxes on malt;
4) a brewing capital sitting on a fault line providing soft water, high in chlorides and low in sulfates, perfect for accentuating darker, malty beers; and (though we didn’t really talk about it above)
5) a climate that allows for cool fermentation – that is, one that only allows for the survival of yeast that are able to ferment at cool temperatures that suppress ester and hot alcohol formation – and an easy lager-like conditioning of the finished product to round out the flavors

Have we painted you a picture of what a Wee Heavy Strong Scotch Ale probably tastes like yet?

Often called a “Strong Scotch Ale” by those who are too embarrassed to order something called a “wee heavy” out loud at a bar (never a problem in Scotland – remember, this is a country where grown men wear skirts), a wee heavy can be light copper all the way to dark brown in color, often with ruby highlights. A large, tan head is expected, though it may not persist long with the higher alcohol content and low carbonation. The aroma should be deeply malty, with caramel often apparent and dominating, though peat, earth, and smoke can provide secondary complexity; hints of alcohol and minimal esters can be present in the nose, but shouldn’t dominate. The flavor should be richly malty, with kettle caramelization—complex caramelized reactions caused not by the use of specialty malts but instead by Malliard reactions that occur in the boil kettle during a prolonged two or even three hour-long boil—contributing nutty, toffee-like, and smoky flavors. Malt complexity can come across as plums, raisins, or dried fruits, and hop flavors and bitterness should be low. Carbonation (as was mentioned above) should be low to moderate – no bright, crisp effervescent zip here. Alcohol can range from 6.5% up to 10% or even higher.

So how does our Fat Bottomed Girl stack up? We think she more than holds her own against this illustrious brewing history. A dark ruby-hued body, the aroma is full of dark, malty caramel, gentle spice, and dark, plum-like fruit notes. Clocking in at 8.8% alcohol and with a final gravity in the low 20s, our Girl has plenty of residual sweetness – hints of rum raisin, dark pumpernickel bread, and molasses-coated figs mingle with faint smoky and nutty notes, the result of a 2.5 hour boil and dark English crystal malts being used in the grist. Hop bitterness clocks in at a low 28 IBUs – enough to prevent the sweetness from being cloying, but hardly even an afterthought compared to all the maltiness goin’ on up in here.

We also have a few special kegs of Fat Bottomed Girl that have been aged on whiskey-soaked guava wood. Ask for them if you actually took the time to read to the end of this blog post!

We’ve ben busy brewing something up for you guys! Yes, you read that right, we’ve been busy brewing the our new commercial equipment and we’ll have beer for you soon… for the meantime, head over to our Facebook page as we try and tease you with picture countdown. As I write this short, but sweet post, we’re currently at B-minus 11.

When I was put on Keezer design duty, I knew exactly how I wanted it to look like. I have been a long-time fan of Restoration Hardware and everything with a wood restoration finish. A few Google researches and I was finally able to get a much clearer view on what to do and how to get the look on our own – because we’re hands on like that, heh.

A “keezer” is a portmanteau of “keg” and “freezer,” which pretty much tells you exactly what it is – a chest freezer that’s been converted in to a draught system. To avoid drilling holes into the freezer itself and potentially damaging the condensation coils, we had this top made out of Mahogany wood, where we will be installing the tap handles. Also, it gives your keezer a lot more space for kegs!

As a base color for the keezer top we chose the color white, since we were ultimately aiming for that rustic dove grey look. I painted haphazardly to make sure that parts of the wood still showed, and at the same time making sure that I painted with the grain. It’s best to do two coats of white and let it dry for at least 12 hours. Now don’t be impatient, I learned my lesson the hard way, by slapping the grey into the still wet white the color of the mahogany bled right through and I ended up with yellowish blotches that I had to re-paint. Better wait than sorry!

After waiting a full 18 hours for the first coat to dry, I sanded the white coat using a 60 grit sand paper (an 80 grit will do just fine) to give it that extra distressed look, and then I proceeded to do some dry brushing. It’s a technique used to add distressed patina to a piece of wood. You do this by lightly dipping the ends of your brush into the paint (for the second coating we used a medium grey color), and then wipe it with a rag until your brush is dry. This method aims to make it look like the old paint is showing through the newer coat. It doesn’t look much yet in this photo, but I promise it looked tons better once I was through with it. Patience is a virtue, ha!

After waiting for the dry brushed grey to dry, I sanded it off with a 120 grit sand paper, and behold the final look. Not bad for a first timer, I guess, ha! There’s still a lot more room for improvement, specially with the dry brushing – it takes a whole lot of patience, then again, brewing beer takes a lot of patience too!

