• AussieStyles
• Sparkling Ale

Sparkling Ale

This page is provided as a service to the brewing community. It is a public wiki page and is not intended to represent any official styleguidelines.

See also other AussieStyles.

References

BJCP style: none

AABA style: section 3.1 "Australian Pale Ale" includes Coopers Sparkling Ale as a commercial example.

"Style guidelines for 2005 ANAWBS"

Aroma

Some light malt notes with a complex fruitiness similar to apples, pears and bananas. This comes from the unique strain of yeast.

Appearance

A pale gold to amber-red colour. If poured carefully it indeed has a sparkling appearance although with yeast sediment in the bottle, it is often served cloudy. Kegged examples are always cloudy. High carbonation levels.

Another opinion as to why it is called 'sparkling' is that it had a higher carbonation level than other British ales of the mid 1800's (and higher than the British 'real ales' of today). Sparkling as in carbonated, just like sparkling wine.

Flavour

A soft malt and fruit combination with a noticable hop bitterness in the finish.

Mouthfeel

A medium rounded mouthfeel.

Overall Impression

Widely available, Sparking Ale displays a solid head and a distinctive, full-bodied flavour. The flavour is enhanced by a soft, fruity character and the sediment which gives it a cloudy appearance. http://www.melbournepubs.com/docs/beer-ale/

History

Also often called the Adelaide Sparkling Ale style, it is derived from the English pale ale and adapted to local ingredients. Much more highly carbonated than English beers, the beer undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle or keg. Most other Australian breweries in the late 19th and early 20th century produced this style of beer. Cooper's Brewery in Adelaide, South Australia has continued to brew ales after other breweries switched to lager production, making their ales the model for the style. This style of beer has historical parallels with the "California Common" style of beer.

• Coopers Brewery made their first Sparkling Ale in 1862.

Comments

• Michael Jackson article

Ingredients

• Pride of Ringwood hops.

• Coopers house yeast with a vintage of over 90 years.

• Australian grown pale, wheat and crystal malts.
• Cane Sugar

Vital Statistics

Commercial Examples

• Coopers Sparkling Ale and Original Pale Ale

• Golbourn Sparkling Ale (?)

Below this line are historical perspectives cut and pasted from the http://oz.craftbrewer.org/ mail list. At some stage I hope to sort them out.

Graham S: (emphasis mine)

• "I have said many times before that I believe Australian Sparkling Ale is the forrunner and reason steam beer came to be. In fact, I believe you can group the two styles together, the sparkling ale is the light version, the steam beer the darker maltier version. To explain this means going into the history of both beers, and understanding the movement of people and trade between USA and Australia in the early 1800's, as well as the REAL reasons Australia was colonised. Hint - the dumping of convicts here was not real reason, just a convience."

Brad M:

• "As for the tasting parameters and naming I expanded the model to include other pale ales such as Kent Town (defunct), Southwark ,Cascade and Coopers OPA as I believe they should be regarded in same style. If you disagree on how these beers taste you are welcome to put your slant on things. You will have to explain how you disagree on the naming."

Graham S puts forward an argument that Australian Pale Ale is quite distinct from Sparkling Ale:

• "Quickly, Aussie Pale Ales were higher alcohol, extra speciality malts added (darker) and had decent hop flavours and aromas. They were still pan fermented, but were definitely considered the beer for the upper-class, and not the average joe, that would drink the Sparkling Ale instead. So a little maltier, darker, hop flavours (English derived) and much higher alcohol. Still has sugar as a major adjunct, and bready/fruity from the shallow pan fermentation, probably more estery as well than a sparkling ale."

Graham S agrees with Brad M that today, examples of the Pale and Sparkling ales are quite similar:

• "The other pale ales as you state that are available today are just basically sparkling ales. BUT we did once have a unique Pale Ale. Most, if not all breweries in the 1800's had a Sparkling Ale as the standard beer, but most had a Pale Ale as well. Point is, we should not confuse Pale ales made in Aussie today with original pale ales."

David Lamotte has been doing some reading in the sweltering heat:

• "It is too hot to think here in NSW today (45 Deg C in the shade), so I found the coolest spot I could and read through my old copies of Ausbeer magazine. Way back in 1994 they had a 10 part series on the history of the Coopers brewery written by Allison Painter (who I suspect is a historian).

  Anyway, even though Coopers were founded in 1862 they were broke by 1870 because they prided themselves on being one of the few colonial brewers to make an all malt ale. Other brewers were using cheaper cane sugar to dilute the high nitrogen local malt or reduce the amount of expensive imported British malt used. In the early days Coopers prided themselves on being a nutritious 'all malt' brew whereas sugar was derided as producing 'hollow' alcohol.

  In 1870 Thomas Cooper started to re-build his brewery in rented premises and was reported as being profitable this time around as he had started to use a sugar addition to lighten the brew and dilute the expensive imported English malt. At this time Coopers did not supply cask or draft beer - only bottles. In their 'all malt' days they did supply small casks, but only to private homes. Because of his religious background, Thomas Cooper refused to deal with hotels.

