New craft ale from sourdough yeast
A leading artisan bakery in Northern Ireland has teamed up with a craft brewery to produce a new beer from sourdough yeast.
Contributing to the new beer, Babcha, from Pokertree Brewing of Carrickmore in county Tyrone is Yellow Door Bakery and Deli in Portadown in county Armagh.
Yellow Door provided yeast for fermenting the beer, described as a Berliner weisse-style and made from a range of ingredients especially raspberries.
Babcha (ABV4%) follows a chance discussion about fermentation between Simon Dougan, managing director of Yellow Door and Pokertree founder Darren Nugent.
Simon Dougan, also one of Northern Ireland's leading chefs, says: "When Darren suggested he'd be interested in producing beer from sourdough, I decided to produce some yeast for him from a starter I've used for many years. My sourdough is based on yeast brought to me from Poland by my head baker many years ago. In fact, the original recipe dates back about 50 years!"
"The product we gave him is ferment or called 'mother' in Poland. A ferment is just a bucket of fermenting flour which can live for decades as long as you keep feeding it more flour and water.
"It gives our bread a slightly sour and earthy flavour and helps bread have a better texture and structure. My head baker brought some of this 'mother' back from Poland when he first started working for me 15 years ago.
"He told me that the 'mother' was from a bakery he had worked in before coming to Northern Ireland. This 'mother' was probably 40 years old at that time.
"Darren Nugent's wife is Polish and she suggested the name Babcha, which means grandmother in Polish.
"We took some of this 'mother' that we have been feeding and caring for like a baby for the last 15 years and produced an extra amount for Darren to use in his beer. He also used some loaves of our sourdough bread with the raspberries to produce the beer."
Darren Nugent has been exploring various types of beer since launching Pokertree craft brewery in 2013 and been looking at different fermentation and processing techniques that would enable him to produce a unique product.
Babcha is hand-filled and bottle-conditioned at Pokertree. It's described as a very light, tart beer that's made without hops and with an opaque, pink colour. The beer is available in 500ml bottles with an RRP of £2.50.
As well as Babcha, Pokertree has just introduced Dark Nirvana (ABV 6.5%) which Nugent has named after music legend Kurt Cobain, the singer/songwriter and founder of rock band Nirvana in 1987. He chose Black Nirvana because Cobain's family originally came from the Carrickmore area of county Tyrone.
Dark Nirvana is a smoky, jet black beer made from green hops and espresso. The new beer retails at around £2.80.
Pokertree has also worked with other artisan businesses in Northern Ireland on innovative products. Collaborations include Ispini Charcuterie in the nearby village of Aughnacloy on cured pork products including salami. The brewery has a core range of three beers - Seven Sisters Treacle Oat Stout, Chrian Golden Ale and Red Earl Ruby Ale.