All Access Subscribers can download the Beersmith and BeerXML version of this recipe. Subscribe today.
When breweries around the globe submit beers for the World Beer Cup, they can face a disadvantage when it comes to freshness—judging takes place in Colorado, and U.S. brewers can ship the freshest beer they’ve got at the last feasible minute before deadline. Foreign breweries, on the other hand, often need to act sooner to ship their beers the longer distance.
Aiming to level that playing field, Cervercería Hércules is Querétaro, Mexico, decided to prime and condition their bottles the same way they do their casks—with a carefully calculated amount of fresh wort, or speise, to create natural carbonation and extend the beer’s shelf life. The move clearly paid off: Hércules Pueblito took home a World Beer Cup gold medal last year in the Export Stout category.
Below the recipe, for our All Access subscribers, Hércules head brewer Josh Brengle explains much more about speise and how they manage the process of adding it at packaging. If you want to try out the method, also see the Speise Calculator that we’ve just added to our Brewing Tools.
And for more on this particular beer and how it came together, be sure to check out the Ask the Pros article in our upcoming Summer 2025 issue.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.070 (17.1°P)
FG: 1.020 (5.1°P)
IBUs: 50
ABV: 6.5%
