Redcap – 4.2% Ruby Ale
Redcap is a staple of our bottled beer range, but only occasionally appears in cask. Using eight different malts creates a complex layering of caramel, treacle, dried fruit and toasty flavours; this is combined with Goldings & Endeavour hops for spicy and blackcurrant top notes. I think beer in cask always tastes slightly different to in the bottle, so now’s the chance to try side-by-side and decide which you prefer!
As Redcap has been in our range for a number of years it’s fairly straightforward to make the necessary recipe tweaks for a cask brew. But if you’re trying to build a new recipe from scratch, where do you start from? Coming up with the concept is typically a mixture of what I’m interested in brewing and what I think people will be interested in drinking. A new ingredient or style gives me the opportunity to learn, but I try to balance this with what’s sold well in the past – as much as I’d like to make an imperial stout in cask tomorrow, there’s not a huge market for it!
Once we’ve decided on a style and strength, I usually start by putting together the malt bill. The amount of malt you use determines the strength, and the style usually gives you a rough idea of which varieties to go for. A hop-forward beer is likely to be majority base malt, which provides fermentable sugar without any dominant flavours; caramel and crystal malts are often used in golden to brown beers for colour and flavour; and roasted malts give the darkest beers their colour and roasted qualities. Other grains can be used to contribute a specific character – small quantities of wheat or oats are sometimes used as they will add to body and foam retention due to their higher relative protein content.
It’s also worth deciding on the yeast you’ll use at this stage, because that too has an impact on strength. Different yeasts will consume different amounts of sugar – this will determine how much alcohol is produced, as well as the perception of how sweet or dry the finished beer is. Different yeasts will also produce different flavour-active compounds (lager yeast produces more sulphur compounds, for example), which can be relevant for specific beer styles.
When it comes to choosing hops, it’s very much down to the flavours you want in the finished beer. Hops can be added during the boil, at the end before the wort is cooled, or during/after fermentation; the same hop can impart different qualities to the beer depending on when it is added, due to conversion or evaporation of certain flavour compounds. All hops are advertised with a few key words describing their aroma, but I find (particularly when combining multiple varieties) that knowing what works primarily comes with experience. In terms of bittering hops, I generally favour aiming for a certain bittering to gravity points ratio – in my opinion this gives a better idea of what the finished product will actually taste like than looking at IBU (international bittering units, the measurement of bitterness) in isolation.
Finally, I look at water chemistry. The quantities and ratio of different minerals in the beer will contribute different character and suiting this to the beer style you’re making can lift a beer from good to great.
And that’s it! Once I’ve designed a recipe, we’ll typically do a test brew (unless I’m fairly confident based on similar previous beers), and then I’ll make small changes based on customer feedback and how it compares to my expectations. Our tests are done on the 100L kit Sarah began brewing on all the way back in 2015, and then sold in the tap room, so if you’d like to try the next new idea before anyone else, come down one weekend and see what’s available!
