'Flat Beer'

Since we first started selling our beer in August of last year, we have received a massive amount of feedback; some great and some not so good. Whether it’s a face to face conversation, email, tweet or an Untappd comment we take what people think of our beer very seriously. Perhaps surprising to some, I am still the only full time employee here so I don’t always have time to respond to every comment that is posted, though I wish I could. Generally feedback has been very positive but of the negative comments we’ve received, one thing has been mentioned more than all the others put together - ‘flat beer’. I hope in this little blog I can answer some of the questions and queries we’ve had about why some of our beers have been so flat.

All Little Earth Project beers undergo at least part of their fermentation with a mixed culture of wild yeast and bacteria taken from the lees of a local wild cider. Castlings Heath Cottage Cider is made by my parents at our family home; they take Organic Suffolk apples, press them and let the juice spontaneously ferment with the yeast on the skins. This natural fermentation, which can take up to a year, was the inspiration for our brewery.

Wild yeast can be fickle. It will behave differently depending in its environment, temperature, storage vessel, composition and pH of the fermenting medium and the exact mix of wild/non wild yeast and bacteria present. It is this unpredictability that causes us issues when it comes to levels of carbonation.

​The first batch of beer we packaged was our Organic East India Pale Ale. It was brewed using our own well water as well as 100% locally grown Organic malted barley and Organic Goldings hops grown just down the road from the brewery! It underwent a primary fermentation with lab yeast (s-04), transferred into oak barrels and spiked with our mixed culture. The original IPAs that travelled to India would have undergone a similarly long secondary fermentation with Brettanomyces. During this fermentation, the yeast would have produced alcohol and Co2, both of which would offer protection against bacteria and going really sour.

After primary fermentation, the beer had a gravity of 1016. After 3 months that was down to 1004 with the test batches dropping slightly lower. We left the beer another 4-5 weeks and saw no change. At this point we decided to put it into bottles as we thought that the beer might start going acetic (turn to vinegar) due to oxygen ingress. We were fairly confident that the beer would not continue to ferment much further, but could not be 100% sure. If we’d primed the beer with sugar at the point of bottling and the wild yeast hadn’t finished, we could have ended up with over carbonation and potentially bottle bombs. We decided to bottle the beer without priming and hope that fermentation would continue to some degree. After several months the beer had gained only a small level of carbonation but we thought the beer was tasty and a good representation of the beer we wanted to make.

From then on we have always primed the beer before kegging or bottling but we are still finding our feet and tend to err on the side of caution. Some beers continue to be slightly under carbonated but we are sure not to release anything that we don’t think is delicious. While we brewed the first LEP in October 2015, we are still learning and reacting to the yeasts’ behaviours on a case by case basis and growing and experimenting further as we go. It keeps things interesting, and we hope you feel the same.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has given feedback over this time and we continue to encourage it - good or bad. It’s the basis for how we move forward, do things better and make better beer.

Cheers, Tom

Brewer, Little Earth Project