by Alex Troncaso
Chief Brewer, Little Creatures

Back in my early days of studying brewing I used to do a lot of home brewing, and just had a general curiosity for the process.

One day I found all of my fermenters full but, still wanting to do something brewing related, I decided to make some crystal malt at home - and it even actually worked! Below is the method I came up with, based on my reading about how crystal malt is produced. I'm not claiming that this will be better than what you can buy, but it's a bit of fun at the very least and will make your beer just a bit more ‘yours'.

The basic steps in the process are steeping, stewing and kilning.

Steeping is required to raise the moisture content of the dry malt to approximately 50%. Interestingly, re-hydrating finished pale malt is one method by which crystal malts can be made.

Stewing is the step where the contents of the now re-hydrated malt will be converted to sugars (yes, just like mashing!).

Kilning is the stage where the malt is dried, the kernel contents become caramelised and melanoidins are formed.

Method

1. Measure out 500g of Pale Malt. I'm sure any Pale Malt will suffice.
2. Measure 1.5l of water and add to a pot. Add the malt to the water.
3. Heat the mixture to approximately 45°C and let sit for two hours. Stir occasionally. The warm water temperature assists in water up-take.
4. After the two hours are up, the malt should be rehydrated. Strain the mixture through a normal kitchen strainer.
5. Preheat your oven to approx 70°C. Place the wet malt in a baking/casserole dish and level out the grain bed. Put the lid on (if no lid, cover with foil, a plate, or whatever) and put in the oven. Let stew for two hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Note: it might pay to verify the temperature of your oven with a thermometer - I know mine is slightly out.
6. Once step 5 is complete, remove the lid and for a sort of ‘medium' crystal - increase the oven temperature to 175°C and kiln (bake) for two hours, stirring every 15 minutes. Make sure the grain bed is levelled after stirring. After two hours, you can raise the oven temperature to 200°C and kiln for another 30 minutes for a darker colour. During this time, stir every five minutes. Don't kiln any higher than 200°C as it may burn the malt and might even catch fire!
   Those temperatures are just guidelines, you can play around with lower temps, longer times, whatever, to get different character and colour.
7. Once the kilning is complete, remove from the oven and cool uncovered. The grains will become crunchy after cooling (ie. when the caramelised insides are cold). Once cool, place in a sealed container and let sit for approximately one week before brewing.
8. Brew a good English Bitter and enjoy! Happy Brewing!

Brendan Varis

Brendan Varis' Feral Brewery is anything but undomesticated as Chris Canty recently found.

There was once a time when Western Australia's Swan Valley was known for being the State's oldest wine growing region. Yet when Brendan Varis opened Feral Brewery in 2002, the area began getting plaudits for other reasons.

"I was pretty well inspired by what the craft brewers in the US were doing after visiting there in 1996," Brendan says.

"The beer we had there was great and I knew that Aussies would take to fuller flavoured more interesting beer if it was available."

So with that in mind, Brendan began learning his craft working with DME Brewing Services before a short stint with St Arnou in 2001. He maintains that this experience continually helps him at Feral.

"Between 1998 and 2001 we completed 14 turnkey projects in Australia and the experience I gained from doing all those startups is still proving invaluable today."

Feral currently has 5 beers on offer, ranging from its Farmhouse Ale, a light beer (3.8%) with hints of ginger, cured orange peel, coriander and Thai palm sugar; to Rust (6%), a Belgian Abbey ale style with a distinct banana aroma.

He says that the name Feral means ‘undomesticated' which shows a bit of cheekiness in regards to the major ‘domestic' beer labels. While he makes an array of different styles, he maintains the main feature of all his beers is balance.

"You can be as big and bold and experimental as you like when it comes to flavour and aroma profiles but all components of the beer need to be in balance with each other in order to make a beer that is all round satisfying and with a high drinkability," he says.

"That's what we strive for when putting together a beer."

Ask anyone in the industry about Brendan and the first thing they'll say is his generous nature. He is well known for going out
of his way to share his knowledge with fellow brewers, though it's not only those in the industry he likes to educate.

"I really enjoy pouring our beer for people who either don't normally drink beer at all or who have been a one beer brand person their whole life," he says.

"Invariably they will be pleasantly surprised by some of the flavours they encounter in our beer and you know they will go away and try new beers on a regular basis. That's a job well done as far as I'm concerned."

