The latest bit of hi-tech kit!

OK, I'd be the first to admit that it doesn't look much.  Actually I'd be surprised if you had any idea what this thing is.

If I told you that this half-metre diameter piece of perforated stainless steel sheet is saving us up to an hour per day I dare say you'd be amazed, suspicious even... but believe me, it does.

This thing is the new filter plate in the bottom of our copper which the guys at Wobbly Brewery have made for us and it replaced the shoddy piece of crap which came with the brewery; put it this way, last week it took us 90 minutes to transfer 1450 litres of wort, today with the new plate it took 45 minutes pro-rata for our 2100 litre brew which, as you can see, is one hell of a time saving doing nowt looking at a digital thermometer and playing with water feeds and wort valves in a vain attempt to keep the temperature of the wort going into the FV constant.

So, all hail the new copper filter plate, yet another replacement part to make the brewday easier, shorter and less stressful.  We can't complain really, having got the brewing kit for a song (we did have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch though), so as and when we can replace parts then we will!

It's a filter plate.  Honest.

All in it together...

No, this isn't a rant about ham-faced tory cretin Cameron, but a missive on the camaraderie amongst brewers and others in the industry when you wouldn't expect it.

You'd imagine, with more and more brewers chasing the same (or slightly more) amount of free houses and guest accounts, that brewing would be a cutthroat business with brewers holding cards very close to their chest and keeping the counsel of Homer Simpson, that is "never help anyone"; you'd be wrong.  

Maybe this was the case in the past, and certain brewers I could mention still think we are in those times (and these are the same people who think you couldn't guess what's in a brown beer that tastes of toffee, twigs and grass), but the vast majority of brewers, publicans, wholesalers and others in this great industry are living the "big society" in a way which would probably make Dave C proud if we were making Claret or something equally poncy; someone's short of something or a cask needs a ride somewhere?  You can bet there will be a fellow brewer who can help you out for cost or, usually, for nowt.

A few examples; in Sheffield we found out someone had used our last pack of yeast but, after a quick appeal on social media - down with the kids, innit? - one turned up the next day.  Another time we found out someone had used all our shives... guess what?  A few calls and 50 arrived, gratis.  I could go on with tales of hops, malt, finings, caustic, space on the van for a cask to hitch a lift and suchlike being donated but I'm sure you can see what I'm gunning at here; (most) brewers are all too happy to help out a brother in need in the knowledge that, when they're in a similar situation, they'll get this good karma coming right back at them... and everyone has these moments when they urgently need something, believe me.

On that note, we're helping out a local-ish brewery this week and as Steel City, Gazza and Dave have helped many of the current crop of UK "cuckoo" brewers get started.  When you think about it not a lot in brewing is secret or only you know, so you may as well be the good guy and help out the people in need as, one day, they may be in a position to help you out.  Having friends in brewing is very useful and, after all, is one of the things which makes it such a great industry to be in.

As I said, we're all in it together.  Almost all of us.... 

Tidy Bitter - the making of a "simple beer".

Today we brewed Tidy Bitter version 5; when we first brewed Tidy we envisaged it as a straightforwards bitter which, by it's very definition, would be easy to create a recipe for and then brew.... hindsight is an amazing thing.

So now, after 6 months brewing with 39 gyles on the board, we're finally getting close to sorting out Tidy, and by that I mean getting the recipe right which has taken 5 attempts and I still don't think we're quite there yet; we've done amazingly complex hoppy beasts which I think we've nailed first time (or got pretty close to target) whilst Tidy remains a constant reminder that the simpler the beer style the less wriggle room you have in making it and the more exact you need to be in both recipe and execution.

The yeast is a simple one, we use Whitbread B (or S04 to give it's commercial name) which does near enough what we want except it has a tendency to give up working completely too soon without warning; one moment you've a huge fluffy yeast head - and S04 gives a huge fluffy crop - the next it's all gone and the beer is lying there limpid and ready, except it's not ready! To counteract this we may pitch in some US05, just a touch, to take advantage of that yeast's superior attenuation powers which means we may get the gravity down this brew!

