Hopcraft Brewing: Final brew of the year and Whisky cask maturation update!

It may seem a bit soon, but we've just done our final brew of the year! We've been brewing twice a week for a good few weeks now so we've built up a bit of a buffer to see us through until January; saying that, we're off to London twice next week with 50 (and counting...) casks so we'll need to be brewing straight off in January to replenish some stocks. The thinking was we'd rather brew and sell fresh beer than sit on lots of older stock (hops fade very quickly so we want our beer from brewery to bar as quickly as possible) so that's it for 2013, 35 brews completed in our first 6 months; not bad to begin with.

The final brew was a rather unusual dark beer, not quite stout not quite wheat beer, with a generous dose of German smoked malts (both beechwood and oak) to add complexity and, as you'd expect in such a beer, the hop charge was (for us!) ludicrously low with Admiral, Marynka and Magnum being used more to add to the flavour than to add their own as is usually the case with our beer. It should be pretty complex so look out for "Cruxshadow" in the new year...

We've got a good range of beers coming on sale now including The Beast, Permanent Revolution, Monky Business (of which more in a minute) and The Beast to name but a few, as well as last month's Bosun James Gray, Prospector and Lucifer Juice... oh yes, and Citra Plus which was tasting monumentally good on casking; can't wait to try that in the pub.

Brewing for the year may be over but the work isn't, oh no. Today we racked Tidy, transferred and dry-hopped Bang Tidy (Centennial and Columbus), transferred Monky Business to tank and the Whisky cask then washed all the casks to rack The Beast tomorrow, plus all tanks have had their pellet trub disgorged. Be a brewer and laze around drinking beer, they said...

Some photos of the week's events are below...