歴史 (History)

When we got talking about our anniversary this year, our 10 year anniversary, we decided to go back to the beginning and reach out to someone central in the founding of Kyoto Brewing Co., Luc Lafontaine, owner and head brewer of Godspeed Brewery in Toronto, Canada. Luc has known us and advised us since before Kyoto Brewing had even started, and was also someone who helped us in making our inaugural brews.

So what to do for such a beer? Well, we wanted to do something new and different that neither of us have ever done for a start. And we wanted it to be high in impact. After some back and forth, we decided to take inspiration from cocktails. We specifically thought towards the technique of creating a smoked cocktail, where the glass itself is smoked before pouring the cocktail in, infusing a light smoky character that helps add depth to the cocktail and remains through the glass. But we aren’t going to make this beer one glass at a time, so we decided instead to fill the full 2000L size fermenter that the beer would go into with smoke!

We decided to go in the direction of an Old Fashioned cocktail, a drink that is mostly whisky with some bitters and sugar, with some Wakayama iyokan peel (very close to the traditional orange) added. This cocktail is well suited to smoking, or even with the lighting of the zest with a flame. The base of this beer is built around the malts, and we went for a blend of Maris Otter and a little Special B to at some dark fruit and caramel, as well as rye crystal, adding a bit of rye spice (think rye whisky), as well as adding some sweetness. We limited the hops to some East Kent Holdings, just enough to help with beer stability, and we went for a long 3 hour boil to concentrate the sugars and add to the caramelised character. We then also caramelised the candied sweet iyokan peel and added grains of paradise into the end of the boil for some citrus and spice, before getting to the really crazy and fun part. Before racking into the BBT, we loaded some oak chips into the tank on a platform, purged the tank lightly with CO2, leaving some oxygen behind, and then lit the wood chips on fire and closed the tank. The fire consumed the residual oxygen in the tank as we fed it with CO2 to prevent a vacuum from forming. Quickly running out of oxygen, the fire went out, and the wood began to smoke vigorously, filling the BBT. We then transferred the beer into the BBT to impart some of that smoke flavour, while also allowing it to rest on the now charred wood chips, giving the beer a soft vanilla and oak character. This beer may be a first of its kind given that we are not sure many people would be willing to light fires in their BBT’s, but the character from it makes this beer very unique and truly special, which is only fitting for our 10th anniversary.