The Beer that Jack Built - an interview
Get ready to take an exclusive tour behind the scenes at the ÅBEN brewery, where the magic happens. In this email series, you will meet passionate brewmasters who dedicate their days to crafting delicious beers for you to savour and enjoy.
This is a rare opportunity for you to discover the secrets of the brewing process and learn more about the people who make it all possible.
First up is Jack Delaney - Senior Brewer at ÅBEN.
Jack, what inspired you to become a brewer, and how did you get started in the industry?
My Grandpa was always into his beers and I started working at his local pub. During my time there, I was in charge of looking after the casks of real ale and working my way through an extensive and respectable bottle list.
Fast forward to university, I got into homebrewing, caught the bug and was offered a foot in the door at Electric Bear helping out in the taproom and on brew days. Once I graduated from university I went straight to work there as a full-time brewer and have been in production ever since.
Can you walk us through your brewing process, and how do you decide on the ingredients and flavours for a beer?
It starts with a recipe that's already pre-conceptualised and is often a slight compromise between what you think may work and what will work with the system and processes you have at your disposal.
For us, a lot of that starts in the mash tun where we aim to make the starches in grain available for enzyme conversion and then lock in fermentability through varying mash rests. We have a great brewhouse, so I like to make it earn its keep.
From there we separate the sugary malt liquid from the grain, boil it and add hops, spices, and adjuncts in accordance with the recipe. It gets chilled, yeast is pitched and the wort ferments into beer. During this process we coax the yeast to do what we need it to do. Sometimes we add hops, adjuncts, fruits/additional flavours or just let the base beer shine dependent on what we're brewing.
Ingredients and flavours are determined by what the end goal of what we want the beer to be, how we want it to taste and smell like. There's plenty going on during the brewing and cellaring process which can influence flavours and we do our best to coerce and guide our beer to get to that point.
Do you see any specific trends in brewing at the moment and what do you think of them?
I'm seeing and hearing that people want more lagers, low ABV and core range products which I'm here for. It sounds like a lot of people want accessible and familiar beers and to not have their palates beat into submission. There's a reason why some people drink the same beer all their life and don't tire of it.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are massively sweet, overly hopped or adjunct beers driven by ratings that are unbalanced and only 'enjoyable' in small measures. Stuff like that seems to be what the drinkers want as those who shout the loudest are easiest to hear and although those beers can be exciting to try or make the novelty wears off pretty quickly.
Locality seems to be becoming a much more important factor in both buying and making trends, money is getting tighter and supporting local is something people appear to be taking to.
How do you approach developing new recipes for your brews?
It depends if it's something I'm used to brewing or something that's fairly new to me or traditional but as a rule of thumb, I always start with how to coax the most pillowy and stable foam out of the beer.
If it's something like an IPA I'll typically start with building the beer around where my house yeast is at the time and use that as a firm foundation to build from and work back from how I want the beer to look and feel like after you get past the aroma. It's a bit of a push/pull process as everything should work together to create balance.
If it's a new style to me I go on a deep dive inside the internet/books and try to find the best examples of that style and drink them where possible. When making them I find it better to play on the safe side to begin with and then tweak them to where I feel their interpretation needs to be. Some beers just make sense to be made a certain way and some there can be a bit of artistic license.
How do you deal with scaling production and maintaining the quality of the product?
With as much and maybe more coffee than is deemed safe.
I like to keep my finger on the pulse and know what is going on with each process that has happened, is happening or about to happen so that the beer can be guided and coaxed to where it needs to be and perform how we want it to. It starts with simple daily checks and sensory evaluation of the wort going through the brewhouse, the beer fermenting in tank or the beers that are ready to be tapped. There's a lot of moving parts and sometimes it's like shooting at a moving target whilst blindfolded so some things change day to day and alter the weekly plan but we work around it as a small and agile team.
More often than not working with reliable and repeatable processes/actions helps keep the beer doing what we want it to.
What was your first brew at ÅBEN?
Elm, a northern German style pilsner hopped singularly with Hallertau Mittelfruh.
What is your own favourite type of beer? Also, which ÅBEN beer is your favourite?
A soft and vibrant modern pale ale I can have a couple of, not too much bitterness and not like chewing on hops.
It's probably Birch that is currently sitting in the tank as it takes everything we have learnt from Elm and acted upon it to make a much softer and brighter expression of water, malt, hops and yeast interaction.
What is the most interesting fun fact about yourself?
I have a very strong dislike for goats.
Anything else that would be cool to know?
Keep an eye out for some pretty fun collabs and projects we have lined up over the coming months with some friends and industry partners. We've got some fun in the pipeline with hop and yeast providers that I'm seriously excited about.
The newest release to the juicy juicy series is Mumbo Jumbo w. Passion fruits.
Think pornstar martini meets a passionfruit infused margerita. It recently dropped at a time where we've all been craving some sunshine after a long winter. This series of beers is going to push the envelope on our fruited beers.
