OnTap Magazine

40 | Winter 2019 | ontapmag.co.za STYLE GUIDE HOME DRY Black, red, white, brown, double dry-hopped, imperial, double, session, American, English, Belgian, hazy or single hop: the IPA has had more reinventions than Madonna. Lucy Corne explores its latest incarnation: brut. nother year, another IPA trend. While hazy, juicy, fruit bombs are still very much the darling of the craft beer world, a thinner, some would say more sophisticated version has recently taken away some of NEIPA’s adoration. e brut IPA is pretty much the antithesis of the New England IPA. Bone dry, often crystal clear and thin in body, this new version shares several traits with the Champagne style from which is borrows its name. It is a style so new that it hasn’t yet made it into o cial judging guidelines like those published by the Brewers Association or the BJCP. e invention of the brut IPA is credited to Kim Sturdavant of Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco. He had long been using the enzyme amyloglucosidase in his triple IPA to reduce the residual sugars and make it more qua able, and he started to wonder whether he could utilise it the same way in a normal IPA to create a hop-forward and very dry beer. After several months of wondering, he brewed Hop Champagne in November 2017. As well as using the enzyme, the beer was also heavy on adjuncts – the grain bill was made up of 20 per cent rice, 20 per cent corn and 60 per cent pilsner malt, largely to lighten the colour. MASTERING THE ENZYME It was an instant hit with drinkers – as beer styles featuring the letters I, P and A in quick succession tend to be. It also quickly attracted its fair share of copycats, with brewers across the USA trying their hand at the dry, aromatic style. Brut IPA took a while to travel to South Africa, with what is believed to be the rst commercial version coming from Little Wolf in August 2018 for IPA Day. “I had recently got my test brew kit up and running and had heard about brut IPA on podcasts so I thought I would make a small batch - just one keg’s worth,” says Little Wolf founder Stefan Wiswedel. “I dialled back the bitterness because with a dry beer, high bitterness can be overpowering. In the end it didn’t turn out as dry as I had hoped, so if I did another I’d work on using the enzymes more e ciently.” At that time, sourcing the enzyme proved a little tricky although brewers are now managing to get their hands on amyloglucosidase easily. Getting it to work however has been more of a challenge. Earlier this year, Eben Uys from Mad Giant teamed up with Olaf Morgenroth of Franschhoek Beer Company to brew For the Fools Brut IPA as a once-o brew for the Fools &Fans Festival. “We got chatting about IPAs and we have both made NEIPAs so we thought we would give brut a go,” says Olaf. “We did some research on the enzyme you add to bruts and decided to add it during the pump-over in the kettle. e enzyme didn’t work too well – we were aiming for a nal gravity of less than 0.5° Plato, but at about 2° Plato fermentation was slowing down. Luckily we had a batch of actively fermenting saison so decided to nish o the brut with A