Apologies for the lack of updates recently, but we've been way too busy to blog about stuff...
Anyhow, today (Sunday 15th) was our first ever weekend brew and definitely the first time on a Sunday which, so it turns out, isn't really a position of strength seeing as all the butty shops are closed! Despite the lack of porcine sustenance, however, we managed to knock up a very unusual beer indeed; a white porter!
Well, I say white porter, although that's a bit of a piss-take really as it's more a pale ale with some unusual flavourings, but as it's the second in our "Insult to History" series the more bizarre-sounding category definitely sounds better... so, in essence, it's a golden-coloured beer, around 4.8%, with flavour from locally-roasted coffee from Ferrari's of Bridgend plus vanilla, coconut and, if we can get some, Sorachi Ace hops too; this should be one unusual brew alright!
The coffee is added in two steps; the bulk of it, 5kg, was added into the copper at 95c - that being the optimum temperature for brewing coffee - plus an extra kilo will be added into the conditioning tanks after a few days of "cold steeping" in water which extracts different flavours than the "hot steeping" and ensures all the lovely coffee character is installed into this brew and giving it a "darker" flavour than the colour might suggest!
For a beer which tastes a lot darker than it looks we decided on the slightly unusual name of "Midnight in Antarctica"; hopefully this will reflect what this creative brew means not just conjure up images of a bloke saying "I may be gone some time"... time will tell.
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| The crushed coffee ready for adding |
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| 6kg of locally-roasted coffee! |
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| Dave bashes the coffee in a maltsack with the mallet |
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| Dave adds the coffee to the copper after the boil |
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| Dave adding the final hop charge |
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