The twig box runneth over

...well, almost....

To explain for those that live under a stone on Uranus (hur hur), we find twigs rather amusing, but especially hop twigs which a lot of brewers use as a derogatory phrase for boring old man's brown beer as it's made with UK hops which, so the story goes, are half twigs, 33% leaves, 20% hop cones and the rest random organic (and occasionally non-organic) material.  

Well, to be honest, ALL hops come complete with twigs - especially American ones - which have some whoppers hiding in them!  They're not actually twigs,  usually parts of the hop bine itself, although twigs is a far more evocative name for them!

Anyhow, we've been collecting all the wood we harvest from our hops in our very own twig box and, as you can see here, it's getting rather full now...

We do a jokey "twig of the week" post on Facebook where we show a photo of the week's best twig for the jollity of the populace at large, examples of which can also be seen below.

More serious stuff next time, I promise.  Oh yeah, we brewed our chocolate rye oatmeal stout today, if you're interested...

See, it's a bine!

Finings tests in glorious colour!

I've talked about finings tests before (at some length!) so this photo is only on here as I like the picture... plus it's a good indication of what we do to ensure the beer leaving us will clear down in cask the way most customers expect it to and thus be served reasonably clear, or at least as clear as the hop oils in suspension allow!

We use the minimum amount of finings we can get away with as they strip out flavour, mouthfeel and body from the finished beer - and anyhow, who wants fish guts dissolved in phosphoric acid in their beer? - although brewing the kind of beers we do, VERY pale and hoppy, the lower limit is a tad higher than I'd like as any clarity imperfections are very obvious in the style of beers we generally produce, meaning we must add more than I'd really like to (actually, I'd love to add zero, but the UK isn't ready for that as yet except in a very few cases)...

In the photo here you can see the finings are clumping the yeast together into floccs which are heavier than the individual yeast cells themselves and, consequently, sink to the bottom of the bottle (or cask, or keg, or silo, or whatever you put the beer in) in a matter of hours rather than the weeks it would take for the yeast to settle out under it's own violition (and it still wouldn't be totally clear after a few weeks); fining is, in essence, the process of making yeast (and protein) do what it would do in weeks in a matter of hours.

On the left we have "Mate Spawn and Die" and on the right "Dance with the Devil"; MSaD was casked up today, DwtD was transferred from fermenter to conditioning tank.  We do a finings test at this point to check the protein fining in the fermenter has worked and taken out the majority of the haze causing protein which, as you can see, it has!

More beers on the way!

Regular readers won't be surprised to hear this, seeing as we don't really do the traditional "standard range" thing, but I thought this week's brew was worthy of a bit of a plug seeing as it's not a pale & hoppy one for a change, plus a reminder what's going on with the rest of the brews we've completed recently.

This week we'll be brewing "Straight to the Light", a chocolate rye oatmeal stout, which will hopefully come out as lovely as it sounds right there!  Specialist German chocolate rye malt and UK malted oats will be combined with East Anglian pale malt and some unusual Polish hops - Junga - to produce a stout with a difference, or at least not your usual boring "dry stout" with no hop character and a mere hint of roasted barley...

The following week will see the deployment of a brand new hop which comes highly recommended by random people on the internet, which is important as no-one I know has actually used it yet!  Azzacca promises to be a big fruity beast and we're hoping for great things from it... hopefully it'll be as good as new Aussie behemoth Vic Secret which has lent it's catty, fruity and luscious character to "Mate Spawn and Die" which we casked up today; beers generally taste better after a few weeks in cask, but this one tasted amazing straight out of the conditioning tank today, albeit with a mouthful of hop bits to contend with!

Our collab with Cardiff's Crafty Devil brewery "Dance with the Devil" is on it's dry hops now and will be casked up next week alongside the final tanks of "Millennium bug" (lean fruitiness) and "Party Line" (zesty lime marmalade!) for your delectation....

Keep the faith, hop lovers...

