It will come as no surprise to any of you that in the middle of my workload here in Halifax, I have been trying in fits and starts to sample the city’s beer culture. Last week I popped in on Halifax’s lesser known brewpub – Rock Bottom Brewery and Restaurant. It is an elegant and sophisticated restaurant, with soft lighting, granite and hardwood adornments, a welcoming fireplace and a quiet, relaxed atmosphere. Sadly, that is where the positive impression ended. The beer was underwhelming. No, that is not accurate. It was awful. All of them had a yeast bite that struck me as a a dry yeast issue. They also shared a cidery, metallic aftertaste that threw off the balance. The beer never melded into a desirable whole, offering scatterings of characteristics but never creating an all-around experience.
That said, each beer had elements that hinted at potential. the Nut Brown had a pleasant nuttiness accented by chocolate. The IPA offered a soft, earthy hop that enticed. The Stout had enough dark roast character to hide other issues in the beer.
I chatted with the servers while sampling and discovered that they are an extract brewery. They purchase dried malt extract from BC and only do the boil and fermentation on site. I didn’t ask whether they used dried yeast (because I knew the server wouldn’t know PLUS my tastebuds had already revealed that fact to me). I had already worked out that something was wrong with the brewing process, but this tidbit of information was invaluable for anchoring my perceptions. The cidery, metallic character I was picking up was due to the extract origins of the beer. It left me wondering what the beer would taste like if they invested a little more capital into a mash tun and brewed all-grain.
A few days later, I find myself contemplating the legitimacy of being an extract brewery. To be clear, I haven’t rushed to any quick conclusions.I am not an all-grain snob. I have tasted enough homebrew made from extract (or high end kits like Brewhouse) to know that you can make very good beer from extract – at least at home.
But is this a valid option for a commercial brewer?
I know that Saskatchewan’s brewpubs have made their (lousy) reputation around extract brewing. I also know thatno serious craft brewer has chosen the extract route. In part this is about access to ingredients. There is a limited range of extracts available, dwarfed significantly by the wide range of specialty malts awaiting brewer imagination. But I think it is also about the effects of doing a full mash. It creates a fuller, more complex flavour that extract can’t match. Plus I suspect that extract brewing is regularly paired with dried yeast – as both are about reducing costs and process difficulty – and that can’t be a good thing for beer flavour.
So, I am experiencing a kind of cognitive dissonance here. Homebrewed extract beer can be quite good. Yet commercial beer made from extract seems wrong. Which more accurately reflects the fundamental truth?
It is possible I am being too quick to judge commercial extract from my evidence of one brewery (although I have also tried various extract beer from Saskatchewan brewpubs with similar reaction). Or maybe there is something about brewing multiple hectolitres of beer that is more unforgiving than making 20 or 40 litres.
So, I finish this post with more of a question than an opinion. Is there ever a time when extract brewing works for a brewpub or commercial brewery? If so, why? If not, why not? Discuss.
May 26, 2011 at 8:22 AM
We call the extract brewpubs in Saskatchewan “stir and serve” brewers. Wretched stuff, all of them. They use inferior dry yeast and cheap extract. However, homebrewers that use dry yeast (such as myself) and extracts are typically using better quality versions, and are actually trying to make good beer, which might explain why the product turns out so much better.
To be clear, Saskatchewan has 3 all-grain brewpubs (Bushwakker and Brewsters in Regina, Maguires in Saskatoon), and the other 20 or so do not even deserve to be mentioned. I am not sure about Maguires, but Brewsters primarily uses a dry yeast that I have never before heard of or seen elsewhere. So to my knowledge, Bushwakker is the only one that brews allgrain and uses liquid yeast.
May 26, 2011 at 2:38 PM
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the insight. In retrospect I should have more carefully excluded Bushwakker and Brewsters from my swipe at Saskie brewpubs. I honestly wasn’t thinking of them when I wrote it. I haven’t been to Maguires so I cannot comment on them.
Jason
May 26, 2011 at 1:59 PM
I heard from Steve at Paddock Wood that Maguires buys wort(or wert) from them.
