Recognizable brewhouse characteristics?

[hlm123]

Ever since I took an interest in sampling lots of craft beers and beer styles, something I've wondered about is how various breweries seem to have recognizable profiles that occur in most of their beers, if not all of them. Any ideas what aspects of the process would stamp the beers with these properties?

At the homebrewing level, I wonder if your own beers seem to have something about them that relates them to your brewing process?

 

[Komocabo]

A lot of breweries have a "house strain" of yeast. For instance, Ninkasi starts with Wyeast's London ESB, but after several uses it develops a slightly different profile. A local (small) brewery start with a certain strain, make a huge starter (20 gallons) then pitches from there. Again the profile changes from this (and other) processes.

Other ingredients such as standard 2-row vary slightly by the matter that sells it.

Lots of variables, such as ingredients, different techniques, etc., establish a house strain

 

[angrysparrow]

Also, I would be even more interested to know if your own beers seem (to you or better, others) to have something about them that relates them to your brewing process?

As a homebrewer, I can only hope to eliminate enough possible variables of equipment and process that a fingerprint of my methods could be detected. It's a learning process. There are *many* great homebrewers here that could answer far differently though.

FWIW, I agree that some of the breweries that I've been fortunate enough to try samples from a range of their beer at different times do have a recognizable profile. But I suspect the cause of each is different. For one brewery it might be a common yeast strain. For another it might be an ingredient or process. It's fun to ponder what the signature of each is from.

 

[BrewinHooligan]

The "house strain" yeasts are the largest culprit for this as the yeast provides more flavor compounds than any other ingredient in brewing. Also, most smaller breweries use the same base malts for all of their beers to make it easier for storing and ordering grains so that is also going to lead to similar flavor profiles.

 

[Nightshade]

Was just reading an article that touched on this in the newest issue of Beer Advocate. The article was about Ovalde and the process behind the brews he creates which are spins on traditional styles. He mentioned that although there are recipe tweaks of his own he has concentrated more on the yeast. Specifically he mentioned stressing the yeast in order to get very specific flavors from them. Also mentioned is that they use very little to no ferm temp control (pretty sure it stated no control).

Now this is a "small" operation with distribution currently within the state of Minnesota and I have yet to try their offerings (anyone want to ship me some?) but I am on the hunt and the technique obviously works as it is a steady growing outfit.