Epic Beer

Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning.

“I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told Luke Nicholas after tasting the beer for the first time since they brewed it in February. He liked what was in his glass, but his experience with brown malt — a key ingredient in the recipe and one Nicholas had not used before — told him it wasn’t time to bottle the beer. Nicholas reassured him that what he was tasting had been bottled weeks before so he could bring some to Chicago. The rest was still maturing.

That’s what’s called collaboration.

The theme for the 39th gathering of the Session today is collaboration — Mario Rubio is this month’s host and will have the recap — and I expect various bloggers to come at it from many directions. Let’s just hope we don’t hear the story of Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale too many times.

I’ll try to keep it simple. Nicholas is founder and chief bottle washer at Epic Brewing in New Zealand. Ryan, also a native of New Zealand, is brewery manager at the Thornbridge Brewery in England. They met last year when Nicholas was in England and ended up brewing a collaboration that melded, although that might not be the right word, Epic IPA and Thornbridge Halycon.

Since Ryan would be in New Zealand in February for his brother’s wedding they decided to brew another beer, in this case a stout, a style Nicholas had never made. This was also his first experience with brown malt and two English hop varieties, Target and Bambling Cross.

“I woke up excited to go to the brewery,” Ryan said. “(The process) energizes you. A mass of information goes back and forth.”

The resulting beer is plenty stout, 6.8% abv with 54 bittering units, and even at a young age in early April full of textured flavors, smooth but complex. Half the batch has been packaged and hit the market last week. Half is aging in American oak barrels that previously held Epic Armageddon IPA and likely will be released at the end of August.

Both Nicholas and Ryan judged in the World Beer Cup in Chicago in April, and they spent plenty of time together during the following days at the Craft Brewers Conference. Information flowed freely, but not necessarily the way it would formulating a recipe or standing over a mash tun in the brewery. Nicholas calls what happens during brewing collaborations a cross pollination of ideas, and it is breeds better brewing.

Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer. They also make for good stories in print and cyberspace for those who haven’t already heard them a thousand times. When they start to seem old remember the stories may be repetitive, the experiences are not.

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The photo above was taken at CBC. Luke (on the left) is mugging for one camera, Kelly for another, and that object between them is an unlabeled bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout they are about to open. Clearly a historic moment. You might find pictures documenting the brew day more informative. Details about the beer itself are here.

Featured in the Herald on Sunday, Sunday Savour, 2 May 2010

Kiwi boutique beer brand Epic is going from strength to strength around the world. Its latest creation is a collaboration between New Zealand and Britain

Recently I came across an old post which listed the top 10 things Epic Beer achieved in 2008. I thought it would be fun to do it again this Christmas eve and highlight the top 10 things of 2009.

2009 was an amazing year, which then begs the question "can 2010 be as Epic"?

So for 2009 here are the achievements/highlights which I would rate as the top 10 for Epic Beer (maybe not exactly this order, but close enough).

1. Traveled to the UK to brew 100,000 pints of Epic Pale Ale at Everards Brewery for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival in March. Video footage from the UK & the brewing.

2. Exporting to Australia started in May. As sales started to grow I made a visit to Melbourne to see what all the fuss was about.

3. In April I returned to the UK for the JD Wetherspoons Interntaional Real Ale Festival, and had the privilege of meeting Pete Brown, prior to his Hops & Glory book launch, which lead to the inspiration for the Interislander voyage (see point 5) Anyway back to this point, brewing with Kiwi Brewer, Kelly Ryan at the Thornbridge Brewery and making a special batch of Epic Halcyon. Then Kelly shipped a couple of mini casks to NZ for us to do a special tasting.

4. Bringing back Epic Armageddon IPA, as a seasonal and bottling it for the first time, then winning a Gold & Best in Class trophy for it. Armageddon created a lot of excitement in the NZ craft beer industry this year, hence the extended effort of video to bring in the back story of how it evolved

5. Sea Conditioning of Armageddon IPA, in American oak barrels on the Inter-islander. Six weeks and 126 crossings of the Cook Strait to recreate the ocean voyage from England to India. This beer was then sold for $5.00 for a 100ml tasting at Beervana held in Wellington, end of August.

6.  Launch of the Epic Beer Video Profile produced by Made from New Zealand

7. Bottled Mayhem made a couple of brief appearances in 2009 (February & December) Expect to see more in 2010

8. Change from 6 packs to 4 packs to make Epic more affordable, plus for Christmas making all four Epic Beers available (Family of 4 = Pale Ale, Lager, Mayhem and Armageddon)

9. The Epic Shoe

10. Twitter saw a huge switch in awareness by the online masses in 2009. @epicbeer grew from 500 followers to nearly 4000 in just 12 months. Also @epicbeer is one of the top 10 New Zealand brands using Twitter, and was the first brewery in the world to adopt this new technology to communicate with its fans.

I'd like to thank everyone that has supported, followed, friended, retweeted and bought Epic Beer this year. Without you all Epic wouldn't continue to become available in more and more outlets around New Zealand and Australia, plus I would have an awful lot of beer to drink by myself. Consumer demand wins at the end of the day (go the Naki).

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Hope I get a chance in 2010 to catch up and have a beer with you somewhere on my travels.

