New Beers For The Winter Season

Its always nice to come up with some new recipes and with winter suddenly upon us, we decided it would be a great time to do a couple of Expery-Mental beers to unleash on the lovely public.

The first was born in Autumn, with the ripening of the chestnuts.  Both Mark and Mike love them so it was only a matter of time before they ended up in a brew.  Mike went out in the Norfolk countryside with Simon 'Hunter' Marsh and some other willing volunteers to forage as much as possible and after a few trips had enough for the brews.

The hard part was working out how to extract their flavour. Should they go in the mash, the boil or secondary?  Mike decided on the boil and to try and be even cleverer, wanted to use the shells as well, as a bittering agent. To add to the flavour some Hazlenuts were also added to the mix.

'I ended up roasting the chestnuts, blitzing them with a food processor and then putting them in the boil' 

The result... A nutty brown ale that is the colour of chestnuts, the bitterness of a bitter and an aroma of chestnut, hazelnut and chocolate.

The second brew went a little of piste. 'I wanted to create something that was quintessentially Christmas but not something that everyone else had done'. Out went the ideas of orange and chocolate and in came the idea of using cranberries, a great side to any roast turkey. The cranberries were used in the mash in this case and added a beautiful orange tinge to the wort.  

The final beer has come out full of flavour with a slightly tart edge. Great as a side to any Christmas meal.

You can find the 2 Expery-Mental beers in shops and on pump around Norfolk now! They are of course, both gluten free and vegan!