Big brew today!

We're doing a "big" (12BBL) brew of "Temple of Love" today, which means we get an extra third more beer from a brewday for not a lot more time - but obviously pro rata more hops and malt are required!

Anyhow, we have 2300 litres of wort in the copper, 16kg of Summit, Columbus, Cascade and Chinook are broken up ready to add, and we're just about to dig out the 300kg of wet grain from the mash tun.... happy days!

Busy week...

Damn right it is.  This week Gazza has been out delivering beer to the Birmingham Beer Festival, the marvellous Craven Arms in Brum and the incredibly good Cotteridge Wines shop in King's Norton, south Brum, as well as collecting empty casks from a wholesaler in Stoke whilst Gav has been washing 60+ casks to fill with lovely beer.

Today we filled said casks with beer - Mate Spawn and Die, So Much to Answer For, No Pasaran and Corazon de Oro - which has meant our coldstore is full for the first time in well over a month!

We're brewing twice this week; first off is a "remix" of Oceanic with a slightly different hop grist in the copper and it's dry-hopped with Galaxy instead of Nelson Sauvin to see what happens, then we're doing a big 12BBL brew of Temple of Love as whenever we brew it the whole lot vanishes pretty quickly...

We're also about to start building our warm room for bottles and an office out the back of the brewery (in the area which was to have been the tap room but that's never going to happen!) which means lots of planning as to how much wood and insulation board we need... all good fun.  There may also be deliveries to Bristol although that's not confirmed yet, depends if anyone there wants anything!

Apologies for the quietness!!

Basically, just that.... Gazza has been away on holiday and we've been mad busy, so that's our excuse for a total lack of posts in the last few weeks...

Normal service will resume next week as we're brewing twice (Temple of Love and Oceanic remixed), then racking 4 beers (So much to answer for, Corazon de Oro, No Pasaran and Mate Spawn and Die) to add to the two racked today (Dark Underbelly and Deutsch Projekt 6 Record) plus lots of delivering and other stuff too.

Cheers!

Busy week....

Cold Break!

So, for those who don't know what a cold break is (apart from a holiday in Murmansk) I suppose I'd better tell you.... it's a bit technical so just switch over now if that's put you off!

When the wort is boiled with the hops we add a set amount of "protofloc" tablets, which are ground up seaweed.  The idea behind yet another aquatic process aid to beer is that the gloop contained therein causes proteins in the wort - which need to be limited to produce clear beer - to clump together (much the same way sturgeon swim bladder flocculates yeast into clumps) and become trapped in the hop bed at the bottom of the copper when the wort is run off to the fermenter.  Rapidly cooling the wort through a plate chiller makes this process happen a lot quicker and more efficiently and is pretty much essential to create clear beer in the end!  Not all the break material gets trapped and some gets through, but this then flocculates in the fermenter and all is well...  

The specific gravity test is done before the yeast is added and gives you an exact reading of the sugars in the wort you are about to ferment and, thus, when a reading is taken before the beer runs off to conditioning tank, with the aid of a clever spreadsheet you can work out the exact alcohol by volume of the beer; simple, eh?

Never one to do one thing when I can do two at the same time and thus expend less energy I could then use pissing about on the internet, I leave the wort in the sample tube to ensure the "cold break" has occurred properly... which, as you can see, in this case it has!

Old man's beer...

Gazza has a deep love of mild; it's what he used to drink as a lad back ooop North, and is also fascinated by the extremely rare (and getting rarer) sub-style of Pennine Light; years back there were many of these: Webster's Green label, Bass Light, Robinson's Mild, Hydes Light, Taylor's Golden Best and a few others I forget.... wind forwards to the modern era and the only one remaining is the Taylor's (their best beer IMO, much better than the over-hyped Landlord and one dimensional bitter) and a few new-wave examples.

So, last year, when we brewed this it took many people by surprise; "aren't you the Gazza who loves hops?" I heard quite a few times, to which I replied yes, that's me, but I like other things too!  

This is a beer which had an elephant-esque gestation period and the recipe was rewritten many times until the discovery of Castle Maltings from Belgium and their Biscuit malt which was the missing piece of the jigsaw; crystal malt was out as an ingredient so something else was needed to depose it... and here it was in all it's crunchy, biscuity loveliness.  