Start of the Deutsch Projekt

We like projects, or even projekts; they glue together a series of beers with a tenuous link and make it look as if we know what's going on with brewing and in the wider beer world.  Yeah, that's right, of course we know what's going on...

Anyhow, fresh on the heels of the "Whole Pack Project" - in which silly amounts of dry-hopping (5kg per 650 litres) is added to the conditioning tanks to infuse the brew with  massive amounts of hop aroma - comes our latest endeavour, the "Deutsch Projekt".  Now the more multilingual amongst you - or, to be fair, anyone with a modicum of common sense, seeing as a hell of a lot of English comes from German - will have realised that this is our "German Project", but what could that be?

Well, it probably won't surprise you to learn that it's about hops.  When you think about German hops you'd probably imagine the classic Magnum, one of the world's finest bittering hops, but it's hardly a sublimely luscious "hollywood" hop as is Citra or Centennial, for example.  You may think of Brewer's Gold which is, admittedly, a pretty damn good flavour and aroma hop although it's still quite European in it's restrained, leafy way, or maybe one of the many "noble" lager hops such as Tettnang or Spalt which have, for years, ruled lager production.  So, you may rightly ask, why the hell are we making beer with these kinds of hops?

We're not.  Well, actually, we are using Magnum, but only because it's a fantastic bittering hop and Gazza loves it, but the main thrust of the project - sorry, projekt - is the new German "wunderhops" which have recently been released and, presumably, are supposed to transform the German hop industry, already a world leader, into a world leader with some new-world style hops; we've had a quick dabble in the past with Hallertauer Blanc and weren't that impressed but this time we've got enough hops to do it justice - hopefully!

So, the project - or projekt - will encompass three of the new German varieties (we're not using Polaris as it tastes like cactus in a not very nice way) and also the one that started it all, Cascade, but these particular cones were grown in Germany!  Hopefully we'll do all the individual hops justice - principally by adding loads of them as dry hops - so look out for the beers in the coming months and, as is usual, we always enjoy feedback both good and bad!

Click the names to see the official info on Mandarina Bavaria, Huell Melon, Hallertauer Blanc.

Collab brew with Crafty Devil

Today we hosted Adam from Cardiff's latest micro brewer, Crafty Devil of Canton, when we cooked up what should be a right tasty Red IPA together.  The brewery was positively seething with people as Jay and mate Gav were also in attendance, meaning Gazza could actually deal with emails and sort out some paperwork rather than digging the mash!  Well, that's his excuse for lazing about...

Anyhow, the resulting beer should be around 5.5% and it's definitely red, a difficult thing to achieve in beer believe me!  It's hopped with Centennial, Amarillo and Columbus and will be dry-hopped with Citra and more Columbus to give a very hoppy, bitter and well tasty brew!  As is par for the course it's not got a name as yet but there's loads of time for that.

Jay and Adam mash in

About to start breaking up the hops.... Gav, Gazza and Adam

Jay and Adam with the mash

Adam digs out the mash

A tasting session whilst the transfer was on!

Fermenting!

Sometimes it's the little things that make a difference

... in this case a rather big, heavy 6mm steel plate, but it's made such a difference!

Before our mate, Hotrod builder Owen, made this behemoth for us we literally couldn't get pallets in and out of the door due to the knackered tarmac and step, as can be seen here (which is a lot worse than it looks, believe me) ...

It wasn't simply a matter of concreting up the holes as we roll casks out of the door to the coldstore and they would have demolished the concrete in a matter on months (as they have done the current floor!) and tarmac isn't strong enough either.  So, after a bit of thought, we asked Owen if he could make us a steel ramp which he did, powder coated it and even cut hand holds into it!  It weighs a massive amount, mind you, but at least now we can wheel pallets in and out of the brewery meaning we don't have to handball a tonne of malt off one pallet, through the door, then precariously stack it onto another one now, plus we'll be able to build pallets of beer inside during the summer when it's just too hot outside.  Result!

First photos of the Hopbunker

Yes, you heard that right - here's the first few photos of the current progress of our bar in Cardiff, the Hopbunker, hopefully there will be loads more of work in progress leading to completion very soon... !

