Brew 99 is coming together!

The ingredients are in the brewery, the recipe is finally finished - subject to almost certain last minute meddling - and we're all set to brew our 99th beer on Wednesday!

The malt is a 50/50 mix of Belgian Abbey malt (yes, it's actually from Belgium!) and a new Belgian Abbey yeast from our favoured yeast suppliers Safale, although we're venturing a little further south with the hop selection.  Something this old skool calls for an old world hop variety so, in keeping with our bolshy nature, we're using one from Czech (about as old skool hop-wise as you can get) but using a hop which is only a few years old in the form of Vittal, a new hop, which must be the stickiest substance known to man going on the green hands last time after breaking up the pack!

So, all in all, this beer isn't our usual thing, but I'd never want to be typecast and so here's our interpretation of the classic Enkel or Patersbier, a style of Monastic beer which isn't generally on sale!  This beer is the one the monks drink themselves which is of a more sessionable and easy-going nature than the malt bombs usually associated with monastic brewing.  Having only drunk three - Chimay, Westmalle and Orval - I'm basing the recipe partly on what I've read about the beer but also on my experience of those I've tasted... hopefully something good will come out at the end, but don't expect it to taste totally Belgian as that's not how we roll...

This beer won't be dry-hopped as I feel that will overshadow the other flavours in the brew, so it'll go straight to cask from fermenter meaning it'll be out sooner than the last brew; look out for it at all the usual outlets people, Cheers!  Or, seeing as it's Belgian style, maybe I should say Proost or A Votre Sante !

The malt and yeast are in!

Twig box

As any fule kno, packs of hops are full of twigs (technically the bine itself but twigs sounds better) and most people know my love of said vegetation, so what better than a box to store our  precious twig collection in?

It's not a total waste of time, as you'd think, as we'll be leaving it outside next spring for the birds to take for their nests... if they want them that is!  There should be a fair old collection by then.

Brews 99 and 100 !!

You heard the internet; next week will be our 100th large-scale brew since opening back in June 2013.  It's been an eventful 17 months, and continues to be so, but I'm confident that we're heading in the right direction with beers which are consistent, well-made and flavoursome and, above all, beers which our customers want to drink which is, after all, the important bit of brewing; anyone can brew beer (actually, that's a whole different conversation...) but getting people to buy and drink it is another thing entirely.

Anyhow, what to expect from next week?  Brews 99 and 100, that's what!  Gyle 99 will be a slightly unusual one in that it's a Belgian-style abbey single or "Patersbier".  This is based on the beer that monks drink themselves rather than the beers they are famous for selling, and is a modest 4.5% or so with simple malt, yeast and noble hop flavours.

But why a Belgianesque beer, you may ask, when I love hops so much and Belgian beer isn't known for it's liberal use of lupulins?  Well, I felt like doing something a bit different and I've been toying with the recipe for a good 8 months now so felt it was a good a time as any to rip into this one.  The beer contains specially sourced Belgian Abbey malt and yeast along with the new Czech Vittal hops (which may well be the oiliest substance known to man) and I'm quite looking forwards to brewing and - more importantly - tasting the finished beer.

Brew 100 itself is going to be a very simple one.  We've just taken delivery of a ton of Munton's Super pale malt which is a mere 1.8 EBC in colour (our usual extra-pale malt is about 3 EBC) so we'll be using just this and 5% wheat malt along with the classic combo of Warrior, Cascade and loads of lovely Simcoe.  It doesn't have a name as yet but I'll think of one... 

I'm a touch apprehensive about this malt after reading (and being told) some stories of it's power to stick a mash, low extract and high protein, but everything on the spec sheet seems fine (apart from a high moisture content) so we'll see next week!  Our mash tun has a large area of plate so should be fine but, just to be sure, we had the underback pipe off today and gave it a good clean in readiness... good job really, as we found what had been reducing the flow for the past month or so, a piece of blue plastic which has obviously fallen into the mash tun and then got stuck in the valve!  Bring it on....

Malt collection by tractor

Today Jay and I brewed the latest version (v5) of the extremely popular Mosaic Plus which I'm slowly refining to be what I think may be my second-favourite of the beers we produce on a semi-regular basis; today saw Cluster, Columbus, Cascade and - of course - plenty of Mosaic added to the copper (I don't do single hop beers, they don't work, it's a stupid idea) with 5kg more Mosaic being added to the beer once it gets into the conditioning tanks.

It was brew 98 which, in itself, is quite a scary thing; that's a lot of beer produced in a mere 17 months, at a rough guess around 156,000 litres or, if you're more traditional in your thinking, a mere 275,000 pints...