  The issue of sugar in beer was debated by the SA parlement in 1902, and a report prepared for the parlement noted that the average strength of local ales was 13 'Brewers Pounds' (per hogshead) whereas Coopers were brewing at a strength of 21-22 Brewers Pounds. (A brewers pond is the difference in weight between a cask of wort and a cask of water).

  At the time the Adelaide Malting and Brewing Company was using 75 lbs of Malt, 2 lbs Hops and 27 lbs Sugar per hogshead of their Macclesfield Ale. In comparison Coopers were using:

  • Winter Brew: 126 lbs of Malt, 4.2 lbs Hops and 32 lbs Sugar Summer Brew: 102 lbs of Malt, 3.3 lbs Hops and 27 lbs Sugar
  Thomas Cooper's rationale was that a strong beer was needed in winter because people were run down from the hot weather. This bit of history leads to the Sparkling Ale style we see today (or at least before the 'modernisation' of the Cooper's brewery), which has produced the following characteristics :-
• It was a bottle conditioned style, not supplied on draught
• It was a strong ale 50% stronger that other typical colonial ales (to avoid the problems of fermenting in hot climates)
• Yeast acclimatised to these harsh conditions (compared to the cool English conditions) produced different characteristics. Thomas's son worked in a library before he joined his father and had read much about brewing science, including Pasteur's work on pure yeast."

David also questions the assertion that Sparkling Ale is the forunner of Steam Beer:

• "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, not sure that I am convinced. Sure they were around at about the same time (the 1880's), and both 'hot area' styles were cooled to pitching temperature in shallow 'cool ships', but that is about the end of the similarities. Until artificial cooling arived in the back blocks of California, the use of the hybrid 'lager' yeast (ie Wyeast 2112) allowed lager characteristics to be obtained at 15-20 degrees. Australia waited until the Foster brothers arrived in Melbourne in 1887 before they embraced the 'new' lager revolution. Doesn't the grist composition have more in common with an English Pale Ale than an Australian Sparkling Ale ?"

And Graham provides some logic for his assertion:

• "Well considering I can find references to both Sparkling ales and cool ship fermentation in Australia easy into the 1850's, and obscure references into 1840's that blows that argument out of the water!"

Whereas he says:

• "... with all indications the hybrid yeast not available til the 1900's. Well after Sparkling Ales dominance over here."

Graham reminds us that the beers we have today are not necessarily the "classic" style:

" And thats the point. People are using this brewery as the benchmark for style definition, when it was quite clear in its early days it was not.

• As David rightly points out, care should be taken assuming what happens today, happens always. A little history can be enlightening."

Andrew W is reluctant to turn this into a mass debate:

• "I am reluctant to get into this debate, but... From my perspective, the styles that are available in homebrew competitions should reflect the styles that people want to brew and enter. I have heard people say that something like Australian Old (Or dark ale or whatever), should not be its own style, because there's no real history to it. Graham has also given arguments as to why there should only be "International Mainstream Lager" and "International Premium Lager". I disagree with this. I can easily tell the difference between Tooheys-VB-Fosters and Budweiser-Millers-Coors. One major difference is the hop flavour, but there are others. What this all comes down to is a difference in philosophy of how we define styles for competitions. My philosophy is that if there is enough peoplen that want to brew a Tooheys Old clone, there should be a category available that reflects that style. Its going to annoy a lot of homebrewers if the guidelines are set such that Old is not in there because it is deemed not historical enough."

David L provides some more historical perspective and his feeling on whether Sparkling Ale was the forerunner of Steam Beer:

• "From my reading, Coopers used the shallow pans for cooling not fermentation. The Ausbeer series describes the post boiling practice as:

  The ale was then drained (from the boiler) and cooled in large open vessels called coolers. When cool the ale was transferred to the fermenting vat, usually a large wooden vessel, and pitched with yeast. About four days later (depending on the rate of fermentation) the ale was transferred to to casks (tunned) usually hogsheads, where it continued to ferment and the yeast produced rose to the top of the cask where it was collected for use in future brews. When the fermentation was complete the ale was cleared by adding isinglass to the cask which carried most of the sediment to the bottom, the cask was then bunged and allowed to stand until bottling which generally was done up to eight weeks after brewing. This time in storage was reduced in later years by the Coopers to two weeks. The ale was then matured in the bottle for up to six weeks during which time further fermentation produced alcohol and carbon dioxide to give the ale good 'head'. This process required approximately three months from brewing to the finished ale ready for sale. Infections were a common problem for colonial brewers, and it is noted in the articles that the use of the closed casks provided a means of reducing air contact and hence reduce the infections. When Thomas Cooper re-built his failed brewery in 1876-77:

  he was again using English malt and sugar, and he appears to have reached a satisfactory proportion of sugar to malt as well as a better controlled system of brewing. He was also adding sugar to the hogsheads during storage which helped ensure that the yeast kept working and to ensure that the ale 'came up', that is produced enough carbon dioxide to give a good head, and this action, because it also increased alcohol level, which in turn increased the acidity a little, assisted in preventing bacterial infection from occuring.

