Brew-It-Yourself: Making A Beer

Like all the best stories, we begin our tale in a dark and sweaty basement, leaning forward on a bench and trying not to accidentally kick strangers in the shins. Around three yards away from The Skinny in the basement of Edinburgh’s Spit/Fire bar stands Garrett Oliver, long-serving brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, and a man so magnetic he sends trails of cutlery flying through the air wherever he goes.

Equal parts charisma, beer knowledge, rock'n'roll backstory and delightful hat, Oliver is in town to share some ‘ghost bottles’ from the brewery’s collection – beers that are too unpredictable, expensive or bizarre to be mass-produced, but still worth dipping into from time to time. These bottles range from a ten-year-old black chocolate stout, which tastes like being shot in the face with a bag of cocoa beans, to a mezcal-aged beer that was delightfully crisp and refreshing but probably knocked a good few hundred words off this article.

These beers are about more than just the liquid in the glass, though. Each bottle has a unique origin story, and the tales behind the beers do so much to round out the characters on display. Knowing that Oliver went to an eight-year-old’s birthday party in Mexico on a charm offensive to acquire mezcal barrels makes that beer taste better; the fact that the brewery went to the trouble of buying back its own chocolate stout (after realising they’d accidentally sold it all) gives a sense of occasion to the drink that your conscious mind can’t help but pass on to the rest of your face. In contrast, what’s the best origin story you can offer for the average mass-produced lager? “Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. This beer was made to a recipe, by people... Cheers.”

Beer is a story-telling drink; a big glass of brown liquid that starts conversations and makes (and occasionally erases) memories. The story – the origin, the style, the ingredients – is key; as Oliver says: “When you confuse [styles] completely, all that you’re left with is liquid… well, that and the money.” If ever you’re in need of beer-based inspiration, Garrett is the man to hook you up – he’s like a beery Yoda, except he’s a fair bit taller than old green face, and he once went bowling with the Ramones.

Garrett Oliver. Illustrations: Sarah Bissell

Sadly, this story does not continue with us crushing pins with Joey and co, or even messing with sentence structure to make ourselves seem deep and spiritual. Instead, we've got the unmistakable smell of manure, the sight of a huge factory producing baked goods for a well-known purveyor of all things baked, and two city slickers pathetically using Google Maps to navigate from one end of a suburban street to another. We're at Stewart Brewing in Loanhead just outside Edinburgh, with inspiration in our minds and nature burning our nostrils, to make our beery dreams come to life in Stewart's Craft Beer Kitchen.

Sam, our brewer for the afternoon, talks us through the details of the brewing process and explains how it's all going to go down, and when we say details we mean details. An alumnus of Heriot-Watt's venerable Brewing and Distilling MSc course, Sam knows beer inside out and back to front.

We get information about water profiles, and the way in which the minerals that are present can affect the beer's ingredients; we learn about the ways in which the compounds in hops break down and the specific conditions required to get your beer going in the right direction; we do a lot of nodding and 'mmm-hmming', and feel glad to have an experienced prescence on hand. Any mug can blab on about beer being "a brown liquid that starts conversations", but if they don't know anything about how that liquid works, they're up shit creek.

Luckily, there's a job that's perfect for our childlike mix of enthusiasm and uselessness – when brainstorming recipe ideas in the office, we mentioned that a citrus element to the beer would be nice. So, once we've picked out our hops, checked out the equipment and stood helpless as one of the other starter beers foams up like a beach at high tide, we're put to work zesting and juicing a pile of grapefruits and lemons. There's one zester between two, and we have to use a teaspoon to cut the fruit in half because there are no knives lying around, but it is kind of 'our level' so it's all fine.

We throw our hops and fruit into the vat of liquid, discuss the finer points of Viking brewing – they thought their yeast-infected spoons were magically causing their beer to ferment, but did they ever think to chuck some fruit in there? Take that, the Vikings – and finally pour the beer into what look an awful lot like empty missiles. We pop in the yeast (after almost forgetting to add half of it to the mix), and our work is done. And because we added the yeast to the liquid at the end, we technically 'brewed' the whole lot ourselves.

So that's the story of how the beer came to be, now to tell you a bit about what it's like. To be honest, it's a bit like the magazine – left-field but approachable, packed with ingredients from all over the place, but a great combination once you put all the pieces together.

A dry-hopped citrus pale, it features a blend of Ella, Southern Cross and Summit hops from Australia, New Zealand and the UK, as well as grapefruit and lemon, lovingly juiced and zested by yours truly. At time of writing, it’s still working away, so we’re going to look mighty silly if it turns out that we’ve managed to somehow balls it up, especially after that needless brag in the previous paragraph. Oh, and it's got a cracking name. The Skinny's beer is called Hop Off The Press, and it was made to a recipe, by people. Cheers.

---

Hop Off The Press will be available at Stewart Brewing’s Edinburgh Beer Festival on 16 April; tickets £15, via bitly.com/EdinBeerFest