What we didn't expect, however, was for the spent malt and hops to be collected by tractor; usually it's done by Farmer Richard in his pickup, however as he's off on holiday AGAIN his dad came and thought the tractor would be easier to get the sacks onto than the pickup!  Worth a photo I thought... and yes, I did help him load up after photting it!

This week, next week

This week we brewed a mahoosive batch of Graveyard Eyes v3.0; this has a different hop regime making it more a Porter/Black IPA than the original Black IPA/Porter although it's still fairly hoppy!  Cascade, Warrior and Green Bullet in the copper will be followed by the amazing, divisive and totally bizarre Sorachi Ace in the conditioning tank to impart it's herby, dill-esque coconutty and orange zest flavour; yes, it really does have all those characteristics!

This version will be around 5.2% or so as Gazza wanted a bit more "ooomph" to the brew and, anyhow, we already have a 4.5% dark beer for sale (Profits of Doom) so with the original Graveyard Eyes being 4.5% as well we thought it might be better to up the ABV a touch.

As well as the main batch we'll be splitting 650 litres off to make into the as yet un-named Maple Syrup porter which we're hoping will be lush!  or, at least, something a little different...

Next week sees the welcome return of Mosaic Plus, oh yes....

Indy Man Beer Con

Well,  that was an exhausting weekend.... !

Saturday and Sunday were spent serving beer and chatting to all and sundry who got too close to me in the amazing Victorian setting of the Victoria Baths in Manchester's Chorlton on Medlock (yes, of Brendan Dobbin fame!); we had a great time but I'm paying for it now!

This week sees yet another dark beer being brewed, this time it's the return of my Sorachi Ace porter albeit with a totally revised hop recipe, and maybe also a little experiment in the form of a maple syrup porter; watch this space!

Sadly, my hop vodka was a resounding failure; way too many hops added and way too much bitterness extracted... ah well, I'll try again in a few weeks.

Gazza with Bruno Carilli of Italian brewery Toccalmatto and Kevin Andreu McCarry of Catalan hop lovers Marina

The monthly grind

It comes around every month, regular as clockwork, but somehow it always feels like a mere week since you worked out the last duty return and filled it in!

Now all we have to do is find 3.5k to pay it.... being an unpaid tax collector is great.

Going in the post now!

Where will it end?

Tomorrow sees the brewing of the latest in Gazza's Joy Division series of beers.  The base for these brews are two hops; one is constant, the gorgeous mangoey Citra, the other varies but is generally something with a lot of balls to stand up to the blockbuster that is Citra lest it gets swamped in waves of tropical fruit juice!

For those who have been living under a rock on Saturn for the past 18 months let me enlighten you on the strange title and pumpclip; here at Hopcraft we brew no permanent beers but we do make a series named after Joy Division tracks.  These are all hopped with Citra plus another hop which varies between beers and are therefore big, fruity and bouncing beers, admittedly nothing like Joy Division's sombre, melancholic songs but hey... 

"Exercise One" is a lesser known track of Joy Division's but one of Gazza's favourites and totally worthy of the newish American hop "Eldorado" which is fruity, citrussy and overall a pretty damn tasty hop.  We're hoping it will shine from behind the wall of Citra and even combine with it to give a lusciously fruity, bitter and citrus-edged beer.

We're also brewing a re-run of our oatmeal pale ale "Naughty Boy" which is mainly Centennial with more luscious Citra, Summit and a touch of Mosaic to give a lime zest and tropical fruit character; the hop recipe has been totally overhauled from the first brew of this back in February with more hops, some of different varieties, and a more clever hopping schedule should make this a beer even Gazza might like....

Today we casked up the "plain" version of "Profits of Doom" our sweet stout; this is tasting pretty damn good from the fermenter, but we're not finished with it yet!  Tomorrow (hopefully, Royal Mail permitting) we'll have our coconut flavouring to add to the second half of the brew, currently sitting in conditioning tank 5, which I hope will turn this into a thing of pure beauty.... we'll see next week when it gets casked up!

Autumn mists....

Today we brewed "Slave to the Wage" version 2.0 which was a 12 barrel (2250 litre) brew and drowned over 15kg of Green Bullet, Magnum and Kohatu hops; a further 7.5kg will go into the conditioning tanks when we dry-hop it, this time Sticklebract and Nelson Sauvin; all the hops - apart from the 2.5kg bittering charge of Magnum - are from New Zealand which has absolutely zero relevance to the name...

Anyhow, here's Jay mashing in this morning.

Another side of running a brewery

Most people think that running a brewery is all fun and games; you make beer, drink beer then make more beer... sadly it's not really like that at all; there's the never-ending cleaning, maintenance, paperwork, sales, admin, invoicing, planning, cask management, buying and.... driving miles in a van to deliver beer and pick up empties!