The malt has been through lots of changes although I think we're almost there now; we've swapped the low-colour Maris Otter for normal Maris Otter to give a touch more body and flavour, Caramalt has been eliminated in favour of CaraGold as it's got a really nasty taste Gazza doesn't like (whereas CaraGold hasn't), Weyermann's exemplary CaraRed remains the mainstay of the colour/flavour stakes and a touch of German dehusked chocolate malt finishes off the flavour department.  We add a dose of torrefied wheat not because we like it - it tastes like popcorn - but because many "normal" bitter drinkers expect their bitter to have certain flavours so we've shamelessly caved in to popular opinion and used torrefied rather than our usual malted wheat; the public get what the public want!

The hops in Tidy have been through the mill.  Not literally, but figuratively.  The rock which is German Herkules has remained constant throughout every iteration of the recipe for the simple reason it's a superb bittering hop and matched perfectly to Tidy.  The other two hops have varied as we've experimented with different ones, always European, to try and get the flavour just as we want it with various varieties being tried and rejected (with Bobek and Saaz the main casualties); we've now settled on what we think is the final hop grist with UK Admiral (red fruit, robust bitterness, rhubarb and custard) and Polish Marynka (juicy, oily, hoppy, grassy) making up the recipe.

So, here's hoping that this time we're satisfied with our endeavours and the finished beer comes out as we want it.  It's a task made extra difficult as neither of us really likes bitter, or at least boring "normal" bitter, so we've tried to make this one as interesting as possible without going too far and veering off into the sphere of flavours we normally inhabit!

So you see, it's not easy getting a recipe right and doubly so if it's with a beer style you don't really care for!  Hopefully we can put this one to bed now, but we always welcome feedback on any of our beers at Hops@Hopcraftbrewing.co.uk so give us a shout; cheers!

Praise for yeast.

I still love seeing beer fermenting, even after brewing for nearly 5 years; it's the alchemy and wonder of it all.  In these enlightened time we know why it happens and no longer have to give thanks to a beardy bloke sat on a cloud, but even so it's still a magical process and I love it - I often look into the fermenter for a while imagining the millions, billions even, of yeast cells gorging on the sugars within and turning a sweet liquid into a delicious, refreshing, healthy (in moderation, obviously!! ) drink.

When I think back to brewers hundreds of years ago with no Antiformin or caustic, no Perecetic acid, no knowledge of bacteria and yeast, no temperature control, no infection control procedures, wooden fermenting vessels and much more I know just how easy we have it these days... it's still hard physical work but we know much of the how and why which is half the battle in making good beer.  

And then there's the hops; imagine having to buy hops by farms in Herefordshire or Kent when they're all the same (or very similar) strain rather than by variety from America or New Zealand... how times change, massively for the better in my opinion!  Just imagine a world without Citra, Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Centennial, Sorachi Ace, Columbus and many more... I'd rather not!

These two photos show yeasty activity on our latest brew of Golden Pixie and a testbrew for Charles Faram & Co Ltd, one is 1500 litres and one 75 but they're pretty similar.

Golden Pixie in FV2 just beginning fermentation

A testbrew in full ferment

Repeat brew!

We're brewing tomorrow and, in a very rare occurrence, it's a repeat beer!

Golden Pixie went down really well when we brewed it back in the Autumn and now, in a spirit of making affordable beer in the dark months of Winter, we're brewing it again but slightly different after some feedback and our own feelings about it; we've cut the bittering level down a few notches but that's about it, it's got the same hops (Summit, Citra, Cascade) and malt (Low-colour Maris Otter, Cara and Wheat) in it so should be the same easy-going hoppy golden beer again!

We're also brewing Thursday, this time a strongish stout at 5.5% or so, as yet unnamed.  Next week should see a brew of Tidy bitter (maybe the same as v4 which was the best yet we thought) and a new pale, hoppy beer which may be similar to Fleur d'Alsace or may not, we've not decided yet.

Keep the faith, hopheads.

It's back!  Well, it will be in a few weeks...

Back to it!

After a long break, well earned I must say, we're back in the brewery today!  

We've also picked up some new casks from the manufacturers and collected a load of malt and hops for the next 3 brews which will be Simcoe Plus, a 5.5% or so strong stout and a 4.5% or so pale & hoppy creation with as yet undecided hops from the stash.

This evening we've given the brewery plant a good caustic wash and flush through with water ready for the brewday tomorrow (Simcoe plus, can't wait for this one!) and the hot liquor tank is heating up ready for action...

Bring on 2014, here's hoping we build on what we've already achieved.

