Bad Seed Brewery... in CANS!

Now we've made no secret of the fact we LOVE Bad Seed, so much so we even made a beer with them last year! They were also a key player in our favourite beer festival of this year, Beertown Malton. We'd noticed a distinct lack of their bottles on the shelves of our local bottle shops over the past few months, and now we see why this might have been as they have relaunched their beers in cans! Here's what we made of the first two canned releases...

Seismic - Session IPA, 4.0%

Classically Bad Seed! Sweet grapefruit on the nose is coupled with a slightly piney hop aroma, with Mosaic coming to the fore. Crisp and clean with a delicate spicy note on the palate from the American hops (this brew also contains Simcoe, Comet and Cascade), with a decent malt backbone and a refreshing, bitter bite on the finish. Ridiculously quaffable. We reckon this is a great one for Bad Seed to get into can first, showcasing exactly the kind of brew these guys are so well known for. We'd definitely recommend this one for anyone looking for an introduction to this brewery.

Crush - New England Hopfenweisse, 4.6%

Before pouring, we got a massive hop aroma straight from the can. But once in the glass, this slowly rounds off and gives way to that familiar bubblegummy aroma with hints of pepper so synonymous with a wheat beer. Incredibly soft on the palate, with the yeast character that's left behind being well balanced with a juicy burst of hops. It's got that New England fresh hop character which we have found quite challenging in the past, but combining this with a wheat beer has led to a really interesting interpretation of the style and it's great to see something a little different being created.

A big thank you to the Bad Seed chaps for welcoming us back into the world of booze after a month off with these tasty little pods of joy!

Cheers,

Jim and Laura

Can Conditioning - What's the Point?

As canning continues its near meteoric rise as the medium of choice for small pack dispense for many small independent modern breweries in the UK, it is no surprise that developments and targeted improvements to the process are continually being worked upon.

Currently, the majority of canned beer is done through packaging a force carbonated product rather than one that naturally carbonates through residual yeast continuing to ferment the beer, creating CO2 as it does so, as is often seen in bottled beer. We are however now starting to see breweries using can conditioning instead - Moor Brewery in Bristol are one of the pioneers of the process in the UK and are the first to be granted real ale status by CAMRA for their cans.

Having briefly met Paddy of Windsor & Eton Brewery, and Kieran of their offshoot project, Uprising Craft Brewing, at a breakfast organised by The Can Makers at SIBA Beer X earlier in the year, we were invited to taste their test run of can conditioned Treason - West Coast IPA prior to them being launched fully to compare against the filtered, force carbonated version. Here's what we made of them...

Appearance: Due to the residual yeast present in the can conditioned version, it requires a slightly more careful pour than the filtered beer. For research purposes, we were sure to give the same care to the filtered version. The naturally carbonated can gave a firmer head to the beer, more like you'd see on a well poured pint in a pub, compared to the filtered which looked "gassier" with larger bubbles. The clarity of both beers was the same with a little bit of chill haze present in both.

Aroma: Much punchier in the can conditioned version. The residual yeast helps to clear up any dissolved oxygen in the beer, in theory enabling the beer to remain as intended for longer. We did detect a slight oxygenation to the filtered beer, although it's worth pointing out that had we not had the can conditioned for contrast, we probably wouldn't have picked up on it as the hop character was still present... just a lot more overtly fruity for the can conditioned version.

Flavour: Again, we preferred the can conditioned version, although there was nothing wrong with the filtered! The can conditioned had a fresher quality to it with a more vibrant hop character, and we felt that the force carbed version had a somewhat more cloying sweetness to it, perhaps due to the filtration process removing some of the hop flavour which provides a balancing bitterness. It's also worth noting that due to the continuation of fermentation, the ABV of the can conditioned beer comes in slightly higher than it's force carbed counterpart (6.0% compared to 5.8%).

Overall: An interesting experiment! We did think that the can conditioned version triumphed on all counts, however, for smaller operations lacking the space and time to invest in can conditioning, this is by no means a death knell for force carbonated beer in cans (provided the beer is well looked after throughout the brewing and canning process), as both cans were tasty and of good quality. Treason, winner of a Gold IBC award in 2015 and the 2016 Indie Beer Can festival, is currently available in Wetherspoons outlets, and it's good to see that Uprising are keen to go about things in a non-macro way and strive to improve the quality of their product.

Canning in general can be a great way for beer producers to dip their toe into smallpack, particularly with companies offering mobile canning becoming more prevalent, making canning more affordable without the need to invest in infrastructure and equipment. Although across the board the quality of canned beer has been variable, it's definitely continually improving, with breweries progressively honing their technique. Cans are also better for the environment when compared to bottles, being cheaper to transport and more easily recyclable, and also take away the chance of a beer becoming lightstruck. Whilst we didn't intend to write this post to look at the potential advantages of cans over bottles, suffice to say we believe the can is here to stay!

Cheers,

Jim and Laura