Follow us here (you have to join the group)...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hopbunker/

One of the latrines.... honestly, it is!

Work in progress

This will be our keg dispense once the keg taps are installed

The entrance when we moved in

Yet more obscure music references

The extra-pale "Mid-Atlantic pale ale" we brewed yesterday with all South Pacific hops, namely Green Bullet for it's chewy hedgerowy berryness and Waimea for a pineapple and tropical fruit hit, is now in FV1 and about to begin it's primary fermentation.  

So, we needed a name... various things had been suggested along the lines of Vic, seeing as the finishing hop is new Aussie superstar Vic(toria's) Secret - which had to be renamed save anyone thought that instead of hops they were buying frilly knickers - but nothing quite worked for me.

Then, Gav (who was helping us out) brought in some industrial CDs, one of which was Lard (look em up!) and after I'd remembered just how good they were the name jumped out at me... OK, it's not your usual nicey-nicey name and some people won't like it, but hey.... sometimes being bleak and depressing is the only way, even more so with the Soviet panelacky and high-impact font on the clip.

Look out for it in a few weeks in the usual places when it'll be dazzling you with it's super-pale colour and big hoppiness for sure!

Today in pictures

Here's a couple of photos from today!  

We casked up (racked) 45 9's of beer plus 4 kegs, washed out the tanks, then took the opportunity of an early finish to clean all the conditioning tanks with a full caustic wash.  I also secondary fined (protein finings, it takes out excess protein from the "green" beer to prevent haze) Millennium Bug ready for transferring to CT tomorrow, then it was time for some paperwork and invoice chasing.... rock'n'roll.

Tomorrow we're brewing a pale ale with Aussie / New Zealand hops which doesn't even have a name yet - as per usual!  We'll think of something...

Hop pellet trub at the bottom of a conditioning tank after casking up the beer

I call this "sunlight on casks" !

This will be going into conditioning tomorrow with dry-hopping.

"State of the Nation" at Brewdog Cardiff

We were invited to submit a beer for this event at Cardiff's new Brewdog bar in late January and so, despite some issues with which beer to supply and delivery, we finally got everything sorted and joined keg beers from such luminaries as Otley, Waen, Tiny Rebel and Heavy Industry along with newcomers Crafty Devil and Cardiff institution Pipes.

A good evening was had with much banter between the various brewers, can't be bad.

The beer board

"Something must Break" from keg in a Brewdog glass

Hops for the "Deutsch Projekt" have arrived

Yet another of Gazza's little projects is now officially underway!  He's long been interested in the new German aroma hops (Mandarina Bavaria, Huell Melon and Hallertauer Blanc) although they are notoriously difficult to get hold of being still grown on a trial basis in their homeland, which means there isn't a lot to go around!  

Well, we've now acquired 5kg of each hop in convenient T90 pellet form for dry-hopping, so once we've got the next few brews out of the way we can begin to experiment with these!  The running order will probably be Blanc, Melon and Bavaria although this may (and probably will) change on the whim of the head brewer!  The base beer will be kept simple and rather understated to allow the hops to show their true character, so look out for the first one in a month or two and see how far European hops have come.

Tap Takeover photos

A grand night was had by all (I assume!) when we hit London town with a pallet-load of our beers last Thursday at the Fox on Kingsland Road, E8.  Here's a few photos from the evening, thanks to everyone who supplied them as I forgot to take many.... I was too busy having fun, apparently, which I assume means drinking lots of beer.

Our first single-hop beer

Let's get one thing straight - I'm not a massive fan of single hopped beers, to me hops are (usually) good at bittering, aroma or flavour and not many of them can multitask, which I suppose makes them male... (actually, hop cones only grow on the female plants, the males are  not needed; hops are dioecious, which means they have separate male and female plants. Only the female produces the flowers that are used for brewing).

So, against all that's gone before, yesterday we brewed a single-hop beer!  And not only that, we used a hop which is quite rare and not often used, Millennium.  It's a reasonably new US hop which is used in dark beers over in America but not seen on our shores often, so when Jay suggested using it and Gazza found we could get some the project seemed a goer!

