Author: regan

Dyad – a group of two…a pairing that creates strength or power… There are some great beers around that showcase a single hop. Oakham Ales Citra is an absolute belter and opened the UK’s eyes to the Citra hop and The Kernel are, as always, freakishly good when they do their single hop pales and IPA’s. So, over a beer, we were “kicking around” how we might emulate these but with some new hop varieties. We really liked the idea of getting to know a hop by tasting it on its own, but every time we came up with a new hop someone would say “wouldn’t that be great with…”. Eventually we had to accept that we were just much more excited about creating 2 hop combinations. That was the easy bit, agreeing a name for this new series of two hop beers took us ages! As always, the beer came first… Eventually we came up with Dyad; ‘something that consists of two elements or parts’ and a term used in music, chemistry, biology, sociology and philosophy. Also, as any Star Wars devotees will know, a dyad is a pairing of two Force-sensitive beings creating power as strong as life itself. So we can have some high hopes for our new series of hop dyads! To really showcase the hops we chose a NEIPA (New England IPA) style and selected a malt base of Maris Otter Pale Ale; Wheat, Oats & Rye and a target ABV of around 5.2%. Unfiltered and unpasteurised (as always) and un-fined, so we get the freshest and fullest flavours possible and hazy juicy beer. After refining this base with a few pilot trials and experimenting with using our house ale yeast but fermented slightly warmer and with more oxygen at the start to encourage Ester formation, we were ready to start playing around with hops. We add the hops late (in no less than 5 kettle and whirlpool additions) for low bitterness and to make the most of the hop aromas on show. Now we had our basic recipe we were ready to choose our first hop Dyad for a full-scale brew! Given our inspiration from Oakham Ales and The Kernel we wanted to start off with Citra, if only we could get hold of some! Until now we’ve only been able to get the occasional 5 or 10kg and even that has involved Alex bringing some back in from India in his suitcase, so we were left “open mouthed” when we read that Oakham Ales are now using 25 tonnes of Citra hops each year! Then Covid happened and to set against the enormous misery everywhere, there has been one small positive, we could buy some Citra! What to pair it with? We wanted to avoid making the beer over-citrussy and after some deliberation we opted for El Dorado. Which was nice as we already had some in stock! El Dorado is ideal as, for a modern American hop it’s non-citrussy, whilst exhibiting some gorgeous soft fruit aroma’s. More subtle than many, but hopefully an ideal partner for the bold Citra. DYAD # 1 turned out pretty much as we hoped, although to try increase the “juiciness” even further, we added an extra dry hopping stage to recipe for Dyad 2 onwards. We also decided to “tag team” the hops, so one hop will change each time and all the hops will gets two chances to shine. DYAD #1 = El Dorado + Citra Dyad #2 = Citra + Wakatu (bringing floral and lime aromas) Dyad #3 = Wakatu + Hallertau Blanc DYAD #4 = Hallertau Blanc +?? etc We hope you will join us on the journey and find your favourite hops and combinations – keep a record as we may bring back one or two of the most popular.

Artwork

Just in case anyone wants to know about our can designs… Out of necessity we’ve developed a simple (inexpensive) formula for our artwork. We get our team and/or others who have helped with the beer, to hand write a few versions of the name in their own style and we then pick which we think works best for the beer. Then everyone claims that it was their writing that was the one finally chosen. The DYAD handwriting came from one of the team at Charles Faram “Hop Factors & Merchants Since 1865” and we like to think that they will now argue about whose. We then had to choose colours. We used our ale yeast, so it had to be a black can. The beer is all about hops, so we wanted a hoppy colour for the writing. Then a lightbulb moment, Sean shot off to the beer garden and returned with a photo of one of our growing hop plants, which became our background image.

Alex, our Head Brewer, was truly bitten by the Bohemian Pilsner “bug” when working for Staropramen in Prague, back in the 90’s. He’s been on a mission to perfect a craft homage to the style ever since. Sheffield has superb soft water, fresh from the northern peaks, similar in fact to Plzen water and ideal for brewing lagers. Not surprisingly then, Pilsner (Czech-style) was Triple Point’s gyle, or brew number -001. Although, as it takes such a long time to properly “lager” it certainly wasn’t the first beer we got to drink! The Pilsner tasted great and was soon a firm favourite with the rest of the team and in our taproom, but we gradually realised we hadn’t got it quite right. The beer always behaved beautifully at the brewery tap, but it would sometimes “fob” excessively when we packaged it into kegs or cans and sent it elsewhere. Trying to understand this pattern of “mis-behaviour” and getting feedback from people who said they loved the taste of the beer, but just couldn’t cope with the amount of foam, has nearly driven us nuts. Not only that, but we decided that we had got the name wrong too. We generally like simple beer names that “tell you what’s in the can” but ‘pilsner’ is probably the most over-used and abused word in common beer language. How can people know what to expect when so many beers that have no similarity or right, claim a bit of the pilsner heritage, when most of them aren’t even Bohemian style pilsners. In fact the Czechs complained to the Germans about calling their tribute lagers pilsner, as they clearly weren’t from Plzn. The compromise, pilsener (in the pilsner style) was adopted. So, after kicking the problem around over many an after-work beer, we decided we had to go back to basics. Could we evolve the beer, retaining all that we loved yet make it more… Well just more?  

