Sunken Knave's first beer...
Sunken Knave's first beer... Wow I can scarcely believe it myself and I made it! It has been a long time in the making.
First things first what is a Mumping? It was an old Sussex tradition that every 21st December (St Thomas's Day) the poor of the county would go around knocking on the doors of the rich demanding or in Sussex dialect 'mumping' food, drink and money so that they too could have a Christmas dinner. This refusal to be cowed by their social 'superiors' and ability to finagle what they wanted is a hallmark of the rebellious Sussex spirit that is embodied in the famous phrase 'we won't be druv' and an inspiration for Sunken Knave.
The beer itself being my first solo brew is difficult to neatly categorise and like a debut album I had hundreds of themes and ideas that I wanted to try and squeeze into a 2000 litre tank. The primary inspiration was what I call 'pub strength' Old Ale, a beer style which is popular in Sussex and Harvey's make the benchmark example- a 4.3% black beer with high percentage of crystal malt in the grist, a even higher amount of NaCl in the kettle, which makes for a soft almost New England mouthfeel and a low attenuation typically low 70s. A key characteristic is the dark colour but with minimal astringent roasted notes. To achieve this some breweries use caramel food colouring which is an established ingredient in British brewing so I am not criticising its use as with an EBC of 14000 (pale ale is 6!) a little goes a very very long way, but what if I made a old ale but without the caramel what would the colour be?
The grist was 80% Maris Otter pale ale malt, the variety of choice for the Family brewers, 15% a blend of two crystal malts medium colour and double roasted for colour and forest fruit notes and 5% wheat malt for head retention. The result? A glorious deep red wort reminiscent of HSB. A colour that stirs the passions of nerdy brewers like me.
In the kettle I added another vital ingredient in traditional Old Ale 25 litres of invert sugar No1 for additional extract but also to help lighten and sweeten the brew. The bitterness was a reasonably robust calculated at 32IBU and I used a hop that is very close to my heart, 2022 crop Ernest grown by Hukins of Tenterden Kent. I had the privilege of visiting the hop gardens of Hukin Hops and meet Ross Hukin and Glen Whatman back in September 2022 and see the Ernest just before harvest. To see the beautiful green hop bines, rub the juicy verdant hop cones in the fields and smell the apricot spicy notes was such a sensory overload that all brewers should experience when they can. Its very important for me to have that connection to growers and Hukins were the first hop growers since the 1930s in England to start growing Ernest hops. I put most of the hops at the start of the boil to get that bitterness target with the remaining added 5 minutes before the end of the boil to get some of that lovely aroma in the wort.
To finish I used Verdant yeast, kindly donated by Lallemand Brew, as I mentioned above a low fermentation attentuation is important to this style and Verdant combined with a high mashing temperature- my mash temperature was 68C- attentuates in this range, helping me to leave lots of residual sugars and body in the beer for depth of flavour. The original gravity was 1064.5 and my final gravity before packaging was 1018 to give an ABV of 6%.
The beer was then matured in tank for two months to help marry together all the various notes, after primary fermentation the beer tasted very estery but that mellowed over time to deliver what I hope is a rich fruity ale that reminds people of winter warmers and brews such as Fullers 1845.
Thank you for reading this far and expect many more intriguing styles such as Burtons, barley wines, porters and strong pale ales in the future with some barrel ageing to come too.
All the best,
Henry