We hope you guys enjoyed reading about our little DIY keezer project and hopefully you can share with us your DIY beer projects as well!

More often than not, we take swigs out of our beer straight from the bottle or can – is there something wrong with that? Well, it depends on what you’re after. Are you looking to get drunk, or to just wash down your meal?  Or are you looking to have a more fully defined sensory experience and really enjoy what you’re about to consume?  If it’s the latter, we suggest you start pouring from now on. I guess our predisposition to consuming it in the former way is the result of our culture and how we, Filipinos, perceive beer. It’s always been largely a tool for merrymaking and, let’s admit it, intoxication. Fortunately, however, more and more craft breweries have been opening up in the Philippines and giving us an opportunity for a more worldly beer experience. Yes, as we’ve mentioned time and time again, there’s more to beer than just its alcohol content.

There are a number of reasons why you should pour your beer in a glass—and not just any glass, but the appropriate, clean glass. Like wine, there is glassware that has been crafted to highlight the flavor, appearance, and scent of the beer (we’ll talk more about what styles of glassware are appropriate for which styles of beer in a later post). First thing’s first: when it comes to food and beverage, aesthetics matter. Sure, the bottle looks swanky and the beer label hip, but that’s not even half of it. What any serious beer enthusiast should know or already knows is that without pouring your beer you will never be able to marvel at its beauty. A little too dramatic for you? Maybe, but seriously, appreciation of consistency, color, clarity, head structure, effervescence, and lacing amplify the beer experience, and you can’t get any of that if your beer stays in the bottle. It’s all an integral part of the presentation. And the beer head, come on, isn’t that reason enough to pour your beer? Throw out the misguided belief that you’ll get more for your money when drinking beer without the head or other such nonsense. A nice, one-finger-tall, foamy, frothy head helps keep your beer in the best condition until and while you drink it.  Why?  Let’s get scientific. When beer foams, it’s obviously due to the creation of little bubbles.  This is a process called “nucleation” – the physics of nucleation isn’t entirely understood, but what we do understand is that certain proteins present in barley and hops are what we call “foam positive agents,” which are exactly what you think they are.  These proteins are essentially really hydrophobic – that is, they don’t like water – so they’d much rather hitch a ride on a rising carbon dioxide bubble dissolved in the beer and liberated by the action of an aggressive pour in to a glass.  These proteins then cross-link and form a dense mass of foam on the surface of a beer – and voila, head. And foam has a huge effect on flavor and aroma.  Certain compounds are prevented from evaporating out of your beer by the presence of this head, and certain other compounds (like oxygen) are kept out of your beer by the same.  Foam also has a big trigeminal effect, which is the word used to describe the “feel” of a taste (think how “cool” mint is, or how “hot” chili peppers are) – the creamy, fluffy head can smooth out the flavor profile of a beer considerably via this effect.   And those volatile aromatics–“smells,” for the layperson–are important. Fact, the olfactory sense plays a big part in tasting. Flavor = taste + aroma. Without these, much of what we taste would be one-dimensional, bland even. When we consume food or beverage, it gives off aroma vapors that are detected by the gustatory system receptors in the back of the mouth. Because the rim of the beer of a bottle is so narrow, very little of those vapors escape and reach those receptors; however, by pouring your beer, you not only allow it to agitate but also serve it in a vessel with a wide enough mouth to allow the vapors to volatilize, escape, and reach their final destination, allowing the beer to reveal its aromas, texture, and carbonation. I can go on and on about why you should pour your beer, but the bottom line is this: beer tastes good in a bottle or can, but it tastes infinitely better when you pour it. Give it a try and taste the difference.

For questions about this blog post, marketing and PR inquiries, or just to say hi, you can email me at:

 The Beeroness: beeroness@thecebruery.com

The final member of our flagship series of core beers is our Dumaguete Dubbel, and as part of our continuing series of blog entries where we introduce our beers and also wax philosophical/didactic on some aspect of beer history, culture, or production, our Dubbel really gives us a great case study on malts—those grains that give beer its body, sweetness, and fermentation potential.

