This new series consists of three unique beers, dreamt up by three separate brewing teams, under the watchful eyes of our three brewers, Mike, Lewis and Rory. Here’s a breakdown of the trio of beers they brewed and a summary of the brewing process for each of them…
This light and refreshing salted lager was brewed by Docks’ Head Brewer, Mike Richards, our former drayman Anthony ‘Sid’ Sidney and Alex Dunham, a member of our taproom team. A huge amount of freshly pureed watermelon was included in the brew, giving the beer a sweet, light flavour and pink hue.
We started the process with a meeting where we shared some interesting beers with each other and thought about what kind of flavours we wanted. We really liked the salted flavour from the recent gose WIP series, and we’re also big fans of Docks Beer’s Overtime. We tried a watermelon beer and thought all these things would combine well and make it a super refreshing drink.
We brewed using mostly pilsner malt and our usual Maris Otter Pale Ale malt. After mashing in, our big task was the chopping up and pureeing of 9 watermelons! After boiling the wort we added the watermelon puree (almost 20L of it) and some salt, along with some Huell Melon hops to add even more light fruitiness. During fermentation the beer was dry hopped with Kazbek hops, adding an intense floral hoppy character.
The resulting brew is a lightly pink-tinged, fruity and light lager that is still full of flavour. Sweet watermelon flavours are balanced with spicy, herbal hops to make the ultimate summer refresher.
This beer was inspired by monastic brewing traditions, a love of ginger beer and citrus. It was brewed by Rory Lynch, the latest addition to our brewhouse team and Dani Thompson and Caitlin Wallace who work in the taproom. Notes of ginger and citrus harmonise with the Belgian yeast phenolics to create a refreshing, light ale.
We started by tasting a few different beers and I asked the girls what kind of style they wanted to make. They asked for something zesty and fruity but not too tangy. In our conversations we spoke a lot about ginger beer, so we decided on including ginger in the recipe pretty early on, it was just more of a question about what we’d do with the base of the beer. But eventually decided on that being the wheat based Trappist ale.
Next we had to work out how gingery we wanted the beer to taste and that was quite a big challenge because it’s a bit of an unknown quality in terms of flavour! We decided to use ginger juice, rather than flaked, dried or frozen ginger, because it was easy to add and we could taste it beforehand. We ended up using around 150mls of fresh ginger juice and that took us to the level we wanted. We also included some orange zest as well because it’s a complimentary flavour to ginger.
Unfortunately Caitlin was isolating on the brewday, so it meant that Danni had to do pretty much everything. She zested all the oranges and lemons and had to taste a lot of ginger. She also did all the weighing out, mashing in and stirred it up as well. Danni did a great job and, if she carries on like that, I think I might be out of a job!
A really moreish beer made by senior brewer Lewis Birch, with help from Josh Hill and Lauren Bridgewater. It’s full of lemon and rosemary flavours and has a big pineapple finish!
After sampling many different beer styles at the initial planning stage, we decided that we wanted to make a fruity wheat beer. Both Josh and Lauren took a creative role in deciding the flavour combinations and rosemary, lemon, pineapple, basil, mango and cinnamon were all discussed. We ended up settling on a traditional hepfenweisse base with added rosemary after it stole the show during the tasting. Lauren was keen on the idea of adding lemon and pineapple to compliment the banana character of the WLP300 yeast.
The brew day went perfectly. The only tricky thing was deciding how much Rosemary to use! Once the brew was complete and we added the yeast, we left it alone to do its thing and produce some slightly spicy and big bananary flavours. At the end of fermentation, two whole pineapples were blended and mixed to create it’s signature tropical taste, pillowy mouthfeel and a deliciously curious edge from the rosemary.
These beers were brewed on our experimental 100L pilot kit and so only 50 cases are available. If you’d like to try the Team Series of WIP, buy them online or drop by the taproom shop.
