Pennine Mild in cask

Today we - myself, Julie and Daigy Thomas - casked up the latest version of Tidy Bitter (version 7 if you want to know, probably the final version too!) and our Pennine light mild "So Much to Answer For"... we've also got a new "Bang Tidy" in the tanks now, although I've not yet decided what to hop it with... !

Don't forget my Meet the Brewer at Port Street Beer House in Manchester Monday; you have to ring them to book a ticket, £13, but you get food and beer plus get to listen to me ramble on about brewing and beer until everyone gets bored...  you know you want to.

Next week sees the brewing of a new beer featuring the new German hop Hallertauer Blanc, plus another new beer with lots of hops in it... surprise surprise!

First birthday brew!

It's our first birthday on Wednesday and so, to celebrate, we are going to re-brew our first ever beer, "Statement of Intent"!  

It's a kind of IPA-type thing and full of lovely US and Aussie hops although, as the first brew was a bit of a learning curve and didn't come out exactly right, this version 2.0 edition will iron out all the problems with the first one and, hopefully, result in something pretty damn special!

Look out for it at the usual places, hop fiends... happy birthday to us!

RIP whisky cask....

Sad news is that our "double hogshead" Islay whisky cask is no more!  It failed it's pre-filling checks today with a couple of minor leaks one of which developed into a bigger one, so I think that's the end of that; my lack of knowledge in keeping wooden casks alive (i.e. wet) looks to have been exposed here.

Hopefully we'll be able to acquire another one... and I wss looking forwards to putting some Spanish Main into it, too.

Clean floor! And next week's brews

Yesterday we gave the floor a massive steam clean as it's not been done for a while... OK, some paint came off, but just look at it!!  And we cleaned and flushed out the drain which has needed doing for a while, all the exciting stuff happens here....

Next week we turn into a CAMRA brewery as we're brewing Tidy Bitter and a Pennine Mild!  it's just coincidence that brewing these two has fallen on the same week, but it's still quite a turn up for the books!  The week after we hope to be returning to normality with some hoppier stuff....

Clean floor!

Do not adjust your sets...

Don't take this too seriously... ;-)

"This is the Brown Beer society, we are in control of this transmission. Do not adjust your sets.  Next week, under our direction, Hopcraft will be brewing a bitter and a mild - we think this is about time, who wants these golden "beers" that taste of lemon fairy anyway? End of transmission"

Gazza here... unfortunately the statement from the BBS is true, we're being forced to brew beers under threat of colonic irrigation with fuggles, so as you can see we have no option but to comply... So, next week sees Tidy Bitter (version 7) and "So much to Answer for" Pennine Mild being produced under the watchful eye of the twig police. Please, send help....

OK, so we're brewing Tidy Bitter and a Pennine Mild next week!  I thought that called for some piss-taking of CAMRA who probably wish we would brew them all the time...  Tidy is now into version 7 although it's just small tweaks to the recipe now, whilst the Pennine Mild is Gazza's baby and isn't traditional... as you'd expect from him!  It contains lots of strange Belgian malts plus the best UK hop, Admiral, for flavour... this should be interesting!

Big day today!

Tom's first day back meant lots got done today despite Gazza (and Ash!) being hung over and of not much use to anyone at first....

We racked 75 casks of beer plus two kegs, namely "Simcoe Plus", "Santa Muerte" and "Diggin' up the King" which were all tasting pretty good in their different ways, plus we washed all the casks first (a big job no doubt about that) before washing/rinsing/sterilising/gassing the conditioning tanks into which "Oceanic" and "Citraic" were transferred and dry-hopped... I must say the Oceanic is tasting even better than the first version and that's before dry-hopping; this season's Nelson Sauvin are the best I've ever had!

Tomorrow we're brewing "Deliverance APA", an old Pixie Spring beer which has had it's recipe totally revamped along the new policy lines, so look our for it in a few weeks; a golden beer with a soft hoppy, fruity flavour says my guess at how it'll end up!  It's full of lovely hops like Cascade, Chinook, Centennial and Citra so you can kind of guess the flavours it'll have...

