TCS – a beer for all seasons

Here's the full version of David Edge's 'story behind the recipe' - it makes fascinating reading!

Back in 2001 we needed to brew a beer called ‘TCS’ for a friend. A Treacle Chili Stout was my first idea; perhaps Treacle Chocolate Stout would be more sensible? It wasn’t our first stout – we were already had very fond of the 63/-  Oatmeal Stout recipe in the Durden Park book, but this was an attempt at the more robust Irish or Dry stout style. The plan was to combine

• 76% pale malt
• 6½% roast barley
• 6½ flaked maize
• 5% treacle
• 4% flaked wheat
• 2% chocolate malt

How were the ingredients selected? Northern Brewer is sensible enough for a stout and probably inspired by Ralf (my son)’s work experience at the Burton Bridge Brewery. The flaked maize was added just to use it up and of course the treacle and chocolate malt were there for the name and in the hope of some flavour. When we actually brewed on 17th November 2001 the maize was dropped to 3% and the flaked wheat to 4% - history does not record why. The hops had become 75% Goldings and 25% Northern Brewer by weight presumably because that’s what was in the cupboard. We mashed at 67ºC and fermented with S-04 and the OG was only 1050, perhaps as a result of a ‘stuck sparge owing to overenthusiastic extraction’ it says in the log.

What did it taste like? The label said, “Treacle and Chocolate Malt make this a ‘stout’ worthy of the name” although that was sheer puff – in those days the labels were printed before the beers were tasted. Nowadays new brews are forced in the airing cupboard for a couple of weeks to get a tasting note. However, it happens that we sent this beer to Keith Thomas at Brewlab for profiling and IBU analysis – gosh, weren’t we serious! – and so the following tasting note comes from the Master’s pen: -

A rich, complex taste. Fruit is well matched to the dark malts and a sweet body lingers in the aftertaste. Liquorice flavours and alcohol are very attractive in the initial taste and gives additional complexity.

 You can imagine that we were very encouraged – this was just gyle 24. The only suggestion for improvement was a little more carbonation. That was in February 2002 so if people are quick they should be able to have it drinking for Christmas.

Treacle being manufactured. Yum yum.

Well that sounds straightforward enough, but in those days we liked to experiment so about five litres were taken at the end of boil and boiled in a stockpot with 2cm of home-grown de-seeded habañero chilli. That turned out to be just right – the beer didn’t taste very different, but delivered a pleasant warmth in the stomach. The beer was bottled in half pints, labelled “Stout with a traditional Victorian adulterant”.

The second batch was made in May 2002. Ralf adopted the beer (all of our recipes are controlled by an ‘owner’ who usually brews it). The maize was dropped, and the hops became Challenger and Cluster. It looks as though we were disciples of Graham Wheeler and his ‘any old copper hop’ theory. The batch seemed a little thin, so we upped the mash temperature to 68½°C for the next brew in December 2003. This batch used Northdown and significantly perhaps a good dose of Fuller’s yeast. The bottle labels record ‘Traditional dry stout with notes of coffee, chocolate and treacle’, but the log later recalls ‘replaced in the range by 78/- (strong oatmeal stout) in the interests of standardisation’.

We also turned a few litres of the 2003 into Christmas special by boiling for an extra 15 minutes with 1 gram/litre of allspice, bitter orange peel and coriander seed. It wasn’t actually flushed down the sink until 2007, still undrinkably allspicy, and beginning to succumb to autolysis – the marmitey breakdown of old yeast. An attempt at mulling it in 2004 by plunging a red-hot poker into a glass made it worse if anything. So that was about it for TCS. Or so it seemed.

A few bottles were found at the back of the cupboard in March 2005. Well with 1200 bottles in stock before we started kegging the running beers, these things happen. Ralf decided to enter these into the CBA 2005 Derby festival and his beer was judged best in show, thus ending my reign as CBA champion brewer after just four months. He was then invited to brew the beer at Roosters (the now established first prize from Derby) where he learned much from the knowledgeable and hospitable Franklin family.

Needless to say the beer was reinstated to the core range! A follow on brew in 2005 used WLP002 yeast (often regarded as Fullers, but a somewhat different animal to the stuff from the brewery) and had to be repitched with S-04 to finish. The darned stuff is so flocculent it drops out before it’s done. It won second prize for dry stout at Nottingham in 2006, but I got my own back with a first for my oatmeal stout. Again we couldn’t resist a little experiment and following a visit to Java where the Guinness tasted surprisingly treacly a small batch had 50g/litre (rather than ten) of treacle added.

So, fancy a go? Here’s the basic recipe for 25 litres at og 1056, circa 80 EBC and 40 IBU

Assuming efficiency: 75 %

• 81.6% 4.74 kg Pale Maris Otter
• 2.5% 0.15 kg Chocolate malt
• 3.8% 0.22 kg Wheat malt
• 7.6% 0.44 kg Roasted barley
• 4.4% 0.26 kg Black treacle

Mash at 68°C for an hour. The mash temperature is on the high side and I’d suggest that is one of the keys to the recipe. Don’t be afraid – keep the mash warm.

63 g Northdown 8.5%AA. A note on IBUs – our beer was measured at 40IBU, but Promash predicted 53. I have therefore reformulated the recipe on the assumption that your utilisation is higher than mine (our copper is underpowered – 3kW/45 litres). Our version of the recipe contains 80g of hops.

Boil for 60 minutes, adding the treacle for the last 20 minutes

Yeast: White Labs WLP002 English Ale

I wouldn’t get excited about the yeast, but would pitch with a yeast that works for you and gives you the sweetness/dryness balance you want. Roosters used their house strain, with no detriment to the flavour – indeed those who joined us in the parlour of the Brunswick to taste it all claimed to be our best mates and the firkin didn’t see the evening out.

So what could you do with it?

Recipes tell you about the inputs, not the outputs – scale and adjust to suit your brewery – and have fun! You could try some experiments in demijohns: • Add 50% to the quantities and using the first runnings to make ten litres of a stronger beer for two Christmases hence.

• Black pepper – one successful commercial stout uses about 3 g/l sprinkled on top of the fermenter when fermentation is most vigorous.

• Chili – we used 20 mm²/litre (ie2x10 mm) of Habañero pepper per litre in our chili version. The second time we made it, it wasn’t so spicy so make an extract with vodka and try the dosing on a sample.

• Spices – likewise! Don’t just bung powerful spices and hope the quantity is right.

• If you want something a little more festive, 0.5g/litre of coriander and 0.2g/litre dried orange peel added for the last 15 minutes of the boil shouldn’t be out of place.

• It should drink well this Christmas – but why not bottle a few and try them every couple of months until next.

Happy brewing!

David Edge