Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Move over pumpkin beer

Glass bottom brewery is proud to offer a new style to the beer world: parsnip beer. This idea is something that Evan and I have been talking about for over a year now, and it constitutes glass bottom's first true farmer-brewer collaboration. The parsnips were grown in raised beds on Evan's property, and the beer was conceptualized by the minds that brought you TeaSB and Forest Farmer Brown.

The base beer style is a Belgian tripel, a light colored, high alcohol beer in which Belgian yeast provides much of the flavor. They usually offer a complement of spicy and fruity notes. The grain bill for our recipe calls for 100% pilsner malt, and the hops are kept mild.

The other half of the equation is a play on parsnip wine, one of the more flavorful country wines that certain adventurous people will brew in small batches in their kitchens. Evan has been brewing his own parsnip wine for years now. Parsnips are a root vegetable like a carrot. Their taste is a very unique spicy/earthy melange. We utilize the parsnips in the boil as a 30 minute steep. It was a bit like making soup.

Because country wines are often concoctions of just sugar and various flavor compounds and not at all the nutrient rich liquid that unfermented beer is, instructions often list an acidic citrus component - usually orange or lemon juice - to help fermentation along. Purely for the sake of tradition we added fresh ginger, grown in a greenhouse in New York State. The spicy and citrusy characteristics of fresh ginger will hopefully fit well into the tripel/parsnip theme.

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