May 26, 2011 at 3:34 PM
This boiles down to the fact that the person that opened that brewpub was interested in making money. If you are passionate about beer, the craft and science behind it, you would never consider using extract for your brewpub. The only time I consider it to be acceptable is if after producing many successfull all-grain batches that have consolidated your brand you are willing to challenge yourself to find the best extract ingredients and produce a superior beer that will impress people once you mentioned it was made with extract.
May 26, 2011 at 6:22 PM
Mike, I also remember Steve telling me this years ago. I had sent him an email in Feb to clarify for a column I was writing, but did not hear back. However, I was told by the Shiny Penny folks in April that Maguires is making their own all grain beers, so that is where my source came from. I have never tried the Maguires beers either, so I cannot comment, but I certainly have never heard anything good about them.
May 26, 2011 at 6:38 PM
Not to harm the premise of your article but…
Rock Bottom isn’t an extract brewery! They buy all-grain wort that’s been whipped up for them by a brewery in…. of all places…. the Vancouver area! I expect the cidery notes you experienced stem from acidification of the wort to a PH of 3.9 or below as required by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency folks as a means to suppress any growth of botulinum bacteria. Now I haven’t gone in there with a PH meter to be sure, they could possibly be treating the wort with some sort of preservative but I’m a little skeptical that would be the case since it still needs to be fermented. Regardless, they have no kettle to boil anything, they only have the 3 fermenters and some bright beer tanks in the walk-in cooler, they receive the wort in 23L bag-in-boxes and transfer them into the fermenter upon arrival. You are correct about there being a dry-yeast issue, they do use fresh top-quality dry yeast but are seriously under-pitching and therefore have very slow, drawn-out, sluggish fermentations. On my first visit a year or more ago, the beers were ALL as phenolic as you could possibly imagine.
It’s sad really, the manufacturer of the tanks is running to pubs everywhere laying the sales pitch on, explaining how good and fresh their beer will be with the added bonus of huge profit margins since they don’t need a brewer. Of course this is all bullshit given that they act as the middle man and lay a hefty fee onto the wort which is shipped directly to them before they turn around and ship it back out to the ferment-on-premise pub. This sort of setup and degraded quality of product harms each and every craft brewer out there.
May 26, 2011 at 6:51 PM
Wow! Great information. Thank you. Clearly I missed the mark on the details, although my tastebuds seem spot on.
My problem likely was that I relied on the information of the serving staff, who used the term “malt extract”, and I trusted they understood the difference between that and wort.
In my mind buying pre-packaged wort and throwing it in a fermenter is worse than extract brewing because – as you mention – there isn’t even a brewer.
Thanks for the correction and the additional insights. Both I and the readers thank you.
Jason
May 26, 2011 at 7:47 PM
Glad to be of help. It’s too bad the staff don’t at least know what the beer is made from. I suppose I shouldn’t say anything since there is a whole new line of new employees for the patio season at my place, some of which I need to spend weeks with. On a brighter note, the owners realize they have a problem with the product and are seeking ways to improve it. They asked me to have a look to see if anything can be done to improve the beer, I take this as a good sign and hope nobody else in this city (or anywhere) jump on the ferment-on-premise bandwagon.
PS: Hop Mess Monster release is tomorrow at 5pm so come on down if you can!
September 8, 2011 at 4:08 PM
I would be very surprised if they were acidifying the wort to manage micros. Lowering the pH from 5.0+ to 3.90 would take a huge amount of acid and I couldn’t imagine what the beer would taste like.
If it were me I’d simply flash pasteurize the wort and package in a sterile bag.
My guess would be the cidery taste is more related to yeast & fermentation temperature, but it could be any number of things.
September 8, 2011 at 4:44 PM
Cathy,
Good points. Obviously we cannot be certain of what causes the off-flavours until we can probe inside their process. So my post was speculative (and I hope that my lack of certainty came through) as to the origins of the bad taste. The thing I was certain of, however, was that the beer was substandard.
Thanks for commenting.