First, a little bit about the style and the history, to illustrate why it’s a perfect beer to explain how this ingredient (again, one of only four ingredients that make up beer, along with hops, water, and yeast) leave their mark on our final product.  Dubbel as a recognizable style originated sometime around 1850 at the Westmalle Trappist Abbey in Malle, outside of Antwerp in Belgium.  This Abbey, formally known as Abdij van Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van het Heilig Hart, or the Abbey of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, belonged (and still belongs) to members of the Cistercians of Strict Observance, and was founded by monks fleeing France in the wake of the French Revolution, and who, like many other monastic orders, had been prohibited from practicing in France during that tumultuous period.  The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (we’ll call them the OCSO for short) themselves were a Cistercian monastic offshoot that adhered to the Rule of St. Benedict, written in the sixth century to describe the ideals and values of a monastic life – pursuit of a life of stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience.  In addition to discouragement of idle talk and other characteristic that have entered the public consciousness about strict monastic living, most OCSO monasteries produce goods that are sold to provide income in adherence to the 48th chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict – “for then are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands.”  Many abbeys produce foodstuffs such as cheese or bread, and others still produce wares ranging from clothing to coffins.  Fortunately or us, however, the OCSO monks who were invited to settle down in Antwerp on an old 1770s farmhouse (as they were making their way to Canada by way of Switzerland) decided to adhere to the regulations of Abbot Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rance, which permitted monks to drink the popular local beverage with their meals (in lieu of water).  Following papal approval by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836, the monks served their first home-brewed beer at lunch on 10 December 1836.

Now, lest you get the image of a bunch of drunk monks stumbling around a mid-19th century monastery, it must be remembered that beer was often produced during this time as a healthy but still hydrating alternative to water – very few harmful bacteria can persist in an alcoholic environment, and low gravity beer (say, between 3% and 5% abv) when consumed in moderation kept monks (and farmers, and other laborers, etc. etc.) hydrated, healthy, and still relatively sober.  The original beer produced by Westmalle fit this bill – pale in color, low in alcohol, and sweet so as to provide carbohydrates during periods of fasting (they don’t call beer “liquid bread” for nothing).

What has become today’s dubbel was designed as a strong brown beer, approximately twice as strong as their pale table beer (if it needed to be mentioned, “dubbel” is Dutch for “double” – mind blown, I know), very mildly hopped, using darker malts and easily fermented Belgian candi sugar to boost the alcohol content, and a characteristically Belgian yeast strain to tie it all together.  The recipe was perhaps based off an older recipe that had been popular during the Middle Ages, but had waned and was no longer produced when Westmalle “rediscovered” it.  The beer was originally sold beginning in 1861, and though the recipe would be modified slightly in the early 20th century, what is sold today as Westmalle Dubbel—as well as the countless homages sold at other Trappist monasteries and produced by breweries worldwide—is stylistically very similar to the original beer created by Abbot Martinus Dom over 150 years ago.  The popularity of Dubbel and other Belgian styles took off after World War II, and today there are over 650 commercial examples of this style brewed globally.

So, as was mentioned above, the style is characterized by a complex and rich malty sweetness – hints of caramel, toast, and chocolate intermingle with dark stone fruits such as raisins, plums, and cherries, as well as lighter fruits like bananas or apples.  Spicy and floral notes may include clove, white pepper, rose hips, or perfume-esque notes, and the alcohol is present, but never hot or solvent-like.  The body of a Dubbel should be thicker, but never cloying or heavy due to a high level of dissolved carbon dioxide and a well attenuated, dryer profile.  Hops aren’t the star of this show either, providing only a moderate amount of restrained balancing bitterness and noble, spicy character.  Sounds pretty complex, right?  It is, and tasting a well made Dubbel, one would think the ingredient list would be in the double digits with how many nuances and subtle tastes and flavors you can get out of a beer like this.  Our Dumaguete Dubbel showcases all of the above notes – and is made with only six ingredients.  A trio of malts, some local sugar, one hop variety, and a single strain of Belgian yeast from a Trappist brewery.

First, let’s talk a little bit about the malting process.  Brewing, unlike a lot of food and beverage production, really is all about science, and nowhere is that more evident than the malting process.  First thing you need to know is that most fermentable sugars – the things that yeast turn in to alcohol – in beer come from malted grain.  Grains—predominantly barley, but also wheat, rye, oats, spelt, corn, rice, etc.—are malted by a process in which they are wetted so begin the germination process and then dried abruptly to halt the same process.  After all, grains are just seeds, and when you get seeds wet, they begin to grow.  This process begins to create enzymes that break down long-chain, complex sugars in the seed to provide simpler sugars that can be used as energy for what the seed thinks is a growing barley, wheat, or rye plant.  The halting of this process—usually utilizing hot, dry air—“freezes” the germination process in a place where the seeds are full of enzymes needed to break these complex molecules down in to simple sugars … the same simple sugars that yeast can consume and turn in to alcohol and carbon dioxide during the fermentation process.  This process and the variables at play within it gives the maltster and the brewer enormous control over the final product.  Kiln-drying malted barley during the malting process at higher temperatures encourages the promotion of certain chemical compounds that gives beer produced from these malts roasted and toasted notes, such as caramel, toffee, biscuit, cracker, toast, chocolate, coffee, dark fruit, and even burnt or charcoal-like flavors; these sugars are formed from a process that renders them unfermentable by yeast, so they and the flavors and aromas they produce remain present in the final product.

