Keptinis Lithuanian Baked Beer has been a fascinating project to work on. We have an incredibly diverse and talented team at Geterbrewed. Thanks to our friend and colleague Ricardas, we have been able to try brewing this beer.
Ricardas has worked with Geterbrewed for three years. Originally from Lithuania, a highly valued team member who is incredibly talented. He sourced us some traditional Keptinis Lithuanian Baked Beer to taste. He has made the extra pieces of equipment we needed to make this beer and provided direction to help us recreate our version at Our brewery.
What is Keptinis?
The term Keptinis means baked. The mash is specifically baked in the brewing process to create this fantastic beer. Using pale malts to create a dark beer in simple terms. Lithuania has a population of 2.8 million and a unique beer culture with home brewers following their special beer traditions. These traditions create beers that taste like nothing we have ever tasted before. The process is unlike anything else we have encountered in brewing.
Traditional methods fascinate us as you can learn from the methodology and perhaps create something extraordinary. Keptinis is a baked beer, and during the baking of the mash, you are caramelising sugars. You will see from the malting tours we have done previously at Crisp & Dingemans Malt the process of malting is steeping, germinating, kilning & roasting. This is kilning or roasting starches it isn’t roasting sugars like keptinis. We are excited to see what complexity this brings to brewing beer.
The Process
Traditional farmhouse brewing used wooden brewing equipment. Grain was milled with a millstone, and straw was used to filter the mash. Ricardas shared footage with us on these techniques. The wooden barrel used like a mash tun had a hole in the bottom that would fit the end of a wooden stick. The stick would have straw tied and wrapped around it. A false bottom was created to hold the straw up from the base. Achieved by adding wood pieces to the barrel’s inside base, and the straw would sit on top. The stick would have the straw wrapped tightly around the top and middle section, with the straw fanning out at the base to create the filter bed.
A mash was made like we are all familiar with. Soaking the malt in hot water to achieve enzymatic activity and convert the starches into fermentable sugars. The unique Lithuanian approach is to create moulded loaves of the mash on top of a straw bed. Then place these into a wood-fired oven to bake. Using a long wooden paddle like a pizza peel, they would insert the mashed loaves into the oven and bake them until caramelised and roasted. When baked, the loaves are removed, the burnt pieces are scraped from the top and added to the wooden mash vessel with the straw filter bed.
Once the mash is back into the mash tun, they rehydrate the mash that has been baked. Similar in the process to sparging in the modern day lauter tun. Traditionally this mash would again have been covered and allowed to rest. Allowing the rehydration to take place effectively. The stick would be removed from the hole in the base of the wooden mash tun and drained off through the straw filter bed.
Baked Beer?
Lithuanian Baked Beer is a raw ale, meaning the wort created after the mash isn’t boiled. Boiling helps sterilise the wort in preparation for the addition of the yeast. It is usually cooled in modern breweries to the desired fermentation temperature, and the yeast is added. Lithuanian farmhouse brewers usually have their own family yeast, creating unique flavours and beautiful beers.
Usually, hops are added during the boil to add bitterness, Flavour and aroma. With a Lithuanian baked beer being a raw ale, the brewer usually makes a hop tea that is added separately. A Hop tea is created by boiling the hops in a few litres of water and then adding this to the wort.
Our Keptinus
The recipe that we have chosen for Our Brewery, Keptinus Lithuanian Baked Beer, uses Barley, Oats & Rye. We want to use traditional techniques but add a modern twist by using our Brewiks Brewhouse Equipment. The aim is to create a Lithuanian Farmhouse style beer baked in a wood-fired pizza oven. Then returned to the Brewiks brewhouse for sparging & boiling. Rather than making a raw ale, we will boil the wort and cool it in the chiller before fermenting it with a Kviek yeast strain from our yeast partner AEB. Following primary fermentation, we will then age the beer in Rum barrels.
600-litre batch size
Grist:
- Chevallier Heritage Malt – 120kg
- Flaked Torrefied Oats – 50kg
- Rye Malt – 50kg
Hops: Slovenian Styrian Goldings
Yeast: AEB – GEB Fruit Salad Kveik Yeast
65-degree mash temperature for 90 minutes before being placed into the SS Baking trays. The SS Baking trays will be placed into the wood-fired oven and sparged. The wort will be boiled using Styrian Golding hops to achieve 30 Ibu’s of bitterness. We will then ferment with Kviek Hordinal from AEB.
Keptinis Lithuanian Baked Beer with a target of 1083 starting gravity, aiming for 1021 final gravity that will be split over two rum barrels sourced from Kwercus Barrels. We are excited to see how this beer tastes going into the barrels and equally excited to see what extra character the Rum barrels bring to the beer.
