Craft Beer & Brewing Course

Brewing Food-Inspired Beers with Aslin

Andrew Kelly, cofounder of Aslin Beer in Alexandria, Virginia, walks us through the process of conceiving, developing recipes for, and brewing beers meant to evoke memorable culinary experiences.

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Northern Virginia's Aslin Beer is known for a range of offbeat ales meant to evoke fun foods—especially those that stoke childhood nostalgia. In this video course, Aslin's Andrew Kelley walks us through their process—from inspiration to fermentation.

Kelley begins by talking inspiring culinary experiences, and then outlines their approach to emulating those flavors in the brewhouse and the cellar. Among other topics, he discusses:

finding that inspiration and deconstructing it
selecting ingredients, including various fruits, spices, and other adjuncts
deciding when in the process to use those ingredients
how "stressing the yeast" can lead to desirable outcomes
applying kettle-souring and IPA methods to food-inspired beers
water chemistry and mash choices
evaluating the results for fine-tuning

And much more, including two previously unpublished recipes.

Your instructor

Andrew Kelley

Cofounder, Aslin Beer

Kelley's early story is familiar—two homebrewing friends decided to launch a brewery and fired up a small nano system in 2015 to make beer as they figured out the business side. Not long after launch, they had what’s now a more common come-to-Jesus moment as they realized their initial plan to make standard styles with wide appeal was not going to satisfy them and that there was a market for the beers they loved to homebrew but which didn’t exist commercially in their region at the time—hazy IPAs, extremely flavor-forward beers, and the like. So they did what you might expect a couple of homebrewers to do—they changed course, started brewing daily (and often twice in a day), used their tiny scale and frequency of brewing to test methods and ingredients, and started building a name. Through a disciplined methodology of changing single variables and tasting the results, they were able to learn volumes about their ingredients and fine-tune their techniques to get the flavors they were searching for.

Course contents

4 chapters, 20 lessons, 49m of video

Chapter 1

Welcome

Welcome to My Course6:09

Chapter 2

Translating Culinary Inspiration to Recipe Development

Finding Inspiration and Breaking It Down5:30
The Inspiration for Brunchies: A Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Pancake Beer5:02
Brewing with Fruit: Three Tips
Let's Play Matchmaker: Pairing Fruit with Beer Styles
Selecting Ingredients5:28
The Subtle Art of Brewing with Coffee, with Tyler Lindquist of Alaskan Brewing
Brewing with Cacao and Other Dessert-Like Adjuncts, with Neil Fisher of WeldWerks

Chapter 3

Brewing Culinary Inspired Beers

Stressing the Yeast1:40
Kettle Sours6:17
What Is a Kettle Sour?
Getting Great Results with Kettle Sours
Pairing Hops2:21
Water Chemistry + Mashing2:35
Adjuncts8:33
Evaluating the Final Beer3:08
Breaking Down Milkshake IPAs, with Peter Kiley of Monday Night Brewing

Chapter 4

Thank You

Recipe: Aslin Brunchies
Recipe: Aslin El Frutero with Watermelon
Wrap Up1:56