I cannot believe I brewed this beer all the way back in November of last year. Even young and with a lower than expected OG, I knew this was going to be a good beer with age. If you are not familiar with the Brakspear Brewery, it was one of the last remaining English breweries to use a traditional fermentation method known as the double drop fermentation. Essentially, about 16 hours after the yeast is pitched in the primary, the actively fermenting beer is dropped, via gravity, from an upper ferment vessel to a lower (think of bunk beds, but with fermenters). In theory, this may seem like a terrible idea. Why would you want to oxidize a fermenting beer? Well, this basically extinct method is what was once said to give British beers the traditional flavor. Since British yeasts are generally known as under attenuators, there may be something to the dropping that may re-invigorate the fermentation, and perhaps provide additional esters that would otherwise be undetectable in the finished beer. Thankfully, the fine folks at Wychwood Brewery purchased the equipment (including the double drop fermenters) and the rights to Brakspear a few years ago, and the tradition continues on for now.
I set-out to try to recreate this beer, on the encouragement of a coworker who has a fond love of British beers, and perhaps a little more love for the British man she married. They had the Wychwood recreation of this beer during their last trip to merry ole England, and raved. I did the best I could to scrounge up the basics of the recipe, and below is where I landed.