Cheers!

Have a good one....

Happy Yule / Christmas / festivities whatever you call it and a great new year to all our customers, suppliers, drinkers and supporters.

See you all next year!!

Final deliveries...

Almost done!

In the last 2 days we've dropped 32 casks in London and Reading at the following pubs;

• Nag's Head, Reading
• Southampton Arms, Highgate
• Fox, Haggerston E8
• Cock (Howling Hops), Hackney
• King William 4th (Brodies), Leyton

Tomorrow we're doing it all again;

• Nag's Head, Reading (two more!!)
• Alehouse (ex Hobgolblin), Reading
• Hope, Carshalton
• Shoulder of Mutton, Wantage

And that's about it for the year for us!  it's been an amazing 6 months with plenty of highs and lows but we feel that we've achieved way more than we thought and are looking forwards to really taking it up a notch next year.

Our beer quality has steadily improved to the point that even Gazza is fairly happy with it (!) and the last few brews (Beast, Boss and Citra Plus) were particularly pleasing; we're not resting on the proverbial laurels though, far from it, we know we can make even better beer and will be trying to do just that in the new year.

We'll be updating less frequently over Yule as we're not doing that much, so we'll take this opportunity to give out a massive thanks to everyone who's helped or merely put up with us during the past year of planning, building and finally brewing; we really do appreciate all the support and feedback so please keep the lupulous faith for 2014 and we'll see you soon - some Meet the Brewer evenings are being planned for the new year so you can come see us in person!

Have a good Yule and new year everyone, cheers.

Gazza and Tom, the brewers.

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...

The "Double Hogshead" 500 litre ex-Whisky cask in situ...

And here being filled with "Monky Business"

With all these unusual beers we've been doing, the specialist malt store is overflowing with... well, specialist malts!  Some good stuff in there.

Our smokey dark stouty-wheaty-whatever it is!

It's our take on Belgian Dubbel... not perfect, but it's tasting interesting!

Does this make us "craft"?

As any fule kno, to be a craft brewer these days you've got to have a beard and wooden barrel-age everything in sight whether it suits the beer or not, plus declaring everything to be "awesome" helps too.

Tom has the beard but, until now, we didn't have any wooden casks... this situation has been resolved with the acquisition of a whisky cask which, provided it passes QC checks and doesn't leak beer all over the floor, will be used to barrel-age some of our Belgian Dubbel-style brew "Monky Business"...  more news as we get it!

We're brewing tomorrow and it looks like it'll be another "non-standard" brew for us in the shape of a dark smoked ale using Franconian beech smoked malt and a right mixture of other malts to produce a dark, wintery beer (it's not a stout although that's probably the nearest thing you could describe it as) and will be around 5% or thereabouts.

Our whisky cask in the van!

Brewing "Monky Business"

A few photos from today's brew, our first foray into Belgian-style beers, a 6%+ dubbel type thingy; the wort was tasting lovely running into FV1!  Now it's up to the yeast...

Adding Candi Sugar to the underback

Gazza adds the Candi sugar - it's easier to use in liquid form!

The biggest mash we've done thus far - 327kg of grain!

1500 litres of Dubbely goodness...

Yeasties on their main course.

For those who don't know, yeast is the single-celled fungus which makes beer... erm, well, into beer.  Basically yeast loves to eat sugar - wort is full of it - and so putting them into wort is akin to throwing me into a bath full of Nargis kebabs; much eating gets done!

Yeast eats simple sugars first (glucose, sucrose) then moves onto the more complex ones such as maltose - and others with scarily chemically-sounding names - until it reaches a point where it can't eat any more as the supplies are exhausted or the strain you're using simply won't ferment any more; it's reached it's attenuation potential and will go no further.

We're using S04 in our Tidy Bitter; it's an English strain more commonly known as "Whitbread B" and you can taste it's telltale peardrop and almond characteristics in many beers such as Batemans; if you can taste peardrops it's a pretty safe bet you're drinking a beer fermented with Whitbread B... that or your drink has been laced with cyanide.  

S04 isn't my favourite yeast by a long chalk; it has a distinctive taste which we don't want in our ordinary beers and it doesn't attenuate (the level of fermentation it will achieve) that well and stops before other yeasts leaving more sugars - and therefore body - in the beer.  We use it for Tidy bitter, however, as it gives the flavours people expect a bitter to have; the public get what the public want, eh?