Our Dumaguete Dubbel is made from three malts along this spectrum, and the use of each contributes color, aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel nuances.  Simple Belgian pilsner malt provides a grainy, crisp backbone and most of the simple sugars for the yeast to consume.  A sizable addition, though – 20% or thereabouts – of caramel and Belgian specialty malts give this beer a deep ruby, garnet-like hue, a thicker, fuller mouthfeel to offset the high carbonation often imparted by Belgian yeast strains, those dark bready flavors, and that cornucopia of dried fruits we mentioned earlier: cherries, plums, figs or dates, raisins.  These chewy, full bodied malt overtones intermingle with apple, banana, peppery, and spicy notes produced by a Belgian yeast strain still used in one of the original Trappist monasteries in Belgium … but we’ll leave a more detailed discussion of the role that yeast plays in the beermaking process for our next article!

Longer chain, unfermentable sugars provided by roasted malts also tend to make a beer feel chewier or fuller – we say that they enhance the mouthfeel of a beer, which is a craft beer word that somewhat intuitively refers to how a beer feels in your mouth.  Longer chain and “branched” sugars are large molecules, and their presence in a finished beer tends to make it feel thicker, though the overall mouthfeel of a beer is influenced by a slew of other factors: how well attenuated it is (did the yeast consume all the available simple sugars, or did they leave some behind after the party was over?); how oily and slick it is (hops contain a lot of oils, after all); how well carbonated it is (is it heavy and flat or crisp and effervescent?).

Traditionally, Belgian Dubbels were fortified with candi sugar – that is, pale or darkened sugar that has been chemically modified to make it easy for yeast to ferment it, so as to add alcohol strength without adding body or much flavor.  We reproduce this effect with a twist, though, using Visayan-produced muscavado sugar that we invert and darken ourselves in house, using nearly 5 kg per barrel to give our Dumaguete Dubbel an extra kick and layer of flavor that’s equal parts tradition and local.

We think our Dumaguete Dubbel encompasses everything that’s great about craft beer: adherence to and respect for history while also incorporating new techniques and local ingredients; utilizing a handful of both local and imported high quality ingredients in simple ways to produce a multitude of complex flavors; and harnessing chemistry and biochemistry to create something unique and artisanal that’s more than the sum of its parts and straddles the temporal and geographic divide between tradition on the other side of the globe and the burgeoning craft beer scene here in the Philippines.  Pair it with heavier cheeses, fruit, sweet desserts, or red meats, and serve it at 10 degrees Celsius in a room temperature goblet or other wide mouthed glass (a red wine glass will do in a pinch) to let the aromatics evolve properly – we guarantee it will be a near-religious experience.

What’s better than a nice, crisp, cold beer after a long hot day outside?  For years, marketing and advertising have shown us happy, responsible beer drinkers, drinking pale, golden-hued beers from frosted mugs and ice-chilled long neck bottles, and the expectations and practices of customers and restaurants have followed suit.  Go in to many restaurants and order a beer, and your bottle will come out of a 1 or 2 degree Celsius freezer, or your draught will be served in a frozen pint glass from a keg held in a refrigerator at about the same temperature.  Some bars even advertise that they serve “the coldest beer in town!”  What a great way to enjoy a beer, right?

Well, half-right.  Macrobreweries want you to believe that all beer has to be served at this temperature, barely above the freezing point of water.  Why?  The sensation of coldness inhibits the tongue’s taste receptors – at this temperature, it’s not only easy to disguise the relative lack of flavors in their beer, but also easier to hide the less desirable off-notes caused by using large amount of cheap fermentable additives like malted rice and corn.
These beers are designed to taste their best at this temperature, and serving them warmer brings in to sharp relief the lack of depth and character that these beers often have.  If you don’t want to actually taste something – i.e., if you’re just looking for an alcohol delivery system – go ahead and serve it at this temperature.

