When I joined Shepherd Neame at the start of the year one of the big projects that had just started was trial brewing of Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

Late in 2011 a deal had been agreed with the Boston Beer Company for Shepherd Neame to brew this world famous beer under licence in Faversham – the first time that it has been brewed outside the USA. January was a great time for me to join as I could get involved in brewing this superb beer!

Boston Lager is brewed in a very traditional way matching brewing techniques used in Germany for many centuries. The first stage of the process is a decoction mash where part of the mash is boiled and then added to the rest of the mash to bring the whole up to the correct temperature for starch conversion. German hops are used in the copper to give bitterness and dry hops are added to the fermentation vessel to give a delicate hoppy aroma to the finished beer.

Another traditional German technique called “krausening” is used during fermentation – this is where a small proportion of actively fermenting wort from a new brew is added to an older brew that has reached the end of fermentation. The process is carried out at low temperature and is designed to reduce the levels of diacetyl, a compound produced by yeast that has a butterscotch aroma. The beer has a very long maturation period of 28 days before it can be filtered and packaged – this meant that we had a long wait before we could assess the effect of the changes made to each trial brew.

We were in constant touch with the Boston brewers during the trials and the process culminated with a visit by their brewing director towards the end of April to sample the first batch filled into kegs. It was a real “Man from Delmonte” moment when he tasted the beer and pronounced it matched the US beer perfectly and could be sent out to the pubs.

We brew a range of international beers at Shepherd Neame so we are used to working with brewers from other countries but one of the really rewarding aspects of this type of project is that we always find there’s something new to learn about this fascinating process. It was great to have the chance to swap ideas with the Boston brewing team who are as passionate about their beers as we are about ours.

Cheers!

Richard Frost - Head Brewer

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So who on earth was St George and why do we celebrate him as our national saint?

There are lots of myths and legends around him, as there are plenty of myths and legends about brewing.

Some of the “facts” appear to be that he was born to Christian parents in AD270 in Cappadocia (so no where near England then). He grew up to be a Roman soldier and all was going well for him until he led a rebellion against Emperor Diocletian who was persecuting Christians. This led to the emperor having him beheaded on 23rd April 303. The emperor’s wife was so moved by him that she converted to Christianity and was also put to death.

There the legend appears to stop until the Crusaders started to return and bring wonderful stories back with them (possibly including slaying dragons?)

In 1222 the 23rd April was established as St George’s Day.

English soldiers started wearing his cross on their chests and backs to protect them and in 1415 following the battle of Agincourt where it is rumoured he was seen fighting with the English he was made our patron saint.

He is also the patron saint of the scouting movement as well as of Barcelona, Russia, Bavaria and many other places.

So why the dragon – I will leave you with the idea that in the Middle Ages the dragon was frequently used to represent the devil – this seems to tie in with the “true” facts about his life.

So that leads us to St Georges Day – we have again produced Dragon Fire - a celebration of the best that England has to offer, even if St George wasn’t English. It contains malted barley, oats, wheat and Golding’s hops to give a full bodied rich beer with a mahogany hue.

So as William Shakespeare said “Cry God for Harry, England and St George” and go and celebrate with a pint (or bottle) of Dragonfire!

Cheers

Stewart Tricker - Senior Brewer

For those of us that were busy cooking Sunday lunch this weekend the Radio 4 Food Programme made interesting listening as it was dedicated to the ancient and mysterious craft of fermentation – they described it as harnessing the power of microbes to make food more delicious rather than allowing it to decompose and go rotten.

There is a suggestion that currently a third of all food have undergone some form of fermentation (drinks are a sub set of foods)

Whilst this programme covered all elements of fermentation with naturally available yeasts and bacteria from the development of chutneys and fermented vegetables through to sake, malt drinks and even milks and yoghurts fermentation is a critical part of the brewing process.

The production of beer is similar to the production of sake as outlined on Radio 4.

In essence brewing is the conversion of the starch that is naturally available in the malted barley into alcohol. The starch is converted into sugars during the mashing process which is very temperature dependent in order to achieve the desired sugar mix to give both fermentable sugars and the body of the beer. Unlike in the programme no enzymes are added since these are contained within the malt and just need to be activated by the increase in temperature.

The sugars are then converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide during the fermentation stage by the addition of yeast.

A brewer’s yeast strain is a very carefully controlled material since it gives the beer much of its characteristic flavour and the reliable fermentation that ensures a consistency of product.

We have our own ale yeast strain that can be traced back through the history of the brewery which is used to produce the whole range of our ales. We also have a number of lager yeast strains that are used to brew a wide range of lagers, not quite from A to Z but certainly from Asahi to Sunlik.

As I have suggested it is critical to care for these yeasts and keep them separate and so we have a small scale plant where we can grow them up from pure cultures and are typically producing 2 new yeast cultures a week. We are meticulous at both maintaining records of traceability and at plant hygiene to ensure there is no possibility of one yeast mixing with another.

As was suggested in the programme fermentation is both a fascinating process and more importantly produces some wonderful flavours and I hope you agree it is something that we are good at.

Cheers

Stewart Tricker - Senior Brewer

As everyone will be aware energy is expensive and the brewing process uses a lot of it – we spend time heating things up, cooling them down or moving them around. There are comparisons between energy usage in the home and in the brewery but with an obvious difference in scale.

You probably have a boiler for the hot water, we have a very similar system for heating water at various stages in the brewery, but slightly larger. As part of your central heating system there is a pump which allows the hot water to get round the radiator system, we will move the water, wort and beer round the brewery via a complex system of pipes and tanks using many pumps. At the most basic level a copper in the brew house is just like a kettle – it heats the wort to approximately 103 degrees centigrade (just above boiling), a household kettle will boil up to 3 litres, our coppers are boiling 25000 litres at a time.

Cooling is similar, you may want to chill a bottle of beer (or wine or milk) in your fridge, we chill the beer down at the end of the fermentation from 20 degrees to 4 degrees or even to minus 1 dependent on how we will be packaging it.

At home in order to reduce the ongoing cost of cooling your bottles of beer (wine or milk) you would invest in a new A rated fridge, we are just in the process of doing something similar.

The local population of Faversham may have noticed a number of large vehicles, including a crane as we took delivery of a lorry load of shiny new equipment. To the uninitiated (me included) it looked incredibly complicated with tubes and pipes sticking out everywhere. The engineers assure me that this new refrigeration plant will (once plumbed in and wired up – unfortunately this is slightly more complicated than just a 13 amp plug in a socket) speed up the cooling process whilst reducing our energy usage.

So as the sun shines and we are all anticipating a heat wave with everyone sitting back enjoying a beer while admiring the brown patch that used to be their lawn we will be testing our new plant to its capacity.

Cheers

Stewart Tricker - Senior Brewer