Female Boss Brewery, Touraine (Loire)
After that stage they create a racking, following a clarification procedure because the dead yeast, hops and malt collect in the bottom of the fermenter, which you have to eliminate like some sort of sludge or lees. They then add a sugar syrup that will create the carbonation in the bottle, like a 2nd fermentation, that is what is going to provide the beer thoughts, the frothy foam on the top of the glass. About the lees and sludge they which is left at the bottom, they provide it to Corinne of Les Maisons Brûlées, she uses them as compost for their vegetable garden near their wine farm (located just outside Pouillé on the plateau). Emily says that it’s problematic for the craft-beer breweries in Paris for example, they can’t find an easy (and healthy) way to eliminate these lees, so they simply dump them. At La Pigeonnelle they provide these lees to a farmer who feeds his farm animals together, nice recycling, everyone is happy I guess, such as the vegetables or the cows/sheep (may get a little drunk too)…
Now I’ve been clarified the process and saw it for this batch but would have a difficult time reconstitute it for you, but that is not that important, the beer experts know it already and will understand which is which (and you can read this brewery terminology index, it will help a lot). In broad terms, Emily
clarified that here there were making a batch of Drunk in Love, they warmed a stainless-steel vat of water (the boil kettle or tun) to 74 ° C. I forgot to mention that the local water is good, important detail), they then mix with the malts that are Munich and Pilsen 2RP (If my notes are good), using 20 kg Pilsen and 10 kg Munich and massaging them progressively with all the hot water at the 2nd fermenter (that is what Yann is doing on right), the mash tun, where the malt will infuse quietly.
The beer they brought to Bulles au Centre (the Pet-Nat fair in Montrichard) this summer was very bitter and folks loved it this way. When I made this visit they were not yet allowed to sell their beers (the French administrative hurdles take time) but they make to get stock and how the beers to future potential professionnal buyers (and when you’re read this they will have their enrollment completed and will be able to sell). They’re for example in touch with Amicalement Vin, a wine shop based in Pocé sur Cisse near Amboise and selling wines from artisan vignerons in addition to craft beer. One of the guys there worked at Bertrand Jousset, they know what they’re selling, they tasted their beers at Bulles au Centre and will surely take some for their shop (their own craft-beer choice is really wide, even compared to what you find in Paris). Anyhow cool bistrots of the region and they try to sell to wine bars or to cavistes like here.
Filling a fermenter
As you know, her love for organic wines led her to go to the Loire and participate to a crop with Noëlla Morantin where she met Ben, a musician who’s a longtime amateur of these wines, and this was to be another world opening up, moving to here far from Paris and with the nature so close. Once settled here she took part to the artisan wineries life, working for the choosing or doing spray like on the movie on the left, she and Ben immersed themselves in the artisan domaines’ life around here.
Pouillé-sur-Cher, Touraine (Loire).
Yann says that in Norway he had a home-chef busines and he relied in part on a few recipes that had a good success when he cooked for others, so here it’s very similar in that regard. The big difference with the wine, it’s that the wine changes its expression depending of the vintage, here with the beer, once you get your ideal recipe it’s good to keep producing the same product as much as possible, which doesn’t mean you can’t make slight improvements. Emily says that as they’re beginning, they’l tend to adjust the taste and the recipe, and a difference seems to be no problem in a wine-producing region like here since people are used to such changes in wines.
Hops !
Brewer and motherFemale Boss Brewery2 rue de la LibertéPouillé-sur-Cher 41110femalebossbrewery [at] gmail.comEmily’s Paris PaysanneFBB Facebook pageEmily’s Instagram page
A new craft brewery has opened at the Loire, bringing to this part of France the American brew culture with a different touch. I reported a few months ago how Emily began to brew here in the
For example their cuvée Drunk in Love (pictured on right here above) is a saison-style beer, a bit more about the malt side, easy to drink, that is more of a French or
Belgian style, Emily says, this is the type of beer folks would drink previously after
work or after spending a day in the field. It is not a
beer with a great deal of hop but they stil use classical hop.
Emily should be massaging her beers at Les Vins du Coin at Blois (less than one hour by train from Paris) next december 2nd (saturday), and there’ll be a wonderful list of unprocessed winemakers as well…
Here they’re busy with the hand-powered mill, grinding the malt before use. They had a problem with their own hand-powered mill, it wouldn’t work properly, so they contacted Carole Honigmann who also makes craft beer in Blois (also in the Loire, not far from here) and she lent them this one. The milled malt gets easily soaked with water and releases its sugar (pic below : malt before- and after grinding). It is very important to mill the malt correctly for the sugar release and following fermentation. It is very helpful that there are other craft brewers in this part of the Loire to whom they can ask questions when needed. I guess it’s like in the natural-wine movement, people help each other and don’t see you as a rival or competitor. They samely got help and insightful exchanges with Stéphane and Ludo of La Pigeonnelle, a brewery which sells its artisanal beer all over, including in the U.S.