On the other hand, craft beer suffers when served at these very low, low temperatures.  The nuances of the base malts, the flavor compounds imparted by the hops, and the desirable compounds produced by the yeast during fermentation are all very difficult to detect at such temperatures, and the way they support and enhance one another is what makes drinking a craft beer such an enjoyable experience.  An artisan beer is more than just an alcohol delivery system – it’s a careful and intentional combination of flavors and aromas, and the alcohol is just a happy byproduct of the process that creates them.  High quality ingredients, no cheap adjuncts, and careful fermentation control also mean that our beer is more tolerant of higher temperatures – we’re not trying to hide anything from our customers!

Beer should be stored at cellar temperature – that is, 12 to 14 degrees Celsius or so.  Many craft beers – include those we produce here at the Cebruery – are not pasteurized, and are bottled live with yeast.  Storing beer at the proper temperature before serving will ensure that the yeast produce minimal off flavors, as well as reduce the likelihood of chemical reactions with oxygen and light that lead to undesirable flavor compounds.

Beer should be served at a temperature and in a glass appropriate to its style.  Though we’ll go in to the latter (glassware) in a later article, getting the former right is easy.  If it’s on the lighter side of the craft beer spectrum – a Hefewiezen, Kölsch, Pilsner, or Berliner Weissbier – 5 degrees is a good rule of thumb.  If it’s one of your more moderately hued and bodied craft beers – your Pale Ales, IPAs, Porters, Saisons, Weizenbocks, Scotch Ales, or Belgian Dubbels or Tripels – 12 degrees is closer to where you want to be.  And for your biggest beers – Barleywines, Imperial Stouts, Quadrupels, Double IPAs, and Eisbocks – you actually want to be most of the way to room temperature, say around 15 degrees C.  Essentially, the more heavily flavored it is, the higher in alcohol it is, and the less carbonated it will still be enjoyable at (because the saturation point of carbon dioxide in beer is inversely related to temperature), the more it will benefit from being served warmer.  In practice, this means chilling your beers down to refrigerator temperatures when you want to serve them, and then letting them sit at room temperature for different periods of time prior to serving to allow them to reach the temperatures above – less time for those beers you want to drink colder, and more time for those beers you want to allow to warm more prior to serving.

Also in practice, it means never using frosted glasses.  Ever.  Just don’t do it.  Go to your freezer and take those frosted glasses out and stick them back in the cabinet.  Go on – I’ll wait.  While you’re doing that, let me explain – frozen glasses result in ice crystals (duh, right) that can cause foaming problems, kill head retention, disrupt aromatic quality, and likely disrupt that whole elaborate routine above where you’ve allowed your recently refrigerated beer to warm to just the right temperature before you pour it.  The ideal glass for serving your beer in will be one that’s not only stylistically appropriate, but also one that’s at room temperature or just slightly below.  The thermal mass of a room temperature glass will raise the temperature of your beer between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius, so the impact is negligible (or, if you felt so inclined, can be accounted for) on the final temperature of the beer.

Take our Boracay Blonde, for example.  Blonde ales are a style characterized by balance – they should always be smooth and easy to drink beer, with a clean fermentation profile and just a touch of malt character. Held to the light, they should appear light yellow to deep gold in color and brilliant in clarity. A hint of fruitiness is acceptable, and hop character is generally restrained and moderate, as is the alcohol level (3.8 to 5.5% ABV).  Any slight residual sweetness should be offset with just enough hop bitterness and body to keep things balanced, and the end result should never be heavy nor overly dry or thin.

True to style, our Boracay Blonde recipe calls for the addition of small amounts of very slightly kilned Vienna and delicate, lightly roasted 15L Crystal malt to a largely pilsner malt base – these additions add not only a small amount of color, but also hints of caramelized and toasty sugars that would be completely imperceptible to any drinker if the beer was consumed any colder than its intended 5 degrees C serving temperature.  A duet of American “C” hops provides a perfect amount of balancing bitterness and flourishes of grapefruit, spruce, and floral notes that, sure, may be detectable below this temperature … but really blossom as they begin to volatilize from your glass at and above it.  The same thing goes for the fruity and spicy esters produced by the English Ale yeast we selected to ferment the Boracay; we’ve even adjusted the salt and mineral content of our brewing water to augment certain flavors over others.  Our suggested serving temperature is the perfect balance between keeping the beer cool and refreshing (the amount of carbon dioxide present in this beer at 5 degrees makes for a light, crisp, and bright drinking experience) while also enabling all of the various delicately balanced nuances to shine through.

