When you have the car

I was in Dublin with work during the week as I often am. Typically I travel up one day a week and the other days I work from my home office and that works out well for all involved. I benefit from a good work/life balance and get to really see my three soms growing up and the company gets more productivity out of me, as I get far more done at home with no distractions.

Anyway, I digress, so I was up in Dublin for some meetings and it was one if the director's last days, as he was moving onto a new job. He was a very good guy and I got on well with him, so I waited around for his going away drinks for an hour, before embarking on the 2.5 hour drive back to Galway.

Hold on Ablaze, you're not telling us you were drinking and driving??

That's exactly what I'm telling you....

Hold up, hold up...

Have a good look at the can, Ok, it's not actually visible, but id you turn the can a little, you'll see this is 1% and 440ml, so two were Ok for me to still drive.

Kinnegar is an excellent local Irish brewery from Donegal and you'll have seen sample many of their beers here over the years, but it was my first time having one of these bad boys.

Now it's very obvious from the first taste that this is a low alcohol beer, but it's definitely nicer than others I've had before. Here's what Kinnegar tell us about it.

"The Rise of Low Tide
Some sharp-eyed Kinnegar fans may have noted a recent change in the ABV of our low alcohol beer, Low Tide, from 0.5% to 1% and wondered to themselves, why? The simple answer – because we were happier with the mouth feel and flavour notes at the slightly higher level of alcohol. This simple answer however leads to a much more complex question. How do we, or any brewer for that matter, make low alcohol or even an alcohol free beer?

As seasoned designated drivers may remember, the first wave of alcohol free beers burst onto the market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the techniques used by brewers in those early days included boiling off the alcohol or arresting the fermentation before the yeast produced too much alcohol. The results were something akin to a sweet malty beverage with notes of cooked cabbage.

Technology however has moved on and larger breweries can now utilise a de-alcoholiser to, essentially, filter the alcohol out of their beer. In most cases they then use flavourings to plug the taste gap left open by the missing booze. This is an aspect many people forget – the alcohol in beer isn’t just the bit that makes us happy, it also plays a major role in a beer’s flavour profile. With this change in technology, we are certainly seeing a major improvement in the taste of big brand alcohol free offerings.

Of course for a brewery such as ourselves, a de-alcoholiser is not only prohibitively expensive, it also goes against the grain of our brewing ethos. We’re more than happy to push the boundaries, but for us the challenge is in producing a traditionally fermented low alcohol beer that we’d be happy drinking ourselves.

To do this, we had to strip down the process and rethink how we brew, looking at everything from malt and yeast selection, to mashing and sparging techniques. To be honest, Low Tide took more than a few runs on our pilot system to get dialled in and is still one of our more difficult beers to make.

That little increase from 0.5% to 1% ABV gives us the little bit of extra body we want to carry the hops. A restrained dry hop gives it a fresh, citrusy aroma, and results in a crisp, refreshing American style pale ale. Perfect for early risers or those simply keeping an eye on the units."

Until next time Beer Saturdayorians...

Oh by the way...

How was your Beer Saturday?

Where were you?

What was the drink of choice?

Who was with you?

Are those your feet?

How's your auld one?

Any other craic?

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Sláinte

Sláinte wherever you find yourself, take it handy, and if ya get it, take it twice!

*The photos used throughout this post are all my own taken on my Samsung smart phone*

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Sláinte and Peace out.

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