Most of that isn't a lot of fun, but then you don't get into brewing unless you're in it for the love of it; those who are in it for the money soon learn the brewer's law of "the best way to make a big pile of money in brewing is to start with a massive pile of money"...

Anyhow, here's my view when delivering a load of beer to Chris at the superb Craven Arms in Birmingham on Monday morning and picking up the empties from last time.... 

Anyone for Tiramisu?

This is the scene in FV3 right now (probably not by the time you're reading this but we don't have a webcam, sorry!) as our US05 yeast seems to be in full swing producing Tiramisu.... and no, we've absolutely no idea why it's doing that, but it smells absolutely lush so we'll leave it alone I reckon!

Kegging is growing...

If you believe CAMRA (or the Brown Beer Society as I call them owing to their penchant for bland brown twig juice from 1970) then we're going straight to keg hell - where you're presumably forced to drink Watney's Red, clubbed repeatedly with CO2 cylinders and made to listen to / witness Morris Dancing on an infinite loop - as we dare to put beer into kegs.

Hmmmmm, well excuse me if I don't really give a toss.  To explain why, here's a few bullet points which you'd have thought any rational drinker with a vague inkling of beer knowledge would understand;

1. The same beer goes into cask and keg, from the same tank
2. The keg beer isn't fined so is arguably more real than cask, which is fined
3. A CO2 blanket is used on our conditioning tanks so the cask beer might not be classed as real by CAMRA anyhow - I've not asked them so don't know and don't really care.
4. The keg beer is passed through a 30 micron filter to remove hop solids but not flavour, protein or hop oils
5. No pasteurisation is used on any beers
6. Customers ask for keg, so we supply it; simple.

There are many more points but it's late, I'm tired, so that'll have to do for now... let's conclude by saying that we keg beer because people want it not because we're trying to bring down the real ale system in some way, and it's a lot more work than casking beer to keg it.

Craft keg, real keg, craught beer... whatever you call it it's here to stay; get used to it CAMRA and get with the times before you become totally irrelevant in the modern beer culture.

/rant

Sometimes the froth just can't keep itself in

Yes, it's a domestic water particulate filter, it works a treat!

Sweet Stout, good for what ails yer!

You don't see many "sweet" or "milk" stouts these days; years back, brewers such as Mackesons used to extol the health benefits of drinking their "nourishing" stouts, especially targeting the old and nursing mothers... imagine that in these puritanical days!

Anyhow, as our last dark beer sold out in record time (9 days) we rushed through the next dark beer as soon as we could.  I've long wanted to brew a sweet stout and had spent some time researching exactly what makes a stout "sweet" - don't laugh, it's not that obvious a question as it took me a while to pin down exactly what we needed to do!  Basically, 10% added lactose - milk sugar - is the generally accepted definition of a milk stout and although most UK examples are pitifully weak at around 3% I decided to go more for the US style of 4.5% to 5%.

The biggest surprise was the cost of the lactose which came in at around £160 for a 25kg sack; the accounts department are glad there aren't many hops in this with 5kg of UK Admiral being the only addition with 2.5kg added at 20 and then 5 minutes from the end of the boil for their rough bitterness and fruity character; we like Admiral which, along with Bramling Cross, are unsurpassed for hopping stouts.

So, after a false start when the lactose wasn't in stock despite the hop merchant's computer saying it was, we finally got to brew "Profits of Doom" today and it's smelling lush as it transfers to FV3 at this exact moment!

Dry-hopping 101

If these words conjure up images of us tipping verdant hop cones from a hessian sack into casks then think again; this is 2014 people!

Here's how we do it - in the conditioning room the tanks are first washed and sterilised before being flushed with Carbon Dioxode to prevent oxidisation of the beer (this imparts cardboardy flavours in case you were wondering...) before being filled with "green beer" - beer which has just finished fermentation and requires further time to mellow and take up hop flavours - then dosed with carefully-measured amounts of T90 hop pellets.  

Pellets are best for dry hopping as the way they are made mashes up the lupulin and makes the aromas / flavours easier and quicker to extract in the tank; 7 days is generally enough although we often allow more.  The other reason we use them is that we can't get whole cone hops out of the tanks after use, meaning T90 pellets are the only option - luckily for us they're our preferred method!

Observe the precision equipment used - yes, that is a Homebase funnel with most of the spout hacksawed off!  Works a treat... 2.5kg of dry hops per 650 litre tank is our current rate, we get two full tanks per brew.

After a week (or more) we begin to drain off the green sludge of pellets from the tanks; this is done 3 or 4 times, tipping beer down the drain on each occasion, until we're happy most pellet debris has gone.  We then connect up the CO2 line to push the beer out of the tank (and to stop oxygen getting in and oxidising the beer) and the racking hose before filling casks or kegs.