Our third Work In Progress is a Team Series, designed to give some of our non-brewery team members a first taste of brewing and create three innovative craft beers.
This new series consists of three unique beers, dreamt up by three separate brewing teams, under the watchful eyes of our three brewers, Mike, Lewis and Rory. Here’s a breakdown of the trio of beers they brewed and a summary of the brewing process for each of them…
This light and refreshing salted lager was brewed by Docks’ Head Brewer, Mike Richards, our former drayman Anthony ‘Sid’ Sidney and Alex Dunham, a member of our taproom team. A huge amount of freshly pureed watermelon was included in the brew, giving the beer a sweet, light flavour and pink hue.
We started the process with a meeting where we shared some interesting beers with each other and thought about what kind of flavours we wanted. We really liked the salted flavour from the recent gose WIP series, and we’re also big fans of Docks Beer’s Overtime. We tried a watermelon beer and thought all these things would combine well and make it a super refreshing drink.
We brewed using mostly pilsner malt and our usual Maris Otter Pale Ale malt. After mashing in, our big task was the chopping up and pureeing of 9 watermelons! After boiling the wort we added the watermelon puree (almost 20L of it) and some salt, along with some Huell Melon hops to add even more light fruitiness. During fermentation the beer was dry hopped with Kazbek hops, adding an intense floral hoppy character.
The resulting brew is a lightly pink-tinged, fruity and light lager that is still full of flavour. Sweet watermelon flavours are balanced with spicy, herbal hops to make the ultimate summer refresher.
This beer was inspired by monastic brewing traditions, a love of ginger beer and citrus. It was brewed by Rory Lynch, the latest addition to our brewhouse team and Dani Thompson and Caitlin Wallace who work in the taproom. Notes of ginger and citrus harmonise with the Belgian yeast phenolics to create a refreshing, light ale.
We started by tasting a few different beers and I asked the girls what kind of style they wanted to make. They asked for something zesty and fruity but not too tangy. In our conversations we spoke a lot about ginger beer, so we decided on including ginger in the recipe pretty early on, it was just more of a question about what we’d do with the base of the beer. But eventually decided on that being the wheat based Trappist ale.
Next we had to work out how gingery we wanted the beer to taste and that was quite a big challenge because it’s a bit of an unknown quality in terms of flavour! We decided to use ginger juice, rather than flaked, dried or frozen ginger, because it was easy to add and we could taste it beforehand. We ended up using around 150mls of fresh ginger juice and that took us to the level we wanted. We also included some orange zest as well because it’s a complimentary flavour to ginger.
Unfortunately Caitlin was isolating on the brewday, so it meant that Danni had to do pretty much everything. She zested all the oranges and lemons and had to taste a lot of ginger. She also did all the weighing out, mashing in and stirred it up as well. Danni did a great job and, if she carries on like that, I think I might be out of a job!
A really moreish beer made by senior brewer Lewis Birch, with help from Josh Hill and Lauren Bridgewater. It’s full of lemon and rosemary flavours and has a big pineapple finish!
After sampling many different beer styles at the initial planning stage, we decided that we wanted to make a fruity wheat beer. Both Josh and Lauren took a creative role in deciding the flavour combinations and rosemary, lemon, pineapple, basil, mango and cinnamon were all discussed. We ended up settling on a traditional hepfenweisse base with added rosemary after it stole the show during the tasting. Lauren was keen on the idea of adding lemon and pineapple to compliment the banana character of the WLP300 yeast.
The brew day went perfectly. The only tricky thing was deciding how much Rosemary to use! Once the brew was complete and we added the yeast, we left it alone to do its thing and produce some slightly spicy and big bananary flavours. At the end of fermentation, two whole pineapples were blended and mixed to create it’s signature tropical taste, pillowy mouthfeel and a deliciously curious edge from the rosemary.
These beers were brewed on our experimental 100L pilot kit and so only 50 cases are available. If you’d like to try the Team Series of WIP, buy them online or drop by the taproom shop.