The take away from all of this?  If you’re just looking to get drunk, you can probably do it cheaper than on craft beer.  On the other hand, if you’re looking to enjoy a handcrafted, fully realized craft beer, remember that we—and other artisan brewers—try hard to cut no corners and use every tool in our toolbox to get the perfect combination of flavor compounds and notes in to this and other beers that we produce.  And when those beers are served at a temperature that leaves your tongue too numb to enjoy 95% of the flavors present … well, you’ve essentially just gone and wasted 95% of your money.  We respect you enough and have enough faith in our product to recommend that you not do that.

So pick up a case of our Boracay Blonde next time you’re looking for refreshing beer to keep tucked away in the fridge as a reward for a hard day’s work – who says a beer can’t be refreshing and incredibly flavorful at the same time?

The blog post where I intend to introduce my People Power Pale Ale seems like a pretty good time to also begin a series I’d like to do on each of the four primary ingredients in beer, which was mentioned on our first blog post. All beer (with the exception of certain antiquated styles) is comprised of these four ingredients, but the permutations that can be produced by modifying their usage are endless. And the ingredient that can be perhaps manipulated in the most ways to produce the most unique, intense, and flavorful beers is the simple, unassuming hop.

Hops are the female flower of a single species of rhizome-producing plant in the same family as cannabis. They were first cultivated nearly 1,300 years ago, originally for medicinal purposes, though their first documented usage in beer wasn’t until the 11th century. Many people owe a debt of gratitude to whomever that accidental genius was, as hops are now used as the predominant bittering agent in nearly every style of beer and the primarily flavoring agent in many styles.

Those of us in the beer-o-sphere (if this wasn’t a thing before, it is now) who worship at the altar of the hop call ourselves “hop heads,” and I’m a proud member of this club. I’m not sure what makes hop-forward beers so appealing, but their position in the craft beer movement and the public imagination has never been higher than it is right now. Maybe it’s the complexity of the flavors, or maybe it’s their familiarity to so many intensely flavored and aromatic compounds— grapefruit, pinecones, tobacco, lemongrass, leather, mango, stone fruit, chives, mint. Each hop variety, and there are dozens upon dozens of varieties, with more experimental hybrids being released each fall, contains a dizzying assortment of acids and oils that contribute notes reminiscent of the above and more in various proportions.

Historically, hops were divided in to two (sometimes overlapping) categories, depending upon their primary usage. “Bittering” hops were those that were higher in what we refer to as “alpha acids,” which, when boiled for long periods of time, become soluble and are extracted from the hop cones— providing the bitterness needed to balance the residual sugars that remain in a beer after fermentation. On the other hand, “aroma” or “finishing” hops were those that were generally lower in alpha acids, but higher in flavorful and aromatic essential oils; these oils boil out of the finished beer very quickly, so finishing hops were typically added very close to or at the end of the boiling of the beer to preserve as many of them as possible.

The craft beer movement has tried to move beyond these descriptions, and advances in brewing technology (as well as scientific analysis) have given us a clearer picture of what makes hops contribute to beer in the ways that they do. No longer are hops merely added to the boiling wort (note: wort is what we call the beer before it’s beer) at one or two specified intervals. New techniques (and sometimes very old, rediscovered techniques) like first wort and mash hopping involve adding the hops to the wort before it is brought to a boil, allowing the volatile oils and acids to bind to grain proteins and stabilize at lower temperatures to survive the boil in ways that present new and exciting flavors; big additions of flavorful hops at the end of a boil while the beer is cooling allow oils that would boil away at the boiling point of water but can survive at lower temperatures to be extracted more fully in to the beer while also imparting far less bitterness; and “dry hopping,” the act of hopping a beer at ambient or fermentation temperatures (or sometimes, directly in the bottle or keg!) allow an entirely different combination of flavor and aroma compounds to be extracted and merged with the finished beer.

Add these techniques to the new hop strains that are being hybridized and bred every year— one of the recent experimental hops that just made its debut is being described by brewers as producing an aroma reminiscent of “chocolate coconut,” while others are showcasing melon, blueberry, and apricot. The end result are beers that go far beyond the antiquated “bitter” vs. “not bitter” divide. Sure, many “hop forward” beers are still bracingly bittered with hops that impart a rough, catty bitterness; however, more and more are relatively mildly bittered, or are bittered with hops that produce a smooth, pleasant bitterness, and focus primarily on showcasing the herbal, woody, citrusy essential oils that make hops so enticing.