Loire, these were just tries at the beginning, but this is getting serious now. This California transplant spent 10 years in Paris, writing about food (she had been a Paris Paysanne or
Malt tea
Published at Mon, 13 Nov 2017 18:01:10 +0000
Paris farmgirl over there) and she released her Paris Market Cookbook or how
to cook from what you find along the different seasons on your favourite street market and grocery shop in Paris, including tips on the best way best to find the best off-the-beaten route natural wine pubs, craft breweries, urban gardens in the region.
The sugar will be naturally extracted from the malts in a temperature between 64 and 68 °C, which creates. They rack this liquid (called Wort) in a 3rd container (pictured here) where it will be brought to boiling temperature for 60 minutes after which they add the hops. Then after the boiling time is completed they cool down the liquid using a plate chiller (the metal block on the desk near the 2 bottles, 2nd pic above). After the yeast are added it takes about 5 days for the fermentation.And they do so twice in a row to receive their targetted volume. It is still a brewery at the infancy with fermenters but there’ll be larger vats with proper tools in a roomier location for now they focus on the beer they want to make.
Milling barley (before-after)
Actually they didn’t even know at the beginning if they’d stay here, from what I understand they saw it as a pause offering a possibility of durable perspectives but they had also the option to relocate in Iceland, and Idea that Yann considered but something his wife wasn’t too warm about. They stayed in 3 or 4 different houses in Pouillé at the beginning, moving from rent to rent, including when they stayed at La Tesnière with Laurent and their children were beginning to be tired and wanted stability, so they chose to remain and bought the house last december, a nice stately house certainly built between 1870 & 1900, fixed it in the following months and moved in last may.
Emily says they will listen to the view of all the tasters in the area (and if you meet artisan vignerons you know they enjoy craft beer and drink some frequently) and they know many in the region to see which versions people love best. Emily presented her beers lately in the Pet-nat fair last summer in Montrichard, THE wine-tasting event for organic sparkling, and this was a fantastic chance to have focused wine amateurs taste the beer and listen to their feelings. She’ll also produce a few American-style craft beers, since she likes them and will present the beer amateurs of the Loire to such beers produced locally. And of course Emily and Yann want to make beers that they like to drink themselves.
The two cuvées
Yann’s story is very interesting too, he’s another transplant, sort of, a Frenchman who spent years in Norway, married there and decided one day to come back and setlle in this quiet part of the Loire valley with his family. Pouillé is getting more and more international…
Then Yann decided to work with Emily for her craft-beer project, so the two are joining their efforts to launch the brewery. They set up the brewery in this outhouse at Yann’s place for now, it’s OK at this stage, they bought these small but good quality fermenters/vats (they’re made in Italy) but in the medium term they’ll find another location especially after the production volume takes off, and that might be a place where they can serve beer and food as well, possibly in Montrichard for example, a gem of a small town with everything you need, and I guess Yann will this way use again his restaurateur skills. Yann says that compared to Chinon, Montrichard is much more alive and vibrant, and I agree, it’s less bourgeois I’d say, more relax and authentic, it may be because Chinon is too close to Tours or something like that, I don’t know. and Yann says that Montrichard is where the Cher à Vélo (the bicycle path along the Cher river) begins. I tried to find a webpage with the bicycle routes but in spite of all the communication budgets these regional bodies are wasting they’ve not been able to publish a single informative page on the subject. Whatever, just follow the side roads along the Cher river by yourself and you’ll certainly love Montrichard, Chenonceaux and the journey eastward to Bourges.
Emily grinding with the mill
The other beer (on the left) is an American Pale Ale, but not with too much bitterness, they use a single type of hop but pretty generously. Its name Case of Glou was inspired by this song by Joni Mitchell. That’s funny because these times when in the countryside I play now and then a burnt CD found on a flea market, and it’s a 1968 live recording of Joni Mitchell, love it ! Including this lovely talk in between the tunes like here on this link.
So right now for their debut they make 2 beers, the day before they bottled 200 bottles (they do only 75-cl volumes right now) and their goal is to make 2 brews per week, each brew making 180 liters per fermenter. Yann helps for the
production but he says he’s still
learning, Emily is the one
who designs the beers and makes the recipe. The important thing he says is keep concentrated at making the same beer batch after batch, get the regularity of the taste. Right now they’re pretty happy with the types of beers they produce and had a good feeback.
Source: Wine
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