331: Jacob Sembrano of Cruz Blanca Makes Technically Challenging Beers with Beautiful Ingredients and Stories to Tell
Nov 24, 2023
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Jacob Sembrano, passionate brewer at Cruz Blanca, discusses crafting technically challenging beers with beautiful ingredients and stories. Topics include pushing fermentation temperatures, brewing a red corn lager, using black and heavily roasted malts in stouts, building body without excessive sweetness, and growing the brand through partnerships. Listen to hear about brewing a 100% corn grisette, challenges of specific beer styles, and the unique and acidic gurzette beer. Challenges and opportunities in the industry are also explored.
The brewer discusses the challenges and techniques of brewing a 100% corn beer using diastatic yeast and Brett to dry it out.
The brewer emphasizes the importance of balance between sweetness and roast character in their barrel-aged stouts.
The brewery's expansion to Texas in partnership with Molson Coors allows them to produce Mexican lager and exchange technical knowledge with a Texas-based brewery.
Deep dives
Brewing a 100% Corn Beer
The brewer describes the process of brewing a 100% corn beer, highlighting the challenges of low extract and recommending the use of a diastatic yeast and Brett to dry it out.
Differentiating Barrel-Aged Stouts
The brewer discusses how their barrel-aged stouts differentiate themselves by incorporating techniques from their time at Goose Island and focusing on balance between sweetness and roast character.
The Philosophy Behind Stout Brewing
The brewer shares their personal connection to stouts and their desire to capture the nostalgia and roasted flavors of traditional stouts while making them more approachable to modern palates.
Balancing Sweetness and Roast
The brewer emphasizes the importance of balance in their stouts, combining controlled sweetness with significant roast character to create a fulfilling and flavorful beer.
Designing a Stout Recipe for Barrel Aging
When designing a stout recipe for barrel aging, the speaker emphasizes the importance of finding the right mix of ingredients. The recipe for the stout base remains consistent, but adjustments are made each year to fine-tune the fermentation and overall flavor profile. Changes in crystal malt percentages and other ingredients contribute to variations from year to year. Achieving the desired fermentation and body is a challenge, as barrel-aged stouts can become too dry if taken too far. Despite six years of brewing, the perfect recipe has yet to be found, but experimentation and blending different batches continue to yield interesting results.
Brewing Techniques and Expansion to Texas
The podcast episode also discusses the brewing techniques and the expansion of the brewery to Texas in partnership with Molson Coors. By teaming up with a Texas-based brewery with extra capacity, the brewery can now produce and distribute Mexican lager in Texas, leveraging the state's affinity for Texas-made products. The host emphasizes the benefits of this partnership, such as being able to say 'brewed in Texas' and the technical knowledge exchange between the two brewing teams. Additionally, managing the brewpub has undergone changes with more focus on hospitality, staff education, and expanding the range of beer offerings. The speaker expresses excitement about future projects, including more creative recipes, mixed culture beers, and fruited beers.
Jacob Sembrano loves ingredients, and his background as a chef instilled in him a deep love of connecting ingredients and their stories with the dishes he presented to customers. Now, at the helm of the brewhouse at Chicago’s Cruz Blanca, he’s forged a similar identity for his beers—connecting through ingredients with stories, and making beers with unusual methods. Their customers may not realize the technical prowess it takes to brew a 100 percent malted-corn grisette with French saison yeast, Brettanomyces, and a Lactobacillus strain cultured from the corn itself ... but they don’t have to—Cruz Blanca’s reverence for corn as an ingredient is apparent and welcome.
In this episode, Sembrano discusses how they brew a range of beers. Along the way, he covers:
making your own luck in the food and brewing worlds
applying a minimal-intervention yet highly technical approach to making a 100 percent corn grisette
pushing fermentation temperatures to reduce esters
brewing a red corn lager with 70 percent corn malt
using significant amounts of black and heavily roasted malts in barrel-aged stouts
building body without excessive sweetness
working with partner breweries to grow the brand
matching brewing profiles between locations across states
And more.
“I want my stout to fight me back a bit,” Sembrano says. “I want to feel it when I drink it.”
This episode is brought to you by:
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