Our People Power Pale Ale fits in to this category. Though this beer goes a little beyond the stylistic range of a traditional Pale Ale (we’ll call it an “Extra Pale Ale”), we’d like to think it does so in all the right ways. A grain bill with small additions of Munich, Caramel, and Melanoiden malts provides a backbone that’s simple, with hints of graininess, roast, and biscuit… subtle, nuanced, and well balanced. But we’re just getting started. Beginning with a healthy dose of first wort hops, this beer is boiled a full 50 minutes before additional hops even approach the kettle. This late, late addition ensures that we’re retaining as many of those delicate, volatile aromatic oils as possible… and what a late addition it is. We double the initial amount of hops added in the “aroma” portion of the addition schedule, triple it after flameout and while we whirlpool the hops at a sub-boiling temperature, and quadruple the initial addition during the dry-hopping stage. The end result is a beer that actually “breaks” most of the formulas brewers traditionally use to calculate bitterness – despite the numbers telling us this beer should be off-the-charts bitter, the final product is smooth, crisp, and bursting with tropical juicy goodness, reminiscent of apricot, mango, orange, and nectarine, with only a mild, smooth bitterness balancing the residual sweetness in the malt backbone.

This is a beer that’s riding the crest of the hop revolution wave, and as good as any you’ll fine at the finest craft brewery anywhere in the world. No more are brewers trying to make the most bitter, painful-to-consume IPAs; instead, experimentation is focusing on unlocking the true potential of the hop, that mysterious little floral cone that began its time in beer as a preservative but has become a focal point of craftsmanship and flavor potential as the craft era dawns. Our People Power Pale Ale celebrates the hop as a symbol of the power of a movement that has redefined the beverage that beer can be and mean to a culture, and—we hope—what beer can mean to you.

We’ve always loved history here at the Cebruery. With modern civilization having spread to most easily reachable corners of the world, it’s become harder and harder to experience first hand what life was before the modern convenience of electricity, medicine, and indoor plumbing. But there are artifacts of history all around us, and beer is certainly no exception to this rule. From the ingredients to the process to how it is consumed, studying a particular style of beer can shed light upon an entire historical period as viewed from inside a pint glass.

The history of the Porter is no different. All historical references to this inky black, roast style seem to converge upon London brewmaster Ralph Harwood in the year 1722. The 18th century was a period of rapid growth for London, the center of the evolving British Empire and the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, the period in history that brought us the advent of manufacturing, from textiles to metalwork to paper to glass. Steampower and fossil fuel use became common place, and agricultural techniques advanced too, a necessity given the enormous population boom that occurred simultaneously with these technological advances. The population of Europe as a whole quadrupled from 100 million in the year 1700 to more than 400 million by the year 1900, largely due to increased standards of living and economic conditions resulting from the advances of the Industrial Revolution.

Ralph Harwood owned and operated a London brewhouse (and perhaps pub) known as The Bellin Shoreditch. Prior to Harwood, breweries were in the business of producing beer, but not in the business of aging it. That is, beer produced was immediately sold, and any aging that was to take place was the responsibility of a publican or other dealer. Harwood—perhaps in an attempt to take advantage of new technology that allowed him to save money by utilizing utilities of scale—formulated a recipe for a beer that was to be aged on premises, at his brewery, before being dispatched in a condition ready to be consumed immediately. Some (perhaps dubious) historical accounts suggest that Harwood’s inspiration for this darker beer was the popular “Three Threads” blend (which itself was likely vernacular for “three thirds”) that many alehouses and pubs were serving up. This blend was one part each of what at the time were called “ale,” “beer,” and “twopenny” (the strongest and most expensive beer available at the time). At the time of Queen Anne (1702 – 1714), these were three of the five or so options you’d likely find yourself presented with at your standard London alehouse. These names of course don’t mean what they do today – “ale” at the time meant a beer that was less hopped than “beer,” and both were typically made with brown malts, which were less expensive to produce than pale malts. Some of the other options available included “mild,” which was fresh and recently brewed, and could be contrasted with “stale,” which—while not exactly off—was a slightly (ahem) aged version of a beer not meant to be aged.