It's a high alpha bittering hop at 17.1% alpha acids (the stuff that gives beer it's bitterness, this is a very high figure) but we used 10kg in the copper and a further 5kg will be added to the tanks for dry-hopping.  We were pleasantly surprised with the almost Pacific character we got from the cones, with pineapple and tropical fruits coming off during the break-up.

So, although the beer doesn't have a name yet, "Millennium" is sat in FV2 about to commence primary fermentation and it should be an interesting one alright... look out for it in about 3 weeks' time when it gets casked up.

Tap Takeover at the Fox E8

That's right, it's another first for us in the form of a "tap takeover".  On reading up about such things Gazza has come to the conclusion that they are like a meet the brewer except the brewer doesn't have to give speeches or anything else so energetic; sounds like we roll up, drink lots of beer and "press the flesh" as it were... we'll see if this is true next week!

Anyhow, we'd love to see everyone there so the details are as follows..

Thursday 29th January 2014 from 18:00

The Fox Craft Beer Pub
372 Kingsland Road, Haggerston, E8 4DA London

We should have at least 12 beers on, maybe more, during the evening plus Gazza and Jay will be there to berate or buy beer for accordingly.

https://www.facebook.com/events/668121469979964/

The beer list will feature some (or all) of the following;

On Keg...

Belma & Brewise 4.7% golden hoppy
Citraic 5.2% - Citra and Mosaic
Who's been sleeping in my Brain? 4.7% - Golden, hoppy, fruity
Exercise One 5% - golden big fruity hops
Slave to the Wage 4.3% - New Zealand hops, full malty body
Temple of Love 3.8% - big hoppy session beer
Profits of Doom coconut edition 4.5% - sweet lactose stout with coconut flavours
Gazza and Jay's Maple Porter 5.2% - toasty porter with maple syrup
Red Water 4.7% - very pale, rare Waimea NZ hops
every hop i love is dead 5.2% - our 100th brew, almost all Simcoe
Graveyard Eyes 5.2% - Sorachi ace porter
Oceanic v4 4.8% - extra pale, huge nelson Sauvin taste

As for cask...

Mosaic Plus 5.2% - pale, big fruity hops
Cloister Enkel 4.4% - Belgian style "single"
A Good Rogering 6.1% - Black IPA, loads of hops, first in the "insult to history" series
Tidy Bitter 4% - Tasty "standard" bitter, Euro hops
Golden Pixie 3.8% - easy-going session beer with fruity hops in the finish
Whole Hop Project no.1 4.1% - lots and lots of citra!

The Party Line

Today we brewed our latest pale & hoppy little number which, for reasons best known to Gazza (although it's suspected his love of Commie iconography is to blame) is named "The Party Line".

It hints at our ethos which, as you've probably guessed by now, is generally hops and more hops!  This one was brewed from super-pale malt, a touch of wheat, then Magnum, Cascade, Centennial and Belma in the copper and will be dry-hopped with either Centennial or Cascade depending on availability.  As it was a 12 barrel brew (2200 litres) we'll be splitting one tank off to be made into the second of our "Whole Pack Project" beers with the hop in mind this time being Ahtanum which we've never used before.

Next week sees a brew with the rare US hop Millennium which smells pretty damn fruity, although the big question is always if this luscious smell translates into the beer... sadly, this isn't always the case.

We're also doing a tap takeover in London next Thursday, see the next post for details.

About to dig the copper with 17kg of hops down there!

Twig of the Week!

We're obsessed with twigs, as are all craft brewers, so here's the latest contender fresh from a pack of American Cascade hops today...

First bottling day!

After a few test runs we finally bit the bullet today and bottled 3 9's of beer!

It's been a long time coming; regular readers of this gibberish will recall we bought the bottles and bottling kit back in March (or, if not March, then sometime a long way back!) but owing to various happenings, both planned and less so, it's taken us until now to actually bottle some beer on a semi-commercial scale...