But while the joy he has in giving customers the finished product is obvious, he is perhaps even more passionate about the brewing process itself, in particular developing new beers.

"With our beer lineup fairly settled for the minute we only get four or five opportunities to experiment each year," he says.

"The satisfaction of moving a beer from concept to finished product is awesome."

Despite Feral being categorised as a boutique brewery, growth has seen a restaurant and merchandise sales added to his business, which Brendan says can be a distraction.

"Juggling hats between Managing Director and brewer can suck a bit," he says.

"So far the balance has been pretty good, and I haven't had any cobwebs appearing on my gumboots yet."

And what's in store for the Feral future?

"I'm back in the US for the first time in 11 years this April to judge at the World Beer Cup and can't wait to see how the scene has progressed," he says.

"Short term, the brewery will introduce our White Beer to more of the country. We will also do a minor upgrade to the brewery which will let us do more specialty and seasonal beer."

While it is obvious that the Feral Brewery is part of Australia's relatively new wave of high quality producers, Brendan thinks that there is still a lot of work to do in educating people about what craft beer represents.

"I get a little nervous when I talk to people about their new startup brewery and I get the feeling they expect to be the next Crown Lager," he says.

"We need to stick to what we do best which is full-flavoured, interesting beer. If we do this and then put in the effort to explain to people what is so special about our beer then I am confident craft beer has a bright future."

Feral Brewing
152 Haddrill Road, Baskerville. Phone: (08) 9296 4657
www.feralbrewing.com.au

People everywhere lately have been asking about beer and fondue, so here's Neil Miller's twist.

Fondue and I have the same relationship with fashion. We each bump into fashion every couple of years - usually by accident - before drifting apart for extended periods of time.

The humble fondue is alternatively derided as a laughable 70s throwback and then acclaimed as the next great leap forward in up-market gastronomy. Despite the vagaries of fashion, there has always been something very sociable about sitting around a warm pot eating melted cheese. That is perhaps why virtually every household in Australasia will have owned a fondue set at some time. Personally, I still have six.

The national dish of Switzerland, cheese fondue was born out of necessity. When Swiss towns in isolated valleys became trapped by deep snow in winter, they had to improvise dishes from the ingredients available - usually home baked bread, local wine and dry cheese.

Being clever folk, the Swiss quickly found that dry cheese tastes much better melted with a dash of alcohol. While the cheese fondue is the most famous version, fondues can be made with chocolate, vegetables or even meat cooked in oil. Fondue gets its name from the French word ‘fonder' meaning melting or blending. This describes the common cooking characteristic of all the different fondues.

There are a number of arcane traditions and rituals infamously associated with eating fondue. Most of these involve ‘forfeits' when a person drops their chunk of bread into the cheese. Indeed, the very first time I ever read about fondue was in that classic historical tome Asterix in Switzerland. The severity of the forfeits in that story put me off fondue initially. It took a few years for me to realise the authors were using satirical exaggeration and that whips and wild horses were not actually involved in the eating of fondue. Well, not in middle-class Wellington suburb of Tawa anyway.

However, even the real forfeits can be a bit worrying to the modern mind. In her now-kitsch classic book Fondue Cookery, Alison Burt described the best ‘forfeit' system of 1970: "If a man drops his bread in the fondue he must either buy the next bottle of wine or hold the next fondue party. If a lady drops her bread in the fondue, she must kiss all the men at the table".

Traditionally, fondue is made and served with wine and kirsch (strong cherry brandy) but equally beer can be an ingredient and accompaniment. Though it may shock many, I do not recommend the use of heavily hopped beers in fondues because the cooking process will tend to exaggerate the bitterness. In this instance, more moderately hopped beers will produce better tasting results. That is not a sentence I write very often.

To make the world's simplest beer fondue, start by rubbing the inside of the fondue pot with a clove of garlic. Pour a cup of lightly hopped beer into the pot and gradually heat. Add two cups of mixed cheddar and gruyere cheese and stir slowly until it melts. Next, add half a teaspoon of dry mustard for flavour and sift in cornflour slowly until the mixture is suitably thick. Mindful of those forfeits, eat carefully using cubes of French bread on fondue forks.

A mild pilsner such as James Squire Pilsener or Limburg Czechmate would go brilliantly in fondue. Alternatively, a chocolate fondue could be made with a dark, decadent beer like Leffe Brune or Invercargill Pitch Black.