Perhaps largely due to price differences between these options, London’s drinkers were quite fond of mixing their styles to create these hybrid blends. “Stale,” for instance, which cost four pence a pot (or quart) was often watered down with “mild,” which was less expensive because it hadn’t been taking up valuable space aging in the pub keeper’s storeroom for the last year. In 1760, a then-elderly brewery worker with the moniker “Obadiah Poundage” first wrote of the popular “Three Threads” mixture, which apparently provided the perfect mix of flavor and low cost that many of London’s burgeoning working lower-middle class were seeking. Other definitions of “Three Threads” from contemporaneous sources suggest it was a blend of “ale,” “stout,” and “double beer.” It was perhaps an attempt to replicate the popularity of these blends that perhaps led to Harwood’s recipe, which had the financial benefit of being brewed in one place, in one vessel, and aged on premises, allowing the brewer to charge more for the same product and both saving both space in the pub keeper’s alehouse as well as the time and trouble of removing the bung from three separate casks of ale to make one blended beverage. He allegedly christened his creation the “Entire” or “Entire Butt,” hinting at the needing to blend that it obviated.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that the London Porter’s of the 1700’s weren’t terribly similar in flavor profile to what we imagine “Three Threads” actually tasted like, and was instead more a revitalized and improved upon version of ordinary London brown beer. The threat of cheap beer from the countryside brought in by the flocks of migrating Brits looking to work in the new factories being opened in London as well as the aforementioned “middle men” who were buying beer to age and then selling it an inflated price created the perfect storm for the marketing campaign that became “Porter.” The resulting recipe changes—blending several brown ales together, increasing the rate of hopping, and improving storage and aging methods—resulted in a flavorful but mellow beer that had the flavor of neither new nor “stale” beer, and the style became wildly popular among those same burgeoning London working folk, many of whom worked as canal porters in the newly built river transportation networks. From its popularity among these workers—who numbered in the thousands in central London, and whose vigorous daily manual labor often rendered them quite thirsty at the end of a hard day’s work—this beer earned its appellation. The earliest known mention of Porter by name talks about dining at a cook’s shop “upon beef, cabbage, and porter,” and a letter from a Swiss traveler written in 1726 talks about a “kind of beer … called porter … because the greater quantity of this beer is consumed by the working classes. It is a thick and strong beverage, and the effect it produces if drunk in excess is the same as that of wine; this porter costs 3d the pot. In London there are a number of houses where nothing but this sort of beer is sold.”

The thickness and strength of this beer—as well as its high content of dark, roasted malts—covered up any number of faults common in the still-developing industrial brewery settings of early 18th century England, a factor which became more important as Porter began to be shipped to other parts of Europe and North America. The beer reached the height of its popularity during the height of the British Empire, and the effects of its popularity are still felt in the brewing traditions and cultures of former British colonies and trading partners, such as those in the Baltic states across the North Sea and those in Eastern Europe. Even China still uses the term “porter” to identify a dark, roast, very strong brew. Ultimately, lower gravity porters (those in the 3% – 5% abv range) merged stylistically with mild ales, and those with higher gravities and fuller bodies and a deeper roasted malt profile merged stylistically with stouts. The style even went on to be produced in a dryer, more highly hopped fashion in Ireland in the 1770s by the Guinness Brewery: two styles, marked with a single and a double “X” (with a third, stronger version exported to the Caribbean), were ultimately renamed “Guinness Extra Stout” and “Foreign Extra Stout,” both of which are brewed to this day and have since become Ireland’s national style of beer. And even though dark English beers nearly became extinct during the early-20th century (some say the result of an inability of English malt houses to roast their grains during the energy restrictions imposed by World War I), the style has now made a renaissance in America and elsewhere, including at The Cebruery, by those looking to reinvent and continue to push the evolution of historical styles.

Our Chocolate Hills Porter utilizes British Maris Otter malt as a base and five specialty grains to provide a spectrum of roasted flavors—from caramel, to toffee, to chocolate, to coffee, and to astringent, black tastiness—and a smooth, silky body that augments all of the aforementioned. A sizable hop schedule stays true to historical norms, but we utilize a combination of British and American hops to provide an international aroma and flavor profile to this beer, fitting for a style that was the first to be internationally distributed. A traditional English ale yeast strain dries this one out fairly well, but leaves some residual sweetness to augment the caramel and chocolate notes provided by the grain bill, as well as provides some fruity esters that intermingle with the hop notes. The end result is a highly drinkable at 5.8% and with approximately 250 calories per pint, but also highly flavorful.

We would be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to introduce our Kahoy Series. Porter is a style that lends itself well to being experimented with. With such a wide range of flavors presented by the combination of the malts and hops listed above, there are just so many different ways to present this beer that it was hard to settle on just one. We think our Black and White Porter does the style justice, though. This limited edition version of our Chocolate Hills Porter is part of our Kahoy Series, and uses fresh Madagascar vanilla beans, imported cocoa nibs, and moderately toasted American oak to lend both dark (chocolate, toasted wood sugars) and light notes (cinnamon, vanilla) to an already flavor packed beer. Chocolate Hills sits on oak for a full six months before it becomes Black and White Porter, so the latter will be a limited release – grab it if you see it!