398: River North Explores the Outer Limits of High ABV Brewing
Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast
Exploring Belgian Styles and the Art of High ABV Brewing
This chapter explores the journey of a brewer who transformed their passion for home brewing into a professional venture, particularly focusing on Belgian-style and high ABV beers. It highlights the impact of key breweries in Colorado's beer scene and the complexities of creating balanced, ultra-high gravity brews.
Over the past few years, Denver's River North Brewery has collected accolades from top beer competitions around the world—four GABF medals, four World Beer Cup medals, four European Beer Star medals just to name a few—and beers like Father Time and Anniversary 11 have earned top scores from our blind panel. They most recently earned midsize brewery of the year honors at the inaugural Colorado Brewers Cup. While they brew a wide range of beers, including frequent medal winner Nightmare Fuel coffee stout, they're probably most well-known for the beers that push into the peaks of the ABV range—stouts, Belgian-style strong ales, and barleywines that regularly hit 15% and higher.
In this episode, founder Matt Hess and head brewer Matt Malloy share their techniques for making beers that not only turn heads for the their sky-high numbers, but also remain drinkable and as balanced as such beers could be. From controlling fusel alcohols through careful fermentation management, to building layers of flavors through malt selection, they share insights garnered from ten years of pushing the envelope. In this episode, they touch on:
- using very high pitch rates and over-oxygenation to maintain healthy yeast
- employing dehusked malts to soften roast character in big stouts
- pushing yeast into an additional growth phase to increase cell count
- keeping osmotic pressure low and feeding fermentations
- selecting and adding coffee into stout
- managing the oxidative process in barrel aging
And more.
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