Blacksheep Riggwelter on the Jamil Show

[FiercelyFuzzy]

Hi All

Thought I'd post a link to this as I found the show very useful. Usually Jamil attempts to clone commercially available US brews but in this show he takes a shot at Blacksheep Riggwelter!
Also contains an interview with the brewery. Top stuff.
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/618

Cheers
FF

[mysterio]

Yeah, that was a good listen. Very interesting. I believe they used the Timothy Taylor West Yorkshire strain.

[micmacmoc]

well what a top brewer, he deserves better from JBK!
Enthusiasam from the man was superb!

Top fella!
I for one am filling my glass and raising it to the yorkshiremen.


ps...hate the word 'awesome' in every ad.

[Dr. Dextrin]

Excellent link, thanks FF.

[TC2642]

Listened to this the other day. Well worth listening too.

[Bobba]

That's an excellent interview! Brilliant He's a legend that bloke.
I've a question though....how come the commercial brewers get away with fermenting for 3 days, before crashing it, where as I have to wait well over a week before it's finished fermenting?

[CJBrew]

Americans are annoying, but it is interesting

[boingy]

That's an excellent interview! Brilliant He's a legend that bloke.
I've a question though....how come the commercial brewers get away with fermenting for 3 days, before crashing it, where as I have to wait well over a week before it's finished fermenting?

They use that science!. They pitch a precise quantity of yeast and tightly control the temperature.

[steve_flack]

Most of my ale fermentations are over in 3-4 days. If you use the ringwood strain I can pitch on Saturday evening and it be all done by Tuesday. Windsor is nearly as fast.

The secret is pitching enough active yeast at the right temperature into well oxygenated wort.

The CYBI series is quite interesting even if you've never tried some of the beers. I recently brewed an IPA using a 70C mash (like mentioned in the Lagunitas IPA show). It does work, your mash goes fine. You get a nice mouthfeel on the beer and you still get reasonable (if lower) attenuation. I'm definitely going to do it again for some lower gravity beers.

[mysterio]

Yeah I've been listening to it from the start, like you say even if you haven't tried the beers (which I haven't in most cases) it's instructive to listen to what the brewers are doing with recipe design and yeast handling etc.

3 days is pretty typical for an ale ferment I would say.

[Bobba]

Most of my ale fermentations are over in 3-4 days. If you use the ringwood strain I can pitch on Saturday evening and it be all done by Tuesday. Windsor is nearly as fast.

The secret is pitching enough active yeast at the right temperature into well oxygenated wort.

Ah right When you say over, do you mean at final gravity, or practically finished at 2-3 points over? And what's your optimal pitching temperature?

The CYBI series is quite interesting even if you've never tried some of the beers. I recently brewed an IPA using a 70C mash (like mentioned in the Lagunitas IPA show). It does work, your mash goes fine. You get a nice mouthfeel on the beer and you still get reasonable (if lower) attenuation. I'm definitely going to do it again for some lower gravity beers.

Excellent! Planning that as my next batch based on the podcast. Did you manage to get any summit, or did you switch it out for something else. Was thinking I might switch the hops a bit to just use Horizon + Cascade w/ a Fuggles sub for the Williamette (ie not Summit or Centennial)

[Dr. Dextrin]

I've just been going over my Riggwelter recipe to take account of the information from this excellent interview, but something doesn't quite add up...

From the interview, it's clear that this is an all-grain brew - no sugar is used. However, my notes say that the ingredients listed on a bottle of Riggwelter from the supermarket include sugar. Unfortunately, this beer seems to be like hens teeth in the supermarkets around here at present, so I haven't been able to check that.

So I was wondering if anyone could check it for me? Can anyone with access to a bottle of Riggwelter take a look and see if sugar is listed in the ingredients?

If it does, I'm wondering what the explanation is. Convenient forgetfulness in the interview by the head brewer, perhaps?

Many thanks.

[steve_flack]

Excellent! Planning that as my next batch based on the podcast. Did you manage to get any summit, or did you switch it out for something else. Was thinking I might switch the hops a bit to just use Horizon + Cascade w/ a Fuggles sub for the Williamette (ie not Summit or Centennial)

I missed this question at the time but if you're still interested I used Magnum for bittering and Cascade/Willamette as the late hops.

[Graham]

If it does, I'm wondering what the explanation is. Convenient forgetfulness in the interview by the head brewer, perhaps?

It is very difficult to get brewers to admit to using sugar - I've had long experience of that - some will admit it privately but not publicly in their marketing material for example. You can usually tell by the O.G./F.G ratio, the attenuation. I am certain that Riggwelter has sugar in it.

If you listen to the way the brewer answers the question, he stutters a bit and says: No! No! No! No caramel. A convenient side-stepping of the question.

[steve_flack]

I've recently had an email conversation with the head brewer of a largish regional brewer. He was completely open about the fact that his two biggest selling cask beers were 100% pale malt with caramel colouring. Those beers are very well regarded so it does show that using stuff such as caramel and sugar doesn't automatically mean the beer will be sh*t.

That being said, they don't mention it in their marketing materials. I guess it's a perception thing.