I still remember brewing my first batch of home brewed beer. The wife of one of my friends had bought him a homebrew kit for Christmas; however, not knowing whether he would stick with it or not, he enlisted myself and another friend of ours to split the cost of the remaining equipment under the proviso that we would brew together. The first batch was an extract clone of Bass Ale and we split the batch after bottling among the three of us. I can still vividly recall the smell of the hops as they went into the boil! This was in early 1997. Little did I know what was to transpire from this simple beginning.
My son (and first child), Evan, was born in August of 1997. I put my wife through the wringer during most of that year. While still pregnant, we were building our first house and at the time I was traveling quite frequently for work, particularly to Scotland, and it fell on her to deal with much of the issues of the house. Then, during the summer of 1998, after months of planning and uncertainty, I sealed the opportunity to do a job rotation in our office in East Kilbride, Scotland for three months. It became one of the highlights of my life.
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| The Three Judges Pub |
I had a very nice flat in Glasgow's West End just off Great Western Road and a stone's throw from Byres Road, the main artery in the West End. My wife and newly born son spent six of the weeks with me and I still remember it fondly. Every weekend I/we traveled around Scotland visiting primarily castles and other historical sites as well as a few breweries and distilleries. During this stay, I widened my appreciation and obsession for Scottish brewed cask-conditioned (or real) ales under the tutelage of my long time Scottish friend, Alan McRobb, himself a real ale enthusiast for many, many years. Needless to say, I brought back an incredible desire to brew those beers I came to love so much from Scotland (and England) in my home in Austin since they were not (and still aren't) available locally.
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| Caledonian Duechars IPA |
At the time, one beer in particular drove me to pursue homebrewing with an unbridled passion - Edinburgh's
Caledonian Brewery,
Deuchars IPA (I even stated as much during my first appearance on the "
Can You Brew It?" show on
The Brewing Network). In recent times, this beer still has a huge following in the UK but has also accumulated a number of slaggings. Personally, I think this is primarily due to the fact that, historically, IPA was of a very high gravity (alcohol level) as well as very heavily hopped to sustain it for the long voyage to India. In addition, the availability in the UK of many of the over-the-top IPAs from the New World haven't exactly helped the case either. This beer is quite far from either of those so I would ask everyone to ignore the "IPA" moniker in this case. It is no more associative to this particular beer than the "Deuchars" name (Duddingston, at the south of Edinburgh once had a brewery owned by Robert Deuchar). However, the beer is perhaps the finest session ale I have ever tasted. And there begins the saga...
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| The Real Ale Almanac |
I returned to Austin from Scotland armed with three of Graham Wheeler's homebrewing books as well as the indispensable (at least to me anyway) "Real Ale Almanac" and set about trying to clone
Deuchars IPA. By this time I had already moved from extract brewing to all grain. At the time, Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" did not have a recipe for Deuchars so I built up my own based on the information in "Real Ale Almanac". The first attempts were drinkable but not even close, really. Long story short, over the years I've sourced as much information as I possibly could find including my notes from when I visited the
Caledonian Brewery, a forum thread that had detailed information supposedly from one of the brewers, and seeking the advice of my good friend John McGarva, owner and head brewer at
Tryst Brewery in Larbert (Falkirk), Scotland. Through all of this I have tried many, many recipes varying malts, hops, yeast and water profile and achieved improvements in some areas but have never hit the mark to my satisfaction. One of the longer term issues is of course the fact that I am now relying on my memory of what the real thing tasted like as it is still not available in the US and even the bottles/cans I've been fortunate enough to have brought to me don't come close to the beer, properly kept and appropriately served in cask-conditioned format.
This week I tapped yet another attempt using a small tweak to what has become my most stable recipe. Sadly, this one is off too in a different direction that previous batches (too much Crystal Malt). However, as frustrating as it is at times, every batch of beer offers a learning experience and that is one of the reasons I'm still home brewing. As I continue to train my palate through beer judging I am getting better at identifying aspects that need to be tweaked and this latest attempt is no exception. This beer is all about flavor and balance and at 3.8% ABV it can become quite difficult to achieve the desired result. Surely one day (and hopefully soon) I will hit what I'm wanting and move all my frustration to true joy!
Yours Aye!
Neil
