Now that you’ve learned a bit about our brewhouse it is time to introduce you to our ales and concoctions. This is by no means an all-inclusive list of elixirs, but more a focus of liquids that we will be pouring, with a bit of history of course, for our grand opening this coming Saturday, June 7th, 2014.
Berliner Weisse was a very regional style around Berlin that dates back to the 1500s. In the 19th century it was the most popular style of beer in Berlin and there were 700 breweries brewing it. It is a cloudy, sour wheat beer that is not very strong in alcohol, traditionally around 3%. Authentic old recipes of Berliner Weisse suggested adding the hops during the mash as there beer was not boiled. The tartness came into the beer naturally through lactobacillus that was present in the breweries yeast slurries.
Our Berliner Style Weisse, Exilis, is brewed using a traditional 3 part decoction using the thin part of the mash in each decoction. The hops are added during the first decoction and boiled for 20 minutes resulting in about 4 to 5 IBU. WE then slowly lauter the beer and hold the beer below boiling for 20 minutes. It then goes directly to the coolship and rests the overnight till room temperature. At this point we pitch some yeast into the coolship and transfer the beer to the fermenter resulting in what we call a “semi-spontaneously” fermented ale. The resulting beer is quite light in alcohol (3.8% ABV) quite high in effervescence and incredibly thirst quenching with a nice tartness.
Grodziskie is a style that changed many times from the 1600’s to 1900’s when it was brewed. At one point it was made from 100% wheat malt but later on barley was added as well. Changes in tax laws during different periods had it drop to as low as the mid 3%s in ABV. It is still heavily debated whether it was actually sour or not. One thing that is not debated is that it was always heavily hopped. It was a style that was very popular in Poland & even exported (Especially to Germany) throughout the 19th & 20th century. Unfortunately it is now no longer commercially produced in Poland.
Our interpretation of a Grodziskie, Amara, is not sour and uses our own smoked wheat malt and floor malted pilsner malt. We smoke our own wheat slowly over old Zymatore barrel wood. These barrels were old wine & spirits barrels made out of some of the best French & American oak. It is then heavily hopped using Styrian Goldings & Sterling to 48 IBU resulting in an intense combination of citrus, herbal & earthy hops combined with a pleasant but smoky character from the oak. We jokingly call this a “brewers beer” because even if nobody likes it Tony & I will just continue to brew this beer just for our own consumption.
The original porter style was developed around the 1720s and then a special strong porter style was developed near the end of the 18th century. Black patent malt that is now used to bring in the dark color and a lot of coffee like roastiness was not invented untill 1817. Prior to this porters & stouts were colored using dark sugars and at times bittered with licorice. Porter was one of the most popular beer styles in the world in mid to late 1700s and exported to many countries including Germany. German brewers at the time brewed their own version to compete with the imported porters from the UK. It is a style no longer commercially brewed in Germany and is thought to have morphed into the modern day Schwarzbiers.
Phantasma is our attempt to recreate one of these old porters. We disregard the German Purity Law just like the North German brewers at the time and add blackstrap molasses for coloring & licorice root in the coolship for bitterness. It is stronger than a UK Porter at around 8% ABV and combines the characteristics of a dark German Hefeweizen and a Baltic Porter. Also available will be our Phantsma Sour (Blend #1), which is 40% of young Phantasma blended with 60% oak aged sour porter, this edition is even stronger coming in at 9.5% ABV.
At OEC Brewing we predominantly produce blended saisons. Why blended Saisons? Saisons in the old days were beers that were brewed for consumption after a hard days manual labor on the farm. It was a challenging beer to brew as it was brewed for consumption during the summer but had to brewed during the cold weather months due to the lack of temperature control. They were often brewed during the early winter and then matured till the following spring & summer. This would result in either in a sour beer or if enough hops was used to keep the souring bacteria at a bay, a very hoppy beer.
Within the first few weeks of our grand opening we will premier two different blended saisons, the first being Tempus (Blend #1). Tempus is our interpretation of the sour version talked about above. Quite often saisons were actually blended with lambics to create a beer that has a thirst quenching tartness. To recreate this we blend our two of our fresh saisons (one using grains of paradise) and about 40% oak aged sour beer. The other which will be avilable in our second or third week is Novo (Blend #1) which is a dry hopped saison. Novo is our interpretation of the hoppy version talked about above. To slow the souring bacteria sometimes excessive amounts of hops were used. There were even rumors of beers that were virtually undrinkable because of their high bitterness levels before aging. Aging of course dulls the bitterness levels from the hops. Also it is not talked about often now but dry hoping was very common with saisons in the old days. To recreate our version we use about 30% oak aged beer that is not so much sour but has more wild yeast character and two of our fresh saison (one that uses quite a bit of hops and has about 62 IBU), which is then of course dry hopped after blending.
Come with an open mind and be ready to taste a myriad of interesting and exiting concoctions.
Opening June 7th, 2014 – 7 Fox Hollow Rd, Oxford, CT 06478 – 12p.m
Contributions to this article by Anthony Pellino