The Healdsburg Beer Company – The Alexander Cask

Monday, Kevin at the Healdsburg Beer Company introduced us to his operation and talked to us about the transition from homebrewing to “nanobrewing.” Today, Kevin is back to tell us what a typical brew day at Healdsburg is like, and to share a homebrew recipe of his flagship beer, The Alexander Cask.

KYB: What is a typical brew day like?

Kevin: A typical brew day starts at about 6 or 7 am on a Sunday. A key piece of equipment is a coffee maker with a start timer. The brewery fits in my detached garage and the brew house is on wheels. I can generally get the mash done and the dog walked before my daughter gets up and around (she’s 2) which is pretty good timing since she likes smelling the hops before they go into the boil kettle. I’m pretty well past the “getting to know you” phase with my brew house and into the “how can I tweak you to do cool stuff” phase, so I can reliably have everything cleaned and broken down by 1 pm or so. Most of the day-to-day brewery work is done in the evenings after my daughter gets to sleep. At night, I do the keg cleaning, general maintenance, lab work, brewery cleaning (I seem to be always cleaning something), bookkeeping, government reporting, inventory maintenance, beer transfers, dry hopping, keg priming and filling and all the other basic stuff that goes along with running any other brewery. Cask conditioning adds extra labor, and I have some cellarman work if I’ve got some kegs going to a beer engine. Add to that the time needed to go out and sell and support the beer, and it gets pretty busy. Like I said before, I believe that at my size I have no excuse for cutting any corners, which translates into a lot of work and also means that I do it all myself. I’ve had some late nights.

KYB: Are you able to make a variety of beers or are you pretty much making the same product over and over again?

Kevin: I’m making beer that I think is interesting and worthwhile, and that translates to a pretty flexible portfolio. I generally alternate between lighter and heavier styles to have both of them available from the brewery — typically an English-style IPA called “The Alexander Cask” and a Golden Ale called “The Fitch Cask” — but I diverge quite often. I don’t really have “year round” and “seasonal” beers; I have “regulars” and “irregulars.” The irregulars have been fun and some of them can morph into a regular. I’m going to be taking my 2009 Winter Ale, knock the ABV down a bit and put it into regular rotation under the name “The Lytton Cask.” I’ve developed a quiver of about 14 recipes that I’m happy with. The guiding principle on production and recipe development is this: if I can’t sell it, am I willing to drink 31 gallons of it? I only make cask ale, which may be the only constant in the portfolio. Often, I’ll make brewing decisions based on what kind of beer I want to have around in six weeks or so.

KYB: What do you consider your flagship beer?

The Alexander Cask. It’s our English-style IPA and won bronze at the 2009 US Open Beer Championships. I placed above Brooklyn Brewery, Boston Beer Co., Smuttynose, Boulder Brewing and a number of other breweries that I have enormous respect for. It’s my answer to the question “if you were stranded on an island and could only drink one beer…?” I decided to construct my own instead of picking someone else’s and I’ve developed and refined the recipe over the course of several years.

KYB: Can you describe it for someone who’s never had it?

Kevin: The Alexander Cask is an English-style IPA, but not really. By the numbers, it is 6.35% ABV and 48.8 IBU. It has a solid malt backbone and some caramel in the late palate, layers of earthy and spicy hop character from East Kent Goldings and UK Fuggles and some fruit and nuance from our house yeast strain. The thing I really like about this beer is its balance. I don’t like making beers that you drink and think of as hoppy, malty, or estery. All these elements should balance against each other, and if the beer is made right you get layers of complex and interesting flavor. English IPAs are about as close as a style guideline comes to it. I don’t brew to styles and pretty much have come to loathe the BJCP guidelines. If I’m developing a recipe, I figure out what I want it to taste like, reverse engineer it to figure how to make it and then – grudgingly – try and figure out what style it resembles so I have a starting point for discussions. Technique wise, I use multiple malts, pay close attention to our yeast, and use large quantities of low alpha hops. I use a lot of hops in all my beer, but the IBU calculations always come in relatively low. IBUs only measure one dimension of what a hop does, and I tend to like most of the other dimensions better, so most of my hop additions are weighted towards first wort and late and knockout additions. If I stuck them all in at a 60 minute addition, my IBUs would generally double. I also attenuate the daylights out of all our beers. The high attenuation lengthens the finish of the beer, helps highlight the flavors I put into it, and makes it easy to drink a bunch of.

KYB: Would you be willing to share a homebrew-sized version of it?

Kevin: Sure!

The Alexander Cask, an English Style India Pale Ale (kinda).

This is a reasonable clone of my medal-wearing flagship ale, The Alexander Cask. Your results may vary since your mash and boil gear is different than mine, your fermenters are different, your yeast will be different, and the mojo of your brewery is your own. One key point is to try and attenuate the beer as much as possible. While the recipe lists a FG of 1.016 (because the White Labs attenuation figure for WLP028 is 70-75%), the actual Alexander Cask has a FG of about 1.011 and a ABV of 6.35%. A thin mash will also be your friend, and I’d recommend 2 quarts water to 1 lb grain or as much as your mash tun will hold. Finally, if anyone has any questions or I can help out while you’re putting this together, feel free to reach out through Twitter (@Healdsbrew), Facebook or go to my website and click the big “H” to send me an email. Cheers!

5.2g post boil.
OG 1.062
FG 1.016
SRM 13.84
IBU 53.4
ABV 6.12%

Assumptions
Efficiency 75%, Attenuation 75%.
Hop calculation are for P90 pellets and use Ray Daniels’ brain for math.

Malt
10.0 lbs Maris Otter (I use Crisp.)
1.0 lbs Munich II (I use Weyermann Organic Munich II.)
1.0 lbs Med. Crystal (Lov. 55-60) (I use Simpsons, but you can use your favorite 50-60 Crystal as a substitute.)

Hops
1.5 oz East Kent Golding (5.0% AA) – First Wort
0.75 oz UK Fuggle (4.8% AA) – 60 min
0.75 oz UK Fuggle (4.8% AA) – 20 min
0.5 oz East Kent Golding (5.0% AA)- 15 min
0.5 oz East Kent Golding (5.0% AA) – 0 min

1.0 oz East Kent Goldings (5.0% AA) – dry hop

Yeast
I use a house strain, but WLP028 Edinburg Scottish Ale Yeast is a good substitute.

Brewing
Mash grains with a 2 qt water to 1 lb grain ratio for 60 minutes at 152 deg F. Sparge and collect about 6.7 gal of pre boil wort (based on a rate of 0.9 gal boil off per hour) Boil for 100 minutes. Aerate slightly more than you think is prudent and hold primary fermentation at 68 deg. Transfer to secondary fermenter and dry hop for 10 days on 1.0 oz of East Kent Goldings at 68 deg F. Rack into priming keg and prime with 50g of corn sugar for a 5 gal keg, or calculate for bottling with a target of 2.2 vol of CO2. Allow 3 weeks for conditioning at 68-70 deg F. If you’re force carbonating, you should feel shame, but carbonate for 2.2 vol of CO2 and still let the beer condition for at least two weeks.

Water profile I’m using:
Calcium (Ca ppm): 58
Magnesium (Mg ppm): 29
Sodium (Na ppm): 9
Chloride (Cl ppm): 70
Sulfate (SO4 ppm): 65
Alkalinity (CaCO3 ppm): 112

Residual Alkalinity: 53
Chloride to Sulfate Ratio: 1.08

Photos courtesy of The Healdsburg Beer Company