‘Lil Opal
One of my favorite beers can currently be found on tap at Monk’s Kettle: Firestone Walker’s ‘Lil Opal. It’s a farmhouse saison, with a funky nose, but a very mild taste. It’s wheaty, with hints of citrus and apricot, and almost no phenolic kick. Since it’s a Small Beer with only 3-4% alcohol, it’s also perfect refresher the heatwave that San Francisco is having right now.
What’s a Small Beer? No, it doesn’t mean the bartender is skimping on the pour. Rather, it refers to a brewing process designed to make the most of beer ingredients. Brewing is all about efficiency: how efficient the yeast are in converting sugar into alcohol, and how efficient the extraction of that sugar from the malt is during the mashing process. If you make a big beer – say a Big Opal, a 9% ABV wheat wine – there is no way you’ll get 100% of the sugar out of all that malt. So the thrifty brewmaster will extract the grains a second time, resulting in a much lower alcohol, “Small Beer.”
Firestone Walker than uses these second runnings to create ‘Lil Opal. This is an ancient process, used to get the most from beer ingredients. Anchor Brewing also makes a small beer, which is made from the second running of their Old Foghorn Barleywine. Historically, beer was safer to drink than water, so small beers were often brewed for children to drink. Today, even small beers are adults only.
The final brew in this case is the opposite in many ways of it’s big brother. Where Big Opal is high in alcohol, highly phenolic and an all around bruiser of a beer, ‘Lil Opal is light and delicate, and perfectly refreshing for an usually hot spring day.
Tags: Firestone Walker, lil opal, Monk's Kettle
April 28th, 2009 at 4:33 am
For those in the Sacramento area, Sacramento Brewing has Lil Opal on tap. They have an amazing list of guest beers in addition to their house brews. Definitely worth a trip.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Heat wave? What heat wave??
April 29th, 2009 at 5:33 am
It might be good to point out that Small Beer is historicly made from the third runnings, not the second like Lil Opal and Anchor Small Beer. I believe beer made from second runnings was called table beer, but I could have the name wrong. Gotta go brush up on my beer history again.
One reason alot of brewers don’t make small beers is that you can get 70+% or more effeciancy from your grains fairly easy, and extracting more sugars will also pull out lots of tannins. Many brewers don’t know how to handle this (myself included) and still formulate a good beer. Keep in mind we’re talking wort without hops yet. With the focus being on diffinitive styles I think we’ve lost the art. Any way that’s my 2 cents.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
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