Collaboration 5: Lignes de Brux – Bruxellenis Trois on Ekuanot (Trois Dame Switzerland)

Jordan arrived at Lines HQ in Wales just before both breweries headed off to Indyman 17, so things were in superb nature. The last brew between Lines and Brasserie Trois Dame was a date grisette a little over a year ago so myself and Jordan had a little catching up to do… The plan: 2 days of beer producing, geeking, talking and obviously heavy drinking!

Day 1… My Land rover blows a puncture, delaying my arrival to Jordan in Cardiff by 2 hours (I live on a hill with no transport links, so had to run to the nearest village Taffs Well… on a sunday…!) Result…: Jordan lives…. He’s in a a decent beer bar! We met a drank a few, meeting with Duncan and discussing our beer and some of the decent beers on tap (Small Bar, Cardiff)

Day 2… Brew day. We had actually discussed this beer between ourselves (me, Jordan and Duncan) for the past month or so. We had already cultured up a sizable volume of sac brux trois ready for pitching into our beer, so just needed to nail the brewing. For those who have not heard of Brux Trois, it used to be classed as a brettanomyces strain, but White Labs have been engaged in researching the full gene makeup of their main Saccharomyces strains and recently further investgated the origins and specificity of their line of Brettanomyces.  After looking at the genetics of these wild yeasts (sent for sequencing), they realised the WLP644 ITS amplicon falls within the category of Saccharomyces. However for our beer we were interested in the flavours presented from the yeast, which mirrored some of the brett strains. Infact the strain itself shows many properties similar to Brettanomyces yeast, such as lack of flocculation, pellicle formation and these flavour compounds. ON WITH the beer: we wanted to balance our ph correctly so adjusted the liquor with some harsh battery acid, then decided to add some acidified malt to out mash (to buffer the desired enzyme ph levels. The grist was made up of pilsner, oats and wheat, to give a nice clean wort. The mash went well. After transferring to the copper we decided to go light on hops and stuck to some european varieties to keep the bitterness to a minimum. We cool hopped (whirlpool) with Ekuanot, which slammed a nice tropical and zesty aroma on the beer.

Evening: We planned to travel to Bristol… disaster 2… Duncan’s car radiator explodes… So I (I was in Bristol already) had to travel over and grab Jordan… After working out Jordan had to be at Cloudwater for 10am (5am rise), we decided 10pm was getting late, so we travelled back to my folks who presented us with a midnight feast… A Roast dinner! We chatted and had a beer, which was cool and ticked all lists!

BEER Attenuation and dry hopping… It took the beer a few weeks to fully attenuate, and we let the flavour develop a little after this. Once we felt the beer was done and all flavours stable, we dropped in a nice amount of Ekuanot… The beer is now smelling and tasting fine!!