INTO THE BREW


Getting Back to Our Roots Brewing student’s travels reveal birth of popular styles By Sam Tierney


Sam Tierney, enjoying a Gilden Kölsch from the barrel at the Kölner Verbund Brauerei in Köln, Germany


Sam began his love affair with great beer while studying and traveling abroad in Europe as a junior at University of Califor- nia, Santa Barbara. Upon returning home to California in late 2007, he opened the eyes of his then-roommate, Ryan Lamb, to the world of craft beer. Sam began homebrewing immediately and has won awards in the categories of Belgian Ale, French Ale and Belgian Specialty Ale at the Santa Cruz County Fair. Today, Sam is training to become a professional brewer as a student in the Master Brewer Program at the Siebel Institute of Technol- ogy in Chicago. He’ll continue document- ing his journey for West Coaster as the class studies abroad in Europe.


and unique beers. Whether it’s the next delicious hop-bomb of an IPA, a session ale, or some barrel-aged and blended sour wonder with three kinds of brettanomy- ces, two kinds of peaches, and a dash of bourbon, there are always new and excit- ing beers coming from local brewers. In a way, this is what the craft beer movement in the United States is all about; unbound by tradition, we are free to brew whatever our imaginations can conceive and borrow from whatever traditions we see inspira- tion in. No matter how experimental we get though, American beers can almost always be traced back to the traditional brewing regions of Central and Western Europe. In my travels as a student at the World Brewing Academy, I visited over a dozen breweries ranging from ultra-tradi- tional to not-so-traditional, criss-crossing the more ethereal world of Belgian brew- ing in the process. This month I’m going to highlight a few of those breweries in order to shed some light on where some of our experimental creations are rooted. Those of us on the West Coast are intimately familiar with the IPA family of beers. Single, double, triple… sometimes it feels like we can never get enough hops. Now we even have “session” IPAs so that we can get our hop fix without falling out of our chairs. Most craft beer drink- ers already know the gist of the story, but India Pale Ales were originally hoppy ales brewed in England for the export market to India during the colonial era, later being adapted for the local market. While I was in England I visited several breweries, the most traditional of which was Fullers in


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an Diego has the distinction of being one of region’s big play- ers when it comes to creating new


The tasting bar at Fullers, England 8- Descending into the aging cellar at Rodenbach


the Chiswick district of London. At Full- ers, the traditional ale brewing method is still in practice, albeit with a few modern twists. Still in use is the combination mash/lauter tun for producing wort from malted marries otter barley by means of a single-infusion mash, as well as the traditional parti-gyle method of running off several worts from one mash. Fullers’ range of beers is relatively widespread here, but they are wholly different beasts when served from cask on their home turf. If you’ve had Fullers ESB here, you probably know it for its rich English malt character. From a cask in London it’s surprisingly hoppy, and they even dry hop the beer in the cask, which the export version does not get. My favorite beer of the tour might have been the Chiswick Bitter, which is a 3.5% ABV bitter with a very nice hop aroma and insane drinkability. These beers might not be as hoppy as what we do out here, but there is no doubt where the West Coast IPA got its start. Another West Coast favorite that is push- ing the boundaries of brewing is the sour/ wild ale that breweries like The Lost Abbey and Russian River are famous for. These beer have a refreshing acid- ity that make them in- sanely drinkable; once you get a taste for the unique character of brettanomyces yeast, it can seem like you just can’t get enough. While in Belgium I toured two brewer- ies that brew very different beers, but have both had a huge influence on American brewers. First up was the classic Flanders


red ale brewery, Rodenbach. These guys have been brewing wood-aged sour red ales since the 1800s when a brewer went to England to learn techniques for brew- ing porter (an interesting link to think about in my opinion). The dark strong beer is aged up to two and a half years in giant oak foeders (vats), undergoing a mixed fermentation with eight differ- ent yeast strains and several types of bacteria, giving it a powerful acidity and bright fruity aroma. They then blend it with young beer from stainless tanks for a uniform flavor.


The last brewery that we visited on our study tour was the Trappist monastic brewery of Orval in Southeast Belgium. I’ve had a small personal obsession with Orval ever since first tasting it back when I was studying abroad in Sweden. Orval is just one of those beers that speaks to you as long as you are willing to listen. As with many Belgian beers, the key to Orval is in the fermentation. Bras- serie d’Orval’s brewmaster Jean-Marie Rock even told us, “The malt is just to produce alcohol and some color. The flavor of Orval comes from the yeast.” Brasserie d’Orval is unique among the trappist breweries for several reasons: first, they only produce one commercial beer; second, they dry-hop this one beer; and third, they add a strain of brettano- myces yeast at bottling, which allows the character of Orval to radically evolve as it ages. Orval fresh from the brewery is almost a completely different beer from Orval aged a year. At about five months in the bottle, the continued work of the brettanomyces starts to take over the flavor, giving it the wonderful barnyard, fruity, and funky aromas and flavors that wild ale devotees crave. This can be wildly (pun intended) different from the hoppy and bitter Belgian pale ale that you find in a fresh bottle. While Orval is relatively easy to find, I’m happy to see all of the brett-beers coming out of local breweries right now. There is still a massive area of exploration possible with brettanomyces-fermented beers, with the best yet to come.


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