Keep drinking the good stuff

Cheers

Luke Nicholas

P.S. Don't forget Santa

Still all go and we’ve just finished an awesome collaboration with Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Company over in New Zealand. Luke was over here to launch and promote Epic Pale Ale which he had been invited to brew with Everards Brewery in Leicester as part of the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival. Luke is a highly awarded New Zealand brewer with a vast amount of experience. He has twice brewed beers that have won the Supreme Champion Beer of New Zealand (including Epic Pale Ale, which won in 2006) as well as scooping Gold and Best in Class awards at the 2008 BrewNZ competition. Coupled with the fact that he has twice judged in the World Beer Cup (Seattle, 2006 and San Diego, 2008) you can see that he’s no stranger to both brewing and judging a beer!

Although we are both from NZ, this was the first time our paths had crossed. You have to remember that everyone knows everyone else in NZ, so this was no mean feat! How can I describe Luke? He is very confident and oozes self-belief and passion. He has an intuitive understanding of the world of craft beer and has literally worked from the bottom up. He told me of how he used to volunteer his weekends at a local Auckland brewpub chain so he could learn how a commercial brewery worked (Luke was a passionate home brewer prior to this) until he was employed and gradually worked his way up in the brewing world. Commitment seeps from his every pore and the intensity with which he talks about beer and brewing is awesome. He is engaging, intelligent and the type of person that us Thornbridgers love to hang out with.

It was a big step to decide to collaborate with someone that we did not know. We hadn’t tasted his Epic beers or met him; however it was an opportunity not to be missed. In hindsight, I would have been gutted had we not brewed together. We had a great day and even got to try some of Luke’s beers, which were fantastic!

I met up with Luke the night before our brewday at the Chesterfield Arms in Chesterfield, where Everards were launching a Meet the Brewer evening and where Luke had a coveted mini-cask of the Epic Pale Ale that had been brewed with Everards. We sat down and had a few pints of the Everards beers and then got a chance to try the cask Epic. This stood head and shoulders above the Everards brews (which were all good pints nonetheless) with a dominant citrus hop character, a little grapefruit with some underlying caramel maltiness. Luke told me that Everards were shocked when he told them how much hops he wanted to put into the beer. I think he should have put in even more!

It was time for the brew and myself, Luke, Dave and Stef were ready for action. The mash in the mash tun and vessels cleaned and ready to go, we began the mammoth task of deciding what hops we were going to use. We worked our way through a load. New Zealand Hallertau, Pioneer, Cluster, Atlas and Liberty didn’t make the cut. Chinook, however with its wonderful resinous and citrus notes and a little pine and the ultra-intense Hallertau Magnum made the grade. We thought these two hops would provide a nice resin-pine-citrus backbone as both early and late additions and allow our other two hop choices to shine through. Centennial with its pungent orange zest and the unique New Zealand Nelson Sauvin (for a touch of home of course) with its mango and pineapple and gooseberry and grapefruit were the obvious pairing to give us a real New World character in what was to be a unique twist on our Halcyon Imperial IPA.

We cracked open a bottle of our Green Hopped Vintage 2008 Halcyon and started discussing bitterness. The bottled version has a touch more dryness and astringency due to a little more attenuation and a humungous amount of wet hops added at maturation, yet we thought the bitterness level (around 85 IBUs) was still well balanced by the residual malt sweetness. With this in mind and knowing that this was to be in the cask form only, we upped the ante. We went for over 100 IBUs (International Bitterness Units) in the hope that the slightly increased perceived sweetness that the less carbonated cask form would have, would then balance out the mouth puckering hops.

Because this had a bit of a New Zealand twist, Luke had the brilliant idea of bringing a little New Zealand water with him. Good Water is from Kauri Springs in Northland, above Auckland and is exactly as its name suggests! Once the brew was finished, Luke added the water to the finished brew. You can see that here!

We were also lucky enough to try a bottle of Luke’s NZ brewed Epic Pale Ale, which was absolutely beautiful. Reminiscent of some American Pale Ale’s I have tries. Quite light on the bitterness, yet retaining a lot of citrus and resin pine character. Nice carbonation and fantastic cold. No longer will I be reaching for an ice cold New Zealand lager after mowing the lawns when I’m back in New Zealand. From now on, it’s definitely going to be an Epic! Just when I thought that Luke’s Pale Ale was all that, then he brought out his Epic Mayhem. At 6.2%, this poured a nice dark orange/amber colour. The nose was amazing. Lots of sweet tropical fruits with a hint of pineapple and a floral and citrus background. I’ve always thought that Jaipur was extremely drinkable at 5.9%. Mayhem is of the same ilk. I polished off my taster quickly and instantly thought of the movie, Interview with the Vampire… I was the young child vampire Claudia after my first meal… “I want some more.” This was a ridiculously drinkable and extremely tasty drop. All I can say is well done!

Once the brew day was over, we all met up at the Coach and Horses in Dronfield for a few beers, a few laughs and some good kai (that’s the Maori word for food). We tasted the various Thornbridge beers (Luke described Kipling as being the best use of Nelson Sauvin on the planet) as well as some Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast, Birrificio Italiano Tipopils (one of my favourite beers ever), Port Brewing Hop-15, HaandBrygeriet Norwegian Wood (courtesy of Phil at BeerMerchants) a couple of HopDaemon beers (Green Daemon Helles and Skrimshander IPA) and my very own improvised lambic-style beer. As usual it was awesome fun and great for us all to talk about the different flavours and aromas we were picking up.

We are beer nerds!

I love my job…

This great blog post by Kelly Ryan at Thornbridge
http://beerevolution.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/epic-halcyon-at-thornbridge/