Sunday 9 December 2012

Duality

Light can be considered to be both a wave and a particle1. It can be a difficult thing to understand unless you have a massive brain, which is why I struggle to understand it. But, I am assured by physicists that this is a truth. It's not that light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle. No, they are both things at the same time. Actually, this applies to all types of electromagnetic radiation. You see, the only difference between visible light, infra red, ultra-violet, gamma radiation, radio signals, x-rays, microwaves and the stuff that carries your tweets to your mobile phone, is the energy in the particles, or the wave length, or the frequency of the signal. The relationship of the frequency, wavelength and individual quantum energy is accurately and firmly linked by equations that I suspect some bloke called Albert made up.

So, what has this to do with beer?

Beer is beer. There are different types of beer, but they are all beer.

Some people like to group beer into two types; Real Ale and chemical fizzy lager.

Lots of people like chemical fizzy lager, market data confirms this.

Some brewers like to make stuff they call Real Lager, put it into casks and proclaim they are clever for doing so.

Other brewers make mild, yellow beers, put them into casks and give them a name that invariably has "Gold"2 or "Blond"in the name, which are designed to be popular by being something pale, balanced, competently brewed but unchallenging in the flavour department. They appeal to a broad audience and it is a shrewd business move to do so.

Many chemical fizzy lagers are brewed in big breweries where it is important to achieve a short production time. The result has mass appeal, but is barely honest to give the name lager. I have no idea how these beers are actually made, but I have heard tails of relatively warm fermentations and next to no lagering time whatsoever. The main thing is that they are manufactured for mass appeal. Who actually cares if they are genuine lagers? Does it matter?

Then there are stouts, barley wines, dark milds, red ales, IPA's of various colours, various speciality beers and not to leave out the good old faithful hoppy bitter. These are all, at the end of the day, beer, mostly made from a juice we call wort made from hops and barley fermented into a beverage.

We generally, up to now, made beers that have higher hopping, increased coloured malts and otherwise different to what everyone else has done. We like it that way but is hardly a way to gain widespread acceptance.

So, we decided to brew a beer that is slightly less challenging, but doesn't leave behind our core values. We hope that on cask it is enough like a blonde, gold or other "Real lager" type beer to be acceptable to the drinker who likes that sort of thing. We also hope that on keg it will be enough like a "lager" to appeal to those who like a cold fizzy thing.

It's pale, made with lager malt and noble hops. Oh, and it's dry hopped with some special stuff, just to add that little bit of Hardknotty magic.

What is it?

It's Duality.

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1I personally, don't like doing things by halves, I always prefer a full tickle.

 2Apologies to all my brewing friends who do just that, I'm not having a dig, your beer is lovely and sells very well.

9 comments:

Tandleman said...

Sounds interesting. I'll look out for it.

Jeff Pickthall said...

My invoice for the name will be in the post!

Unknown said...

Tandy, I do hope you like it. It's still work in progress and I feel that it could be improved, so please if you do find it and try it we would welcome feedback.

Jeff, I did wonder how long it would be before you noticed.

StringersBeer said...

"Albert"? Would that be Albert Planck? Or Albert de Broglie, or perhaps Albert Dirac.

Unknown said...

Stringers, it may well have been one of them. I'll be honest, I'm not sure, I didn't check my facts.

Is there not another Albert too?

Unknown said...

Now, Stringers, I'm suposed to be working, and you just MADE me look at this Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

I think me head is going to explode.

Neville Grundy said...

I would like to try it but I've never come across any of your beers on Merseyside.

Fishter said...

To be fair to Dave, Albert Einstein did help along the understanding of the Photoelectric effect from which we get E=hf which describes how much energy there is in a photon (it's entirely dependent on the frequency (colour) or the light).
But you still get plus points for mentioning de Broglie ;-)

StringersBeer said...

Oh, that Albert. Thanks, Fishter.

Anyhoo, Dave, I'm sure your Golden Ale will go great guns.