Here's some photos of the yeast hard at work this evening in FV3 troughing down on our Tidy Bitter; it's only been in the vessel a day and already it's going mental!

Tidy Bitter version 4

Today we brewed Tidy bitter for the 4th time and, as is now traditional, the recipe has been savagely hacked about! We're trying to get it to taste more full-bodied yet not too hoppy (although this version is a fair bit hoppier than the last one) and uses English Admiral, German Herkules and Polish Marynka hops for a balance of bitterness and grassy, slightly fruity hop flavour.  This will hopefully mesh well with the S04 yeast and it's peardrop esters and the torrefied wheat which gives a slight "popcorn" taste which, in my experience, "twig bitter" drinkers - for some totally illogical reason - find palatable; eeeuw.  

As you can see, Tidy is a funny brew in that it's the only one we've made where we're not trying to make a beer we'd like to drink but one "normal" punters might want... not being a normal, far from it, some guesswork is necessary to get inside the mindset of said normals and the decision to add traditional grains, hops and yeasts have given a brew which definitely tastes like a bitter - albeit one with a lot more flavour than is usual - although we're still messing about with the recipe to try and get it "right", whatever that might be!

So, here's the moment two of you have been waiting for... the scores on the doors as of now... three FVs full (2 on chill) and 6 CT's with beer on dry hops. Tomorrow we'll be racking Lucifer Juice and also (maybe) Citra Plus to cask, transferring Permanent Revolution to tank and preparing for our brew of "Monky Business" on Thursday, our first Belgian-style beer... should be interesting as we've got a load of special malts and even Belgian candi sugar in!

The whiteboard tells all...

Drink our Manifesto! (not Hop Manifesto, you've missed that one)

As you can see here, our red half-IPA now has a name.  And a personality of it's own... 

Today we brewed "The Boss" again as we ran out all too quickly and we like it a lot!  Good enough excuse?  I think so...

Next week will see a rebrew of Tidy Bitter (now on it's 4th recipe in a possibly futile attempt to get it just as we want it) with the associated sub-brew of "Bang Tidy" edition 2, this time dry-hopped with Cascade.

If the stuff arrives in time we'll also be brewing "Monky Business", our first attempt at a Belgian Dubbel; think Candi sugar, proper Belgian Abbey malt, that kind of thing.  

In other Trappist beer related news, Gazza has been researching Belgian monastic beer recipes and thinks he's got this one about right, plus he's also got ideas to brew a style very rarely seen, Patersbier, a weaker "Trappist session" if you will!  More news on that probably next year... 

Running out of names already...

That's not entirely true although our latest brew, a Red half-IPA, is currently sitting in FV1 and is bereft of a name!  Rest assured that tomorrow we'll think of one... how hard can it be?

For those who don't know what a "half-IPA" is, let me explain... many years ago, a bloke made up a story about IPAs being exported to India and everyone believed it despite it being a pile of bobbins; brewers in the UK did produce IPAs but they were weak affairs and it's all thanks to the yanks that we now believe that an IPA should be around 7% and full of hops (nowt wrong with the last bit...)

So, it follows that on current (mis)understanding of the IPA situation a half-IPA is a low gravity version of the style, although in fact it's the strength they've been brewed at for quite a few years and thus doesn't make a lot of sense.  We're using it as we like to confuse people... that, and it sounds good and exotic which some people like.  That and a lot of beery people have heard of IPA and so will be more likely to buy it with IPA in the name somewhere!

So, if you're still with me, a red half-IPA is a low gravity hoppy beer which happens to be red (or as red as you can get using grains which isn't very) and, hopefully, delicious too... time will tell!

So concludes tonight's gibberish, thanks for your understanding...

It's behind you...

Today was our 30th brew so we brewed this...

It's a strong-ish, very pale (using German pilsner malt to achieve the pale colour) and pretty damn hoppy little number which we originally brewed 6 months ago on the testkit and liked so much we thought it was time to give The Beast it's own full run!  Hops were Summit, Herkules, Citra, Cascade and Centennial.

And if that's not enough we have this trio of flavoured lovelies being casked tomorrow...

As you've probably guessed it's all the same brew with different natural extracts added (except the coffee as that was added after the boil and more will be added to each cask!) but we couldn't decide between the Biscotti and Vanoffi so we had to do both, plus a few just coffee too...