Including A Twist

We were determined to stay faithful to the Bohemian style, but also to retain a couple of “twists” that make it ours and not just a pale imitation. We use floor malts from England’s oldest working maltings, appropriate we think, because it was English progress in malting techniques and development of pale ales that enabled Josef Groll to brew the first Pilsner (the World’s first ever pale lager). Ask any Czech brewer and, given the choice, they will select floor malts for a genuine Ležak (Pilsner lager), so we did. We also dry-hop our pilsner. This practice, adding more hops during late fermentation or conditioning, is normally used in IPA’s and pale ales and allows intimate contact between the hop essential oils and the beer to maximise flavour and aroma. Lagers are not normally dry-hopped.   Alex went over for the hop harvest at the end of August 2019 and was treated to the best of Czech hospitality. Starting with the beer, “Oh, the beer!” Two nights and a full day on the farm gave him the insight he wanted into the delicate, fragrant, yet spicy hops which add so much distinctive, authentic character to our beer. From field to kiln, to bale he was, with humbling modestly, shown everything, including the restored hop museum kiln, wood-fired and alight for the annual hop harvest festival.  He came back buzzing.

Žatec (pronounced zya-tets)

Alex re-thought our recipe and every detail of the brewing process, crucially adjusting the minute details of the softness of the water (liquor) and the dry-hopping in late fermentation to ensure the best conditions for flavour transfer to the beer. This ensures we re-ferment the additional sugars released as a result of dry-hopping, that may otherwise cause a phenomena known as ‘hop creep’, which sounds like a character in a nerdy beer mag, but was in fact the cause of our old fobbing problems.  Our ode to Bohemian pilsner is now different. The beer is a little stronger than the previous Pilsner (4.8% vs. 4.6%) and we think it’s now cleaner, slightly more crisp, but with more character at the same time. Drunk cold it is as refreshing as any fine lager, but as it warms in the glass (if you can leave it that long) the richness biscuit and caramel flavours of floor-malted barleys plays foil to the freshness of the hops, delicate and floral, yet at the same time spicy and with hints of tropical lemongrass and fruit. It was clear to us all that our Bohemian style pilsner, which owes so much of its character and its heritage to the hops, should be named after them.  Pilsner is now Žatec. This does now tell you what is inside the can. And the handwriting of Žatec on the outside of the can, belongs to Petra. Cheers! (or in Czech,Na Zdravi!)

Our first collaboration was with Le Trou De Diable, a micro-brewery based in Québec, Canada, with a quite staggering international reputation and collection of awards. As with all good collaborations, our aim was to do something different. Something that combines the strengths and provenance of our two breweries. Hoping to seek out where the magic happens, where 1 + 1 = 3. Given the relevance to Triple Point of the number 3, we decided to attempt a beer triptych, inspired by works of art designed to be appreciated in 3 parts.

Brew day – 3rd April 2019

Both Head Brewers are fans of pilsner beers, so we decided to brew a pilsner, but differently and in three parts. We had been using oats in our ales but not yet in lagers, so we decided to use a high proportion of oats in the mix. Le Trou Du Diable are masters of barrel ageing, an art that we are keen to develop, so this would form part of the plan. We were keen to introduce some elements, flavours or ingredients from each of the collaborators Nations. As we’d decided to brew a German style Pilsner, in England, with Quebecoise (French Canadians) we decided to incorporate some French hops and what could be more Canadian than Maple Syrup? We managed to get hold of four French Oak barrels that had, for 4 years, been used to mature Sauvignon Blanc. Once the dry-hopped oat pilsner had been matured in our Sheffield stainless steel vessels for 100 days, it was split into 3 parts. The first, T1, was put into conventional kegs and some reserved for bottling. The second, T2, was used to fill two of the oak barrels, with the addition of a generous serving of Canadian maple syrup and champagne yeast. The remainder of the beer was decanted into the other 2 oak barrels with the addition of Gold Medal winning sour beer, L’Ours. This sour culture from Le Trou Du Diable has had previous contributions from Cantillon and Hill Farmstead. We are enormously grateful for the donation of “bugs” with such high pedigree, to our fledgling barrel ageing programme! The “Triptych” handwriting on the bottles belongs to Andrè, Luc & Micho. TRIPTYCH #1 – OAT PILSNER – abv 4.6% – The original oat pilsner. We use floor-malted barley, golden naked oats and French hops. Dry-hopped with Strisselspalt hops for a refined, floral and grassy aroma. One super smooth Pilsner. TRIPTYCH #2 – BARREL AGED BRUT OAT PILSNER – abv 5.5% – the original oat pilsner aged in Sauvignon Blanc barrels for over 100 days, with added Champagne yeast and maple syrup. TRIPTYCH #3 – BARREL AGED OAT PILSNER SAISON BLEND – abv 5.7% – the original oat pilsner aged in Sauvignon Blanc barrels for over 100 days, with added L’Ours (Le Trou du Diable sour saison) and maple syrup. Santé