The best idea is dust off a couple of fondue pots, invite around some friends and start cooking beer and cheese. That way, you can fondue party like it was 1979!

Haiku

Noted poet Captain Hops from www.beerhaikudaily.com captured the appeal of this culinary combination perfectly in just 17 syllables:

Method

1. Rub the inside of a heavy based saucepan with the garlic; discard or leave the garlic in (optional).
2. Add beer and heat slowly. Gradually whisk in the cornflour, stirring constantly, until mixture is thickened and bubbly. (Do not allow mixture to become too hot.)
3. Add the grated cheese and stir to let it melt until bubbly.
4. Transfer to a fondue pot; place over fondue burner.
5. Serve with French bread pieces.

James Mussak
Chef, catering consultant and author, James is currently preparing a new book: Great Chefs of Australia - Cooking with Wine, Beer and Spirits.
 

Brad Rogers takes a look at the hop-driven pale ale and how we're making it our own...

I know in the past few issues we've spoken about strange brews that are right out there. I thought this edition I would bring it back a little - right back to the basics of our raw materials, and specifically the HOPS!

There's no better beer style in the world to showcase the complexities of hops than the pale ale - be it the American version like our Alpha Pale Ale or Little Creatures' version - or the classic English pale ale or India pale ale, and we've all tasted a heap of those.

Pale Ale Background

Pale ales have had a long and illustrious history, starting their lives many hundreds of years ago in the UK. More recently American pale ales have taken the world by storm. You would have to travel a long way in the US to find a brewery that isn't brewing one, that hasn't brewed one, or isn't about to start brewing one. Everyone knows the style, full of hop aromatics, hop flavour and hop bitterness - with a few more hops added in or good measure.

What are pale ales? For me, they are defined by hop character, whether it's an English India pale ale, an American imperial IPA or an Australian pale ale. That's not to say they are one dimensional, rather their reason for being is about the hop and how it is used.

It is the relationship of these hops with the malt characters, alcohol content and the residual or un-fermentable malt sugars. In a word it's about ‘balance', it's about drinkability and it's about "do I want to buy another one?"

The Brewers Association technical style description in the World Beer Cup style guidelines suggests that the American-style pale ale should be "characterized by fruity, floral and citrus-like American variety hop characters, producing high hop bitterness, flavour and aroma" and goes further to clarify the hop usage by noting, "the floral and citrus-like American-variety hop character is the perceived end, but may be a result of the skilful use of hops of other national origins."

The hop characters mentioned above can be sourced from a selection of Pacific Northwest American hop varieties, the champion of them all has been the Cascade hop. He does have some brothers and sisters, such as Amarillo, Centennial and even hops like Mt Hood play a role in giving these beers their floral, citrus-like aromas and flavours. Hop growers, especially in the Pacific Northwest, have tried over the years to clone and cultivate a large number of hops in order to give similar characters to the honoured Cascade hop with varying success. The great thing for brewers around the world is that other hop growing nations have also been trialling the growth of their own ‘versions' of this great hop.

Terroir

These traditional growing regions have their specific environments including micro-climates and soils. The French use the term terroir to describe these specific conditions. The term is not well understood, however my take on it is that it is simply about a sense of place, where the local environment produces certain attributes including aromas and flavours in the grapes. It's the sum of the soil, the climate, the geography, the air - everything associated to the growing area or even down to the individual vineyard. With hops different conditions do translate to different flavours.

The Cascade hops grown in the Pacific Northwest and the Cascade hops grown in Tasmania's Bushy Park may be the same variety, however they will display different attributes because they are growing under very different conditions.

The "new" New World

Traditional hop varieties and their perfectly brewed beers will always be respected but, as times change, the new world brewers need to ensure we all keep up. Changes are already being noted in the beer industry with the 2008 WBC guidelines including an International pale ale class for the first time to accommodate beers from countries including Australia and New Zealand.

Australian craft and specialty beer drinkers have certainly come a long way over the last 10 years. They have been taken on a journey they probably did not know they were on. They have more choice these days from just over 100 breweries producing some amazing beers; some with true dedication to the style, others with their own flare and personality of style. Australian craft consumers have an increased knowledge about their beers and with that knowledge comes a thirst for even more information about the beers they want to drink and enjoy. For the Australian brewers that thirst for information is also at an all time high. You just have to look at the ever increasing number of brewers travelling the world to explore and gain insights to bring home as offerings to their own beer drinkers.

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