When I was asked to write a blog for our new collaboration with our good friends, the Michelin-starred Restaurant Story, I was politely asked not to turn it into a science lesson. I'll do my best but I make no promises.
Restaurant Story, close neighbours of The Arch House, based in Southwark is the brainchild of Tom Sellers, focusing on seasonal tasting dishes of British cuisine. When we were first asked to pair The Smoked Brown with a Beef-dripping candle (I’m salivating too don’t worry) we were elated. Throughout our relationship we have produced a variety of iterations of The Story Saison using ingredients such as Clementines, Blood Oranges, Sea Buckthorn and Alexander Bud.
Our latest joint endeavour involves producing a pale as their house beer, using British hops and foraged botanicals to produce an aromatic and sessionable Pale Ale. This is The Story Pale’s story.
We started with a selection of different botanicals, ranging from nettles and juniper to lavender and pine. All of these botanicals are positively filled to the brim with a group of fantastic organic compounds called terpenes.
If you would like the scientific answer; they’re a large group of aromatic unsaturated hydrocarbons, composed of isoprene subunits. If you would like the fun answer; they’re the essential oils that taste and smell incredible. Limonene gives the characteristic lemony flavour, linanool gives lavender their fragrance and pinene gives pine trees their piney aroma. Hops themselves are also botanicals and are chock-a-block full of terpenes and essential oils too.
A quick run-down on botanical pairings, if you would like to mix different botanicals well, as we, at Anspach & Hobday, like to do here then you want them to share some similar terpenes. You could argue it’s like the science of cooking. I knew I could fit in a restaurant related metaphor somewhere. So with using Endeavour and Jester as our English hops, which botanicals should we pair with them?
We started very scientifically by making tea. Lots of different types of tea. The hot water helps to extract lots of different essential oils and releases them, allowing us to taste them. The two teas that interested us the most were meadowsweet leaves (Filipendula ulmaria) and common myrtle blossom (Myrtus communis). Meadowsweet has a very nice lychee-marzipan aroma pairing delightfully with the strong juicy lychee notes of Jester, whereas myrtle has an aromatic, spicy character, wonderfully pairing with the blackcurrant spice notes of Endeavour.
If you will allow me to nerd-out a bit, the lychee flavour in Jester is partially derived from Geraniol, a monoterpene and an alcohol. However in meadowsweet, the lychee flavour is derived from its sister compound, a terpene ester Geranyl acetate.
If you remember your A-level chemistry; esters are the products of an alcohol and an acid. Geraniol contains an alcohol group, which means that during fermentation when the yeast is active, it can convert some of that geraniol into geranyl acetate and vice versa. Whilst our yeast works very hard, all these wonderful flavour compounds mix together and combine to create a wonderful and entirely natural pairing.
Geraniol
Geranyl Acetate
So how did we bring our terpenes into the brew? We added 6kg of dried foraged meadowsweet leaves, myrtle buds and wood into the whirlpool along with a healthy dry-hopping of a bit more Endeavour and Jester. The end-product?
A delicious, fruity and spicy refreshing pale.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I'm going to go and drink a pint while I bore everyone in the office about my favourite O-Methylated natural phenol.
It’s guaiacol if you’re curious.
So how will this beautiful collaborative creation pair with food?
We recommend goats cheese, Greek salad or light game but you’ll have to visit the restaurant for the next chapter in this Story.