Casks off to the cold store

15kg of dark sugar and 100g of peppercorns...

... gives, hopefully, 1500 litres of "Spanish Main" Jamaican stout!

It's our second go at this, the first being our fourth ever beer brewed back in June last year, so it's time - almost a year on - for a slightly amended second version of it to see the light of day.

This revised recipe still includes the dark sugar (a mixture of muscovado, molasses and soft dark brown) but has more peppercorns and a lot more roast barley to give more of a "stouty" flavour than the first edition which was lacking a bit in what I'd call typical stout character and instead was a bit too chocolatey and toasty.  Hops are German Herkules for bittering and UK Bramling Cross for flavour and aroma, there is no dry-hopping done with this one as there's no point, the malts will overshadow the hops too much so more hop will be added during the boil for flavour.

This is due to be brewed Thursday so look out for more updates then....

Almost a year!

It's less than a month now until we've been brewing a whole year and I have no idea where that's gone!  We're on target to have brewed over 70 times which means we'll have brewed over 100,000 litres of beer or 190,000+ pints!

The anniversary is the 18th June so the plan is to re-brew the very first beer, Statement of Intent, but to make it even better than the first time!  More news as soon as it's been decided upon...

Two more brews done!

First off, big thanks to Ash and Jay who've been helping out this week, couldn't have done it without them - or I probably could but I'd be near enough dead by now!

Ash and Jay

Wednesday saw a rebrew of "Citraic" as you lot love it so much!  As is usual with Hopcraft, this is yet another tweak to the recipe making it even more "awesome" with extra hops and a few substitutions too... it'll be out and about in a couple of weeks.

Today (Friday) has seen yet another new brew, so new it doesn't have a name yet! Brewed with the rare American hop Comet (along with Chinook) it smells like a fruit salad penny chew if you remember such things; all 4 fermenters are full with beer, so hopefully we'll soon have caught up a bit and actually have some to sell!

Next week will see the re-brewing of Oceanic which has gained rave reviews so far and is a deliciously mellow, tropical and juicy example of a modern-day pale ale of which the UK excels.  We'll also be brewing another dark beer with the return of "Spanish Main" - providing I can find 15kg of muscovado sugar - which was only our fourth ever brew.  Some might even find it's way into the whisky barrel...

In the fermenters today...

Today we have, in our fermenters, the following beverages...

FV1 - Diggin' up the King, India Brown Ale, 5.4% approx.  This is currently at 20c and fermenting well, it should be around 1010 tomorrow evening when the chillers can go on.

FV2 - empty, we have a defective column pump on the chiller unit although some shiny new ones have been acquired and just need fitting.  The FV also needs a NIPAC clean (phosphoric acid) to remove some beerstone which has started to accumulate, we may do this tomorrow.

FV3 - Simcoe Plus, Mid-Atlantic pale ale, 5.4%.  On chill, currently at 16c

FV4 - Santa Muerte, golden hoppy ale, 4.6%-ish.  On chill, currently at 8.5c, will transfer to conditioning tank tomorrow for dry-hopping.

What don't we want in our beer?

For those not in the know, twigs is the name for hops without much flavour or aroma so, basically, nearly everything from the UK and a lot from Europe.

These twigs have been gathered from hops used recently and arranged thusly to make their point!

Hops are a bine so they're not really twigs - in reality bits of bine - but hey, I didn't invent the name... or did I?  Ccan't remember now...

Simcoe plus makes a return!

Today we brewed a beer we've been asked to re-make for a long time; how could we refuse our public's demands?  Not very well it seems, so Simcoe Plus is now in FV3!

This version 2.0 is a bit different - read "better" - than the first one and contains more Centennial and Simcoe in various stages of the process including our new flavour hop addition which is definitely adding more ooomph to the hop character, or so the few finished beers with this tweak are suggesting!

