Poppyland Beer
Days of Empire
Strong Ale 6.8%
Bottle conditioned, in 275 ml bottles. Limited edition of 50 bottles.
Brewed on: 14.4.2013. Bottled: 23.4.2013 (St George's Day)
GOLD winner in 'Unique' category: CAMRA Bottled Beer of the Year Competition 2015
Design
This beer is all based around the Chevallier barley grown by Dr Chris Ridout and his team at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. As part of his research programme he took seed that had been stored for decades and grew it up over two years to produce a small crop of Chevallier barley. This was floor malted at Crisp's Maltings at Great Ryburgh in Norfolk. Chris is interested in the natural disease resistance of these heritage varieties of barley in order to breed better plants. But he is also a brewer and was interested in the malting and brewing characterists of Chevallier. He himself made a firkin (40 litres) of special bitter at the Stumptail Brewery which he runs with his wife Sarah de Vos and this was sold at the Duke of Wellington in Norwich on the weekend of the CAMRA AGM, starting Friday 19th April 2013. I turned up at lunchtime that day and was greeted by a camera crew, a journalist and EDP photographer. I had more of less the first pint and it was glorious: malty, complex and with a tremendous mouthfeel and a flavour that modern varieties just don't have. The news journalists wanted to know what I thought. This was the taste of beer as it had been enjoyed from the 1820s until the replacement of old barley varieties with new hybrids during and after the Second World War. It was deeply satisfying stuff. Clearly the new varieties were introduced for their agronomics benefits rather than their flavour. As it happens I met Chris Ridout at my old stamping ground at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse's Spring Fair. He was there because they were planting a half acre field with more Chevallier barley using a horse and a Victorian seed drill. Later at Branthill Farm we had a discussion about growing barley and brewing with extra-special malts as part of the Barley to Beer Project. To my great surprise and delight Chris handed me a bag of malt after the meeting - just 8.25 kg of it - and invited me to try brewing with it.
Chris said: "This single variety dominated beer production for nearly 100 years. It is quite a tall variety which stopped being used when we had increasing mechanisation and people got interested in breeding new varieties, so it became very old-fashioned. As the acreage declined, it became obsolete. However, even as the barley was declining, the beer still won lots of competitions. So there must have been something special about its flavour and we wanted to find out what it was."
I am indebted to Dr Chris Ridout for making this small quantity of Chevallier malt available. Too small to use commercial brewing equipment, I fell back on my home brewing kit and brewed this beer in the kitchen. The yield was not brilliant on account of my primitive setup but it hasn't stopped it being a stonking beer. To get the taste of 19th century beer I chose Goldings for the bittering in the boil, Fuggle hops late in the boil and a good quantity of wild landrace hops in the steep. These I have collected from Castle Acre, Binham and Weybourne, close by the old monastic ruins and quite obviously relicts from the early days of brewing on those sites. I have mapped the occurrence of wild hops in North Norfolk and there is a strong association with former religious houses.
A well written account of the John Innes Centre's research project and Chris Ridout's revival of Chevallier barley is given on Martyn Cornell's Zythophile website.
Tasting notes
This ale has an intense flavour, mostly due to the malt but accentuated by brewing as strong a beer as I could without using adjuncts. The long boil time of 2 hours reduced the quantity from the maximum my vessels could hold - something over 20 litres to just about 14 litres and the flavour has been concentrated too. On first tasting it was very hop forward but that has mellowed as I expected and the powerful malt is now balanced by the flavours of old varieties of English hops. The colour of a deep walnut brown and mahoghany red when held up to the light. The finish is very long. Others can report what they find in the flavours, as other people seem to have a more vivid palate than I do. Do please email me with your tasting notes.
Reviews
"Spendidly different Malt flavour, as hoped. Cheers Martin!" Gary N. (Untappd)
Availability
I was able to bottle just 51 bottles (14.025 litres) but I spilt one before it was capped and some was lost; the rest of it I drank in order to tell you what it tastes like. Two bottles are reserved (for the archive), so that leaves just 48 x 275 ml bottles for sale. That's it. Never to be repeated. This beer is unique in all senses - rare ingredients produced from a research station, wild landrace hops gathered from Norfolk monasteries. It is a link with history, the true flavour of Old England and it is in short supply. Each bottle is numbered and signed by me and is offered for sale at £20.00 each. It is only available from the Poppyland Brewery or by prior arrangement. Call 01263 513992 or mobile 07887 389804 or email me at martin.warren[at]talktalk.net to reserve your bottle(s). If you intend to drink it, the beer will improve with keeping, like a wine.
This beer is produced without the use of any finings, filtering or pasteurisation, so all the flavours of the ingredients are preserved for your enjoyment.
Release date Saturday 29 June 2013, which is the anniversary of Poppyland beer first going on sale.
Sold out February 2014. Bottles may still be available at Bacchanalia, Mill Street Cambridge, or Beautiful Beers, St John's Street, Bury St. Edmunds.
Martin Warren, The Poppyland Brewer
26.7.2013
Barley to Beer Project
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