Aenne - Saison 75cl

Aenne - Saison 75cl

New batch of Aenne, brewed with our own „Schwarze Pfauengerste“ malt. Brewed with organic barley malt and a good amount (6,5 g/l) of Challenger wholecone hops. Notes of biscuit, mint and lemon iced-tea.

Batch no. 04-2023.

The idea for a truly local beer began with the start of our brewery. While some ingredients were not possible to grow locally, grain surely is possible. With the search for local malt options, we couldn't find any. We got connected with the local chamber of agriculture who was researching the potential of historic grain varieties. From them we received the first seeds of "Schwarze Pfauengerste" in 2018 for multiplication.

"Pfauengerste" germinates earlier than other varieties, has low disease susceptibility and tolerates wet and dry weather equally well. The protruding awns protect against sparrows. It yielded more straw and more grains than the common type, and was excellent for malting. Its downfall, however, was that it is somewhat less productive than the common barley and the grain is less easily threshed from the ear.

In 2021 we took the grains to our friends Monique and Chiel who are running the organic farm Frecklinghof in Tecklenburg. With them we are growing our needs for barley and spelt. The first seeding was adventurous to say. With a very wet spring and no chance for harrowing, the weeds took over. But we didn't gave up. We took the learnings and did a new try in 2022. We had a clean start, barley was doing fine and end of July we started to harvest on the hottest day of the year.

40 °C and the belt of the combine broke. We were gathering parts together and did a field repair in full sun. Ofcourse when do machines break - when you need them. Well. The machine was back in shape and we could continue with the harvest.

We had our first vital quantity and enough to do two matings. From December 2022 we use this grain now as our base malt. In Aenne you can taste it as a single malt.