Havin' it old skool, innit....

No we've not gone all "yoof" but we've realised that the last brew we did, and the next one tomorrow, are repeats (albeit with heavily revised recipes) of testbrews we did back in spring on the minikit!

Last week we brewed "Lucifer Juice" which is mainly hopped with the new Experimental 366 hop from America giving a blackcurranty, oily fruit character; this brew is a lot weaker than the original testbrew at around 3.7% to allow the full character of the hop through into the finished brew... we'll see if this has worked in a few days when it goes into tank!

Tomorrow's brew is another rework of a testbrew, this time "The Beast", and this beer lives up to it's name weighing in at around 6.5 to 7%.  It's not like your usual strong winter beer though, oh no, this is an extra pale brew - lightened up with German Pilsner malt - and dosed with a right wallop of hops including Citra, Cascade and Summit then dry-hopped in the tank with yet more lovely American hops... who said winter beers have to be brown and "twiggy"?  Not us, that's for sure, so look out for it in a few weeks; it's one brew only so when it's gone, it's gone!

He lives 300 doors up the road...

A new heat exchanger!

We've finally got our new heat exchanger fitted and working and it's a beast too!  It's specified for a 15 barrel brewery - to give us ample expansion room - and it should cut our transfer time to FV from 2 hours to about 45 minutes once our new Lowara pump arrives from Italy (don't ask, it's cheaper that way).

Just to be sure, however, we gave it a blast today with our 29th brew, "Lucifer Juice", which is an amended version of a testbrew we did about 6 months back using the blackcurranty, spicy and even musky Experimental 366 hop.  This version is a lot weaker at 3.8% or so, but will keep the big fruity hop characater which made the original testbrew a success.

Today marks a milestone (of sorts) in that, for the first time since we started brewing back in June, we have all 4 FVs full of beer!  OK, one is being transferred to tank for dry-hopping tomorrow, but the fact is they're all full and the picture below proves it! (if you believe whiteboards that is...)

The board never lies...

Our new heat exchanger, fitted (and used) today !!

Prospector and Biscotti Porter.

Prospector, the beer we brewed instead of Deliverance last week, is now on chill and smelling pretty damn good, it'll go into tank this week with some Centennial T90 pellets to give it a final citrus blast.

In FV3 we have a very unusual brew in the form of Biscotti Porter!  Yes, you heard this right... it's a pretty standard porter (apart from the exotic German malts!) but then we added almost 5kg of coffee beans to the copper and that's not all; once fermentation is complete we'll add lots of natural vanilla and almond extracts to give it - hopefully - a flavour resembling a biscotti!  We've already done some tests of flavouring addition amounts and we'll do a final one with the finished beer before we commit the little bottles to the tanks... but I'm sure it'll turn out lovely!

One other less positive message is that Craftwerk, our Euro pale, seems to have developed some very unusual flavours in cask and therefore some have been condemned; these are our first ullages and we're very unhappy about it, mainly because the yeast seems to be to blame and we only used it under duress with no US05 available... never again! 

Today's lesson... always check the recipe !!!

It's good advice, people.

Today we were - or thought we were - brewing Deliverance APA, a revised recipe of the old Pixie Spring beer, although on testing the OG (original gravity) we discovered it was 5 points below what we'd been expecting.  Investigation of the recipe revealed we'd cocked up and used less malt than we should have... quick as a flash we amended the dry hopping and so "Prospector" was born!  Well, it's golden and uses American hops.... 

In FV on chill we have "Bosun James Gray" which is named after one of Gazza's ancestors who sailed with Captain James Cook (at his request, too!) on all of his voyages of exploration around the South Seas.  In his honour we've brewed a pale ale stuffed full of South Sea hops such as Waimea, Pacific Jade, Topaz and Sticklebract; it'a a right old Aussie / New Zealand mashup and, although it's not the kind of beer brewed back in the 1770's, I hope it lives up to the name of my ancestor.

In tank sitting on dry hops we have Bang Tidy (on Brewer's Gold), Craftwerk (also on Brewer's Gold) and The Boss (on Citra)... all have been disgorged tonight - the pellets dumped out of the cone on the tanks - and let me just say The Boss has brought a massive smile to my face; mangoes and cat's piss, anyone?  As kids today say, boom.