Tomorrow sees another brew, this time maybe an India Brown ale, although Gazza hasn't decided as of 23:35 the evening before; brew schedules?  Meh, this is how we roll...

Santa Muerte is in the casa...

Massive thanks to Julie Thomas for her sterling work today and, after said work, we have a beer in FV4 called Santa Muerte or "Saint Death" in her native Mexico.  Why Santa Muerte?  It just is, OK?

Golden in colour and hopefully around 4.3%, this will be a hoppy brew with Cascade, Columbus, Chinook, Centennial, Summit, Citra and Herkules to give a full-on US hop character.

Next week will see, touch wood, two more brews with Simcoe Plus pencilled into the "brewing schedule" (posh, eh?) and something else, maybe a new beer if we feel like using some of the new Comet hops.  We also need to re-brew Citraic as you thirsty lot have bought it all in a week...  cheers!

Julie digging out the copper!

Back to normal-ish

After the celebrity stardom of the meet the brewer last week (plus a couple of days of more normal cask washing, racking and transferring beer) it's back to it this week as an (almost) normal one - bank holidays excepted, obviously!

We're off delivering to London tomorrow, then hopefully brewing twice or at least once although Gazza hasn't decided what as of yet... he says he'll have a think about it tonight when he's had a rummage around the hopstore...

We're hoping to be even more back to normal next week as Tom may be returning to the brewery, this would be a great relief to all concerned and hopefully will allow us to resume pushing the beer into new pubs in addition to looking after our existing customers.

A request - if anyone has or sees any of our casks can you please let us know where they are as we're getting worryingly short at Hopcraft towers... they are either turquoise/black/turquoise plastic or steel, or we also have some purple/blue/purple metal ones too with "Nye rental" on them; cheers!

Meet the Brewer and other stories

The "Meet the Brewer" at Edinburgh's excellent craft beer bar the Hanging Bat went really well; would you believe 23 people actually paid £25 a head to hear Gazza speak for nearly 3 hours (with food and beer breaks, naturally...) about everything beer related?  I can't either, but that's what happened...

The evening was a tasting of 6 of the 17 beers on upstairs chosen by Gazza and Sam the head barman to go with the food (chorizo & chick pea stew topped with black pudding and poached egg, spicy fish wrap and finally sticky toffee pudding) whilst Gazza rambled on at length about the beers, the brewing and many other things besides!  When we finally wrapped up it was gone 22:00 and the beers had gone down very well indeed, so I think we can judge the evening a success!

The remainder of the week will be spent transferring beer and then Gazza heads off to Crewe for a collab with Michelle Kelsall's Offbeat brewery; the beer is to be a pale hoppy little number with hops from the Pacific, look out for it in a few weeks' time....

Next week is, after the bank holiday, back to normal with - hopefully, providing manpower can be arranged - two brews taking place and more casking up and delivering.

End to a busy week....

Massive thanks to Dean Roberts who has been a huge help during the past two weeks in helping us brew and generally keep going... cheers mate!

We have two more beers in the FV at the end of this week as we're not brewing next week; "Oceanic", a 4/5%-ish pale with Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin and "Five Seas" an old-skool US-hopped brew with Cascade, Centennial, Cluster, Columbus and Chinook which should come out around 3.8%.

Anyone in Edinburgh next week can come say hello to Gazza at the Hanging Bat where he's doing a meet the brewer on Tuesday evening, not sure if this is sold out though as it's a ticket-only event.

Today was a big racking day with 60 casks filled... as you can see here.

Today's racking.

Dean with his dinner - Galaxy.

Dean digs the mash...

Smooth as a smooth thing...

First off, Massive thanks to Dean Roberts who answered my pleas for help and has been an absolute star this week in the brewery as I knew he would be; we've brewed together before and he knows how to brew and, even more importantly, likes the sort of beers I like so we think the same way!

