River’s Edge Brewing Co.
Dear Replicator, River’s Edge Brewing in Milford, Michigan, has done a fantastic job of combining a great aesthetic with great beer. I love that they brew a wide variety of offerings, but their true-to-style beers are my favorite. One of their best is the Great American Beer Festival award winner Indubious. It is a Belgian-style dubbel that is strong and malty with dark fruit esters. I was hooked the first time I tried it. I would love to know more about this beer.
Larry Yuhas
Waterford, Michigan
Like many professional brewers, Nathan Hukill started out on the amateur path. After years of juggling experiments across a dozen different carboys, Hukill eventually began juggling professional brewing jobs instead, before finally landing a position as the Head Brewer at Michigan’s River’s Edge Brewing Co. in 2017.
River’s Edge has always stuck to its mission of brewing “true-to-style” beers, while also mixing in a few experimental options here and there to ensure drinkers will find a wide variety of options.
“Generally, we have something for everyone on any given day, including cask beer,” says Hukill. But simplicity and straightforward styles still shine at River’s Edge, where their best-selling beer is their Kölsch. Other hits include classic styles such as an ESB and a “rotating cast of characters” in the lager category, which tend to draw the attention of other brewers, according to Hukill.
“I have a guarded optimism to see that lagers seem to be ‘trendy’ lately,” Hukill says. “Trends always come full circle and we end up back where we started, which is why we have always been making lagers and Old World styles. We kind of laugh now that so many breweries who had all their eggs in the hazy basket are now jumping on lagers. You could see this coming a long time ago.”
Still, Hukill admits to feeling some reservation about classic styles like Pilsner becoming hot trends, given the frequent correlation in craft brewing between trendiness and out-there experimentation.
“I am a little apprehensive to see what being trendy does to lagers and beer drinker expectations of what some of these beers are supposed to be. However weird it may get, we will still be here trying to perfect our traditional styles,” he says. “I’m glad to see it, because my friends, co-workers, and I have always enjoyed drinking, brewing, and talking about these beers.”
But after many years of craft beer enthusiasts chasing trends and evolving styles, Hukill says he feels that some classic beer styles are left stranded in a strange place.
“For us, Belgian beers have sadly seen a steady drop off in popularity. Where we once may have had at least one Belgian at all times, we brew maybe two a year now,” he says. “We have a couple that have a good following and a couple that maybe people don’t realize are a Belgian style.”
Still, Hukill says that he loves traditional Belgian styles himself, and is happy to continue to brew them as consumer preferences continue to evolve.
“Give some time for people to rediscover lagers and I believe Belgian beers will be shortly behind that. Lagers and Belgian beers have been around a very long time for good reason. They aren’t going away; popularity just ebbs and flows.”
Indubious, which won a silver medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival, is a Belgian-style dubbel brewed with a caramel and aromatic malt, and boosted with caramelized candi sugar to hit an ABV of 8.1%. While the style may not be in the spotlight at the moment, it has remained one of the brewery’s favorite recipes to tinker and experiment with. The Indubious poured by River’s Edge today, Hukill says, is a completely different recipe from the first batch of the beer brewed in 2014. In addition to recipe tweaks, the brewery has played around with several barrel-aged variants over the years while attempting to stay true to the essence of the style.
“I had a very Belgian-heavy background in my earliest brewing days,” he says. “I couldn’t get enough of them. When it came to Indubious and my version of it, I made incremental changes from one batch to the next until it was where I wanted it.”
Most of the time, Hukill says, that means trying to work with ingredients from the region which birthed the style in the first place. Hence, he prefers to stick to Belgian ingredients for Belgian beers, German ingredients for German beers, and so forth.
“It doesn’t need to be a hard rule, but brewing a German style with a Belgian malt just feels perverse.”
Certain classic styles are all about showcasing particular ingredients, and Hukill tries to stay true to that philosophy. For such a beer, he says, it’s about knowing the malts, carefully analyzing and understanding yeast profiles, and doing the research plus gaining the experience necessary in order to form a clear picture of what you want — then reverse engineering it until you hit the target that you had in your head.
“A consistent process is always the most important thing to me and that usually comes from repetition,” says Hukill. “It’s hard to make fine adjustments to a beer when you’re frantically dealing with a stuck mash or some other process issue. Brewhouse problems go on no matter how long you’ve been brewing, but on the best days the process almost just ‘happens’ and that’s when you are free to focus on small details of any given beer. No matter what kind of equipment you’re working with, get comfortable with your process.”
River’s Edge Brewing Co.’s Indubious Belgian-style Dubbel clone
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.072 FG = 1.011
IBU = 26 SRM = 18 ABV = 8.1%
Ingredients
11 lbs. (5 kg) Belgian Pilsner malt
13.6 oz. (386 g) biscuit malt
12.8 oz. (363 g) crystal malt (40 °L)
12.8 oz. (363 g) aromatic malt
4 oz. (113 g) Special B malt
2.4 oz. (68 g) chocolate malt
12.8 oz. (363 g) dark candi sugar
7.8 AAU Magnum hops (60 min.) (0.65 oz./18 g at 12% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale), Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity), Imperial B48 (Triple Double), or SafAle BE-256 yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
With the goal of creating a highly dextrinous wort, mash in with 2.75 gallons (10.4 L) of 166 °F (74 °C) strike water to achieve a rest temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold at this temperature for 60 minutes. Sparge with enough water at 170 °F (77 °C) to collect about 6.5 gallons (24.5 L) of wort. Total wort boil time is 90 minutes. Add the Magnum hops with 60 minutes remaining.
When the boil is complete, chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, around 66 °F (19 °C). Pitch yeast, being sure to aerate if using a liquid strain.
Ferment around 68 °F (20 °C) to keep esters in check, and allow for an additional week (or more) of conditioning time once fermentation is complete.
Bottle and prime or keg and force carbonate as usual.
River’s Edge Brewing Co.’s Indubious Belgian-style Dubbel clone
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.072 FG = 1.011
IBU = 26 SRM = 18 ABV = 8.1%
Ingredients
5.5 lbs. (2.5 kg) Pilsner liquid malt extract
3 lbs. (1.4 kg) Belgian Pilsner malt
13.6 oz. (386 g) biscuit malt
12.8 oz. (363 g) crystal malt (40 °L)
12.8 oz. (363 g) aromatic malt
4 oz. (113 g) Special B malt
2.4 oz. (68 g) chocolate malt
12.8 oz. (363 g) dark candi sugar
7.8 AAU Magnum hops (60 min.) (0.65 oz./18 g at 12% alpha acids)
White Labs WLP530 (Abbey Ale), Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity), Imperial B48 (Triple Double), or SafAle BE-256 yeast
3⁄4 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash all of the grains in a muslin bag in 2 gallons (8 L) of water at 152 °F (68 °C) for 45 minutes. Afterwards, place the grain bag in a colander and wash with 1 gallon (3.8 L) of warm or hot water. Remove, then add water to reach a total volume of 6.5 gallons (24.5 L).
Bring liquid to a boil. Remove kettle from the burner and carefully stir in malt extract. Return kettle to heat and boil for 90 minutes. Add the Magnum hops with 60 minutes remaining.
When the boil is complete, chill the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature, around 66 °F (19 °C). Pitch yeast, being sure to aerate if using a liquid strain. Ferment around 68 °F (20 °C) to keep esters in check, and allow for an additional week (or more) of conditioning time once fermentation is complete. Bottle and prime or keg and carbonate as usual.