We are now the proud owners of 340 bottles of beer which, after a few weeks of conditioning and the necessary quality controls, will be released into the wild... we  already have buyers for the majority of it and so may have to increase volumes next time we bottle; bear with us regards to supply and carbonation as we're still learning the ropes!

So, "Whole Pack Project #1 Citra", "Oceanic" and "A Good Rogering" are now in bottle and we can't wait to test them out in a few weeks' time...

The bottling line!

Jay with the end product

Oceanic in bottle

Jay capping

Some fat bloke pretending to work

The Hopbunker

Well, here's the big news that some already know...

Work began this week on our brewery tap in Cardiff. It's on the Kingsway, opposite the castle and close to the end of Queen Street, and is (for those who remember such things) the old Bogiez (and before that, Barfly) rock club. For those that don't know, it's a concrete cellar below what is now student accommodation, hence the name Hopbunker - it really is like a nuclear shelter down there! We'll be "decorating", if that's the right word, in an industrial fashion which should fit right in with the surroundings.

There are still a few things to be ironed out but we're 95% certain that everything will fall into place and we'll open sometime in February; obviously the plan is to open for the rugby at the beginning of the month... We have a star-studded team being assembled to run it with a very special boss-man who many will already know!

The plans are for UP TO (not necessarily all the time!) 12 cask and 20 keg beers with - obviously - the emphasis on Hopcraft and Pixie Spring beer accompanied by guest beers from far and wide. Our favourite Welsh brewing comrades will be featured prominently but we'll also have brews from all over the UK (sourced from my many contacts!) and there will hopefully be some meet the brewer events and suchlike to sample.

We'll be updating you with more info about this exciting project as soon as we have some, so finally I'll say we hope you can come visit us and sample our beers as an integral part of Cardiff's flourishing craft beer scene.

Cheers, Brothers and Sisters of Myrcene!

To the drain I commit thee....

It's never nice to tip beer away, especially when you know how lovely it was, but we've had a few comments that the final tank of "Slave to the Wage" wasn't tasting quite right so we decided to investigate just what was going on.

It's one of the big batches we brewed late last year and the final tank sat on the dry hops too long through an oversight; normally this wouldn't matter, but Nelson Sauvin pellets seem to change from superbly fruity to overly grassy very quickly.  Add to this a hint of oxidation which has got into the tank somehow from, I'm guessing, not being flushed with CO2 well enough when it was filled up and you get beer which doesn't meet our exacting standards.

So, the remaining five 9's were today committed to the big drain in the sky.  Lessons have been learnt for sure, and I'm confident that it won't happen again - or, as sure as you can be when dealing with a live substance like beer!  I had a sniff of the casks as they were emptied and, whilst I'm sure many brewers would have sent them out without a qualm, I wasn't 100% happy with them so down the drain they went.

To put a positive glint on things this was only 10% of the total batch we brewed, we've learnt plenty about dry-hopping and CO2 flushing of CTs along the way and I'm happy to be preserving our reputation for quality beer rather than sending out second-rate beer.

Onwards and upwards.... 

New year, new ideas (and lots of old ones)

First off, happy new year from everyone at Hopcraft / Pixie Spring!

Now the pleasantries are out of the way I can run through a few of the things we're hoping to achieve this coming year...

• Open a bar in Cardiff - more news on this soon we hope
• Revisit some of our old recipes and rebrew them with all necessary tweaks
• Brew recreations, as near as possible, of recipes from 1910; we're doing this with the help of Ron Pattinson, the top man and law of what beers used to be like, and although the recipes from the Hopcraft brewery of Brackley are missing presumed destroyed we have recipes from a similar regional brewer of the time and so are using those!  An IPA and Stout will be first.  Warning: may contain Goldings.
• Improve consistency and stability of the beers in cask
• Increase kegging to 15-20% of production (currently around 5%)
• Do some more collaborations, both home and away

There are plenty more things we're hoping to do, but that's enough for now...

Keep the faith, Brothers and Sisters of Myrcene!