Mashing in is the beginning of the brewing day. It’s a calm process, undertaken almost like an act of solemn prayer for the success of the brew. The malted barley is added to the mash tun, followed by water; the heat begins to rise. All is serene.
But when I arrive at Devon, England’s Utopian Brewing on a sunny August morning, the mashing process seems to possess a different temperament than what I usually witness. As the sound of Black Sabbath thunders through the high-ceilinged space, I stand on the stainless steel brewing platform with head brewer Jeremy Swainson and gaze into the depths of the lauter tun. Inside is a caramel-colored swirl of boiling foam, an ecstatically urgent mass of liquid that, after 45 minutes, will be transferred to the mash tun opposite and reunited with the grain that gave it its hue. After that, the temperature will be raised to 100° Celsius (212° Fahrenheit), and a boiling mash will begin.
Swainson is well-known in British brewing circles for his insistence on decoction mashing, but today he has gone one step further. The Fest-style beer he is brewing is based on 19th-century recipes from the Bavarian city of Augsburg. It is common to see and taste British-made Ales that have been brewed using centuries-old recipes (think of Fuller’s Past Masters), but it’s been harder to find British Lagers that reach back through the years.
After an hour, I leave Swainson to get on with what will be a long day (he came in at 5 a.m. and, as I later learn, won’t finish until 10:30 p.m.). Passion is an overused word in beer, but there is a real fervor in Swainson’s dedication to exploring Lager’s past. As he once told me, one of his main hobbies is reading 19th-century Czech and German brewing textbooks in the original languages.
“This is something I have thought about for a couple of years since I first read about it,” he tells me about this particular recipe. “We are always looking for ways to respect the tradition of Lager brewing, create something new and interesting—and this is about as creative as we can get.”