The T90 pellets come to us in 5kg foil bags which we try to use all at once in a brew, although some beers have a more complex dry-hopping charge (maybe 2kg Citra, 3kg Cascade) so any pellets not used are sealed up in the bag and stored in our "hop fridge" until required... which isn't usually long.

So there you go, that's our dry-hopping method!  Fascinating, eh?

Green Hop beer!

First off: what is a green hop you may ask, they're all green! (admittedly so, apart from some twiggy ones which are a lovely shade of beige)...

"Green hops" are the British name (whilst Americans call them "wet hops") for unkilned cones fresh from the bine.  As they have just been picked they're still full of moisture - dried hops are around 80% smaller than the same weight of fresh - so the brewer must use 5 times the amount he would normally use to get the same result...

When I say "same result" I'm obviously not talking about them giving the same flavour; green hops give a much more chlorophylly, "sappy" taste along with hints of citrus and even onion (!) meaning you get a totally different flavour experience with green hops to dried ones.  To be honest I've never been a huge fan of the flavour they impart, but as harvest is a once-a-year event it has become something of a trendy brew to make, especially in the states, and increasingly over here too... I got talked into doing one by our hop merchant and a hop farmer so if it's rubbish you can blame them!

The hops arrived this morning, just in time for the brew, and admittedly smell fairly nice; we can tell they are fresh by the hordes of aphids climbing out of the bags!  The brew is a simple 4.5%-ish one with the Progress green hops plus some Citra, Chinook and Centennial - not a massive amount, just a bit - to give it the extra kick I reckon it'll need.  It won't be dry-hopped and will go straight into cask next week... I'd say look out for it but it doesn't have a name yet so you won't know what to look for...

How many bloody hops?!?

Sparging has finished

Happy yeasties!

Testing 123

Last week we too delivery (well, I collected them) of some Dolium kegs to try out as our OWK - one-way keg, one of the new industry buzzwords!.

They are a traditional gas-on-beer keg with a plastic syphon tube rather than a spear; first impressions are they seem a bit flimsy and don't stack too well, but we'll give them a go and see.  Feedback from other brewers and landlords who have experience of them is mixed to say the least, but with EcoKeg apparently opening a factory in South Wales shortly we'll have plenty of other options soon.

The major upside over keykegs (apart from being about a fiver cheaper) is that they use standard sankey connectors so they're, to use a phrase from my old career, "plug and play" with existing cellar equipment.

Anyhow, here's what one looks like....

What's Brewing....

... this week?

Well, today Jay and I brewed a big (12 barrels, 2250 litres) batch of Citraic which is now up to version 4 and has so much Citra and Mosaic in our bank account hurts!  Seriously, it does.

Tomorrow sees a rebrew of Pixie Spring Golden Pixie, a low ABV session pale ale with just enough hops (mainly Cascade and a touch of Citra) to make things interesting.  This beer is replacing Tidy for a while as demand for bitter seems to be... well, sporadic to say the least.

We're also off delivering in London and the M4 corridor on Thursday, then racking and delivering to Bristol Friday morning; it's all go as usual!

When a brewer sees a huge pile of twigs...

.... what follows is generally unseen by non-brewers.  Well, no more, as here - as captured by Jonny from Brodies and Jeff from Lovibonds - is what happened next.

Apologies if this makes no sense to you, just ignore it and I promise the next post will make more sense.  Well, as much sense as my posts make.

Irony.... oh sweet irony.

A bit of dry-hopping!

When most people think of dry-hopping it's with whole flowers into the cask, but this is the brave new world, people, and this is the way to do it; it's consistent across every cask, takes less time to get the character into the beer, much easier to do and makes the conditioning room smell lovely.  But it doesn't half make a mess on the floor....

Latest coffee (and vanilla) beer ready to cask

Who remembers our first coffee porter?  The one where we did 10 casks coffee, 10 vanilla and coffee and 10 vanilla, coffee and almond?  Course you do.

Anyhow, Gazza has brewed another coffee porter, this one much more complex in the malt department than the previous one, and it's currently sitting in tank now ready to cask up!  This time we're not bothering with the almond extract version as it was the most artificial tasting of the three (we use proper coffee and real vanilla bean extracts, the almond extract was apparently "real" but didn't really taste that way) so this time there are 15 casks of the coffee and 15 of the coffee/vanilla for sale; get em quick as they won't last long.

There will be one single cask of Amaretto flavour but this is already allocated to the "Not the Wantage beer festival" so if you want to try it you'll have to get yourself there from 26th til the 28th September... you know you want to.