  Pictures of the fermenting tuns look very much like the 'old' fermenting tubs used at Pilsener Urquell (before the modernisation) - which are very different to the shallow 'open pan' fermenters used in Steam beer. For details of the Steam beer production you can see http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/styles/2_1style.html. My opinion (for what it may be worth) is that both Steam and Colonial (or sparkling) ale were local adaptions of standard English ale brewing practice. But this adaption occured in parrallel without one necessary affecting the other. But I don't really have any evidence to support this 'feeling'."

Graham digs deeper in response to some brewing techniques highlighted by David:

• "Most certainly. In fact that Coopers read you provided about post boil practice could have been lifted right from the Bass Brewery, it thats similar. In fact the description you give is all but a Union System. In my reserach I went to the Charters Towers Historical Society. In the 1890's they built a huge brewery that specialised in Sparkling Ales, and they have unique literature on receipes and actual brewing practices. Your dead right on two accounts and one I overlooked."

and

• "The Aussie system did indeed transfer from a cool pan to open fermentation vessels (althou that changed quickly to closed vessels). I forgot that bit. However, from what I can gleam, yeast was actually pitched as soon as the shallow pan was cool enough, before the transfer, and well before it was transferred out of the pan. The beer would continue to cool in the pan, with yeast active." By the 1890's these vessels had well and truly been replaced with metal, indeed for the infection issue. Interesting they were relatively shallow, a lot like Burton squares, for two reasons, to avoid heat build up and and to stop excessive foaming. So yes I guess I am wrong in a sense to say its shalow pan fermentation, probably more accurate to say shallow vat fermentation.

  But I find no reference to this outside the Coopers reference

  • >the ale was transferred to to casks (tunned) usually hogsheads, where it continued to ferment and the yeast produced rose to the top of the cask where it was collected for use in future brews.

  Hard [to know what] to read into this. If we are assuming yeast rose outside the keg like in a union system, then I haven't seen any refernce to other breweries doing this. Yes I find a lot of references to

  • >When the fermentation was complete the ale was cleared by adding isinglass to the cask which carried most of the sediment to the bottom, the cask was then bunged and allowed to stand until bottling which generally was done up to eight weeks after brewing.

  But this was when fermentation had subsided. And this was not the practice by the turn of the century. But by the late 1880's it seemed we just bottled as soon as ready as you state

  • >This time in storage was reduced in later years by the Coopers to two weeks. The ale was then matured in the bottle for up to six weeks during which time further fermentation produced alcohol and carbon dioxide to give the ale good 'head'.

  This seems to be due to yeast evolution and need. By the end of the 1800's, we had the process down pat, with quick strong fermentation, minumimal if any storage and large barrels, and going basically straight to bottle conditioning. Interesting its arround this time we start to see sealed metal fermentation vessels, that might have aided this tranission totally away from barrels and only two weeks aging before bottling. Certainly by 1890, wooden kegs storage for fermentation and maturation was not used, at least in Charters Towers. Wodden barrels remained the domain of distribution thou. All interesting stuff."

Which prompts David L to comment:

• "Thomas Cooper was a shoe maker by trade and had to learn how to brew as he went along. But he also sought advice from many people (both in the colony and back in England), so who knows where the use of casks for fermentation came from - it could even have been Burton."

and

• "In the battle against infections no doubt many different techniques were trialed, and I could see how pitching in the cooling pans could help the yeast to get an early start on generating alcohol and reducing the wort pH - both good things in the battle against the bugs. There would also be plenty of oxygen available from the large surface area providing good conditions for yeast growth. The transfer to the main fermentation vessel (possibly after cooling overnight) would essentially be the English Ale process of 'dropping' which carries only the healthy, active yeast over into the main ferment."

And on the subject of using casks for fermentation, Graham S has this to say:

• "On a historical note, my bet they picked it up from the bristish war ships - its a navy tradition to ferment in kegs. I will dig up my notes on this and do a radio program at the end of January on this. BUT in a nutshell, and incredible amount of beer was brewed on warship by the british, streching way back into history. In fact the amount is staggering, no doubt to keep the crew happy (if happy is what you can call press-ganging). They started making new batches almost as soon as they left mother England, thats how much they drunk. In fact all warship had ongoing beer being brewed all the time, (the supply lists are staggering the amount of hops and malt that were part of the stores), and since the "cook" wasn't a brewer by trade, he was instructed to put fresh wort straight into freshly emptied barrels, and NEVER let them dry out. Sort of the first kit and kilo brewer of the day. In fact his life depended on it. Maybe Thomas saw this on the british ships he sailed on?"

PaulSorenson