Making A Mockery
Mockery Brewing in Denver ran a unique homebrew competition, and we submitted two entries!
The premise was easy: They provide the wort, and you add everything else. The wort was 100% Maris Otter, and the only other qualifier was that the resulting beer had to include at least one ingredient outside the Rheinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law that Mockery seems to have a serious grudge against.
There’s a lot of different ways this could have gone. Maris Otter is a traditional English grain and is a key base malt for English-style ales, and that could take you down the path of nuts or other darker flavors. Alternately, you could try for one of the Belgian styles that already start out with something extra in the primary. But the key to the competition was that they wanted something creative (in line with a lot of their own beers) and something well-balanced. So here’s what we entered:
LA MOCKISTRAL: That purple liquid up above is an orange and jamaica pale ale. We started with the Maris Otter wort, steeped in some flaked maize for a little extra sweetness, and then used Inland Island’s INIS-001 American Ale yeast to produce a clean, lightly fruity beer. The hop bill had Amarillo, Azacca, and Mandarina Bavaria hops to accentuate the oranges, and we ran the primary fermentation over mandarin oranges to bring out the orange flavor. The final step was a short dry-hop with Mexican jamaica flowers, giving it a little tartness and little more bitterness.
STICKY MOCKEE: Our other entry played off of the English heritage of the Maris Otter yeast, going with the flavors of a great traditional English dessert – sticky toffee pudding. The wort got a little body bump with a steep of flaked oats and flaked barley, and we used other traditional English ale ingredients to round out the base beer – East Kent Goldings hops and Inland Island’s INIS-315 English Ale yeast. We added molasses to the boil and then pureed dates to add to the beer before primary fermentation, and then finished off with some vanilla in the secondary. Sweet, fruity, and the vanilla has a nice roundness to finish it off.
There’s some of both of these still available for taste-tests — drop us an email from the Contact page!
— HIJO