A sparking ale named Spud will make its debut at the Robertson Potato Festival on May 6 and 7.
The potato beer – a first for Five Barrel Brewing – is made from potatoes sourced from Robertson’s Hill Family Potato Farming, added to the mash to create the alcohol content of the ale.
Five Barrel Brewing co-owner Phillip O’Shea says the process of producing the sparking ale was equally as exciting as it was a learning curve, even for experienced brewers.
“The [Robertson] Potato Festival invited us to pour beers at the festival, and I thought that that would be an opportune time to work on a potato beer,” Phillip said.
“It’s something that is not super common, but it's definitely been done before, where the potatoes are added to the mash, just like any other beer, and the enzymes on the grain act on the starch in the potato and convert it to sugar to turn into alcohol.
“One of the interesting things that we've learned from this process is that there's also another enzyme that exists on potatoes that breaks down long chain sugars into short chain, which makes the beer more fermentable than we had anticipated.
“There's a bit of hands-on work, but then there's also a little bit of time spent in the lab, kind of figuring out some chemistry with this stuff.”
Phillip says while potato is a key component of the ale, the taste of potato itself will be mild.
“To be fair, the potatoes don't add a significant amount of flavour; it's much less about adding a potato flavour and much more about converting those starches into sugars, to add that extra sugar,” he said.
“It's not like you're going to have a beer that tastes like potato, but we've certainly designed the recipe to try not to hide any kind of character that the potato would give us.”
The Robertson Potato Festival will also feature a potato-inspired drop by SoHi – with the Southern Highland’s distiller’s Potato Crisp Vodka set to make a splash – as well as cooking demonstrations, mashed potato eating competitions, a hessian potato sack fashion contest, and more.
For more information about the Robertson Potato Festival, visit the website