We managed to get two brews in this week, both went smoothly without any incident and, touch wood, no problems of any kind!  The first is a rebrew of Simcoe Plus as we always like to have at least one of the "plus" range in stock at any time and Mosaic+ has only today all gone.

The other was a collaboration with the lovely Sue Hayward of Waen brewery; it was a true collaboration as we had no plans or preconceptions what to make, all that was decided on the day, and the result was a 4%-ish dark beer which doesn't really conform to any of the usual styles!  It uses German Special W malt which is a Belgian-style fruitcakey tasting malt along with Roasted Barley and a few others, and for the hops we kept it European with Polish, Czech and German varieties providing the bitterness and flavour.

As it's not slottable into any style we've called it "Whatever" and it'll be around in a few weeks' time, so look out for it, or whatever...

Sue mashing in

A bit of help!

Whilst Tom is recovering from his operation for a few weeks Hopcraft Towers will be host to long-time collaborator with Gazza in brewing / travelling / drinking Dean from Newton Abbot; we'll be brewing up some hoppy delights with Simcoe Plus making a welcome return on Wednesday, albeit in version 2.0 mode, and the following week we have two beers to plan... now where's that Farams hop catalogue?

On Thursday we'll also be host to Sue and Paul from Waen brewery and will be making... no idea as of yet, but I'm hoping we can stick a load of hops in it!  This is part one of a "two-way" collab so when we're up in Mid Wales we'll be brewing up something along their style, probably with some sort of fruit in it.

So, please bear with us for the next month or so, I promise we'll do our very best to keep it as "situation normal" as possible!

Collab in Manchester

Last weekend Gazza did a low-key keg launch and meet the brewer at Port Street Beer House in Manchester where, as well as keeping the pontificating mercifully short and not mentioning Thatcher once (surely a record?), he stayed all evening and chatted to various beery types about beer, music and lots more besides.  If you were one of these people and Gazza hasn't got back to you despite promising to, then just drop us an email at hops@hopcraftbrewing.co.uk and the situation will be remedied!

On the Monday it was over to Rob Hamilton's Blackjack brewery under the train/metrolink arches on the wonderfully named Irk street (I know the river is just over the road, but I still like the name) and it's gloriously Lowryesque cobbles where, along with various luminaries from Port Street, we concocted a very hoppy amber brew with Ella, Galaxy and Citra which should be pretty damn good in a week or two!  This beer is destined for the Port Street chain - so look out for it in the Beagle, Chorlton, and Common Bar in the Northern Quarter - although it doesn't have a name as yet.

This week sees no brewing at Hopcraft towers owing to Tom having to be away, but we've sufficient stocks backed up in the FVs and CTs which will be casked/transferred in the next few days.  We're hoping to be able to brew next week dependent on getting someone in to help out, a certain someone who knows what they're doing... I'm waiting on confirmation of this at present but hopefully we will be fine, so please bear with us during the next few weeks if we don't answer the phone / get back to you straight away.

Brewing at Blackjack.

Another brew in the FV

Today we brewed yet another new beer, this time a 4%-ish extra-pale ale with mainly European hops assisted by a smattering of punchy American ones!  As is normal it's not yet got a name although "All this and More" is being banded about.

With a simple malt bill of Low-colour Maris Otter, Wheat and Caragold to let the hops do their thang, German Brewer's Gold and Mandarina Bavaria and French Triskel teamed up with American Mosaic and Cascade to give what we hop will be an interesting brew!  We've kept the bitterness down to enable the hop character to come through as much as possible and I'm pretty interested to see how this one turns out!

There's no more brewing at Hopcraft Towers now until next week when we'll probably be re-brewing Prince on Bengal IPA (recently named by someone I don't know on Twitter as "The best IPA in Wales!") or maybe, just maybe, knocking up something new... we've not decided yet so you'll just have to watch this space...

As we've already said we're off to the lovely Port Street Beer House in Manchester on Sunday for our meet the brewer / keg launch before brewing a collab at BlackJack on the Monday... should be an interesting weekend all round.

8kg of lovely hops!