June 04, 2022 homebrew, recipes Nicole Irvine

DIY Bobo Libre for Canadian Homebrew Day!

It's a picture perfect Saturday, and you're looking for something new to stretch those homebrew muscles. Well, on this Canadian Homebrew Day you're in luck!

Early in May 2022, we launched one of our newest collabs, Bobo Libre with Shortfinger Brewing Co. This brew prominently featured our thiol-enchancing strain Thiol Libre, leaving this experimental pale ale tasting like guava, ripe honeydew, and pears on the nose and taste.

For those who might've been under a rock for the past few months, Thiol Libre was made with the goal of liberating tropical thiol aromas in your hops and malt. It can offer a lot to brewers, especially with hazy IPAs, by:

Having strong guava & passionfruit flavours - Can be achieved with old school, cheaper hops like Cascade
Is fast fermenting - Faster than other biotransformation strains and produces stable haze
Repitchable - We've seen up to 8 generations with consistent results!

Being that Shortfinger is both a brewery and a homebrew shop, we figured it was the perfect opportunity to showcase what you can do with this strain both on large and small scale equipment!

Below, you'll find the recipe developed by Shortfinger (plus Phill & Eugene from Escarpment!) so you can brew your very own Bobo Libre - plus a couple tips and tricks to keep in mind as you get started! Maybe if you're lucky you can even track down some of the cans and do a side-by-side comparison?

Tips for liberating your thiols:

Select a yeast such as Thiol Libre that has strong IRC7 activity.
Select hops with high amounts of bound thiols, such as Cascade, Saaz, Calypso, and Perle. This opens up the possibility of using and enhancing locally-grown hops! Use these in the mash (mash hopping) and whirlpool. You can dry hop with the big-money hops like Citra and Mosaic later on if you like!
Try adjuncts like Phantasm that contain a high amount of bound thiol precursors.
Experiment with base malts, including locally-produced options. Different malts have different bound thiol concentrations.

What is the best fermentation temperature for Thiol Libre?

Our suggested range is 17-23ºC (63–73ºF). Internal experiments and feedback from brewers suggest the best aroma will be found in the 17-20ºC range (63-68ºF).