It also has a very unusual mashing regime; in most beers the grain is steeped in hot water at around 66c for over an hour, but here the temperature is more like 70c and the mash takes a mere 15 minutes to keep a good dose of unfermentable dextrins for body and mouthfeel, which are essential in a mild.  The other departures from "old school" UK milds are the hops - Polish Marynka, leafy and grassy - and the yeast, our standard US05 American ale yeast, which imparts none of the esters UK beers are famous for but instead ensures a clean, smooth fermentation and flavour with enhanced hop character.

This 2015 "vintage" has had it's recipe amended from the original in several ways, all for the better, and Gazza is hopeful that his modern Pennine mild will challenge and surprise drinkers who thought that all mild was dark and full of fag ends and "pour backs".... 

And the name?  Well, only the Smiths could provide the name for such a Manchester tradition...

No Pasarán

Today we're brewing our (mostly) English-hopped IPA "No Pasarán" which commemorates the Battle of Cable Street where Moseley's fascists were effectively demolished and also the fight against fascism everywhere; the name is from the Spanish civil war (although dates from earlier) and means "they shall not pass".

Here we're sparging - rinsing the grain with hot water at 77°c to rinse out all the remaining sugars to get the maximum efficiency from the malt used.

And remember - for every pint drunk a fascist (hopefully) dies.

Operation auger... phase 1!

At present, our mashing in procedure is a little convoluted but it works a treat; we have a wooden grain hopper (which kind of flows, kind of, it just needs some help with a brush to empty fully) and then a sprayball hydrator in a length of brown water pipe which dumps the hydrated grain into the mashtun; marvellous.

Well, kind of.... this was designed a stop-gap setup to last 6 months until we could get a proper steel hopper and hydrator made, but as is so often the case in a brewery if something is working, why bother replacing it? So we didn't... and now, 2 years and 4 months later, it's showing signs of age and has moved up to the top of the list of "stuff that needs replacing".

With this in mind Gazza has acquired an old auger from Rich the Farmer who collects our grain; it has been redundant in their grain shed for a decade but it'll save us £600 at least which is what new ones cost!  It's a bit tatty and needs a good clean, but it works which is the main thing... We now need to get made a steel hopper and pipework to enable us to connect it to the HLT, but that's work for another day - let's be happy phase 1 is complete!

No green hops...

We were let down on our supply of "green" (unkilned) Bramling Cross so Gazza had to make a quick substitution from the lupulous bench... so, on comes Kazbek, the darling of the Czech hop industry, a brash, bold new face which is suited more to ales than the lagers Czech's hops are traditionally associated with.

So, "Corazon de Oro" (heart of gold) is being brewed today with a hop charge of Chinook for fruity bitterness and Kazbek for lemony, oily zestiness, and it'll be dry-hopped with Cascade to add extra layers of citrussy, lemony deliciousness... looks like all those old proverbs were right and out of adversity does come good!

The kazbek smelt absolutely amazing; loads of lemony citrus, blackcurrant, skunky fruit and even a hint of liquorice!  They are a massively complex hop and we're quite interested to see how this beer will turn out!  Look out for it in a few weeks at, as the media is wont to say, "all good outlets"....

It's Green Hop time again!

Next week, despite me saying we'd never do it again, we're brewing a "green hop" beer.  In case you don't know what this is, the term is taken to mean unkilned hops fresh from the hopyard and used in less than 24 hours from picking to maintain their freshness.  Americans call these "wet" hops which sounds like a recipe for confusion with dry hops!

This year we've been offered a very rare 20kg picking of Bramling Cross from Ledbury, arguably the UK's most characterful "old" hop variety, (discounting new ones such as Jester) and so felt duty-bound to accept... after all, we always like to try different things and this is a chance to use a very rare "green" version of this hop.

As per last year, we'll be cutting it with lovely US Chinook to fill in some of the flavour holes which green hops have, but overall the character of this beer will be Bramling Cross!

Last year's clip, but you get the idea....

New wooden barrel.....

After the vague success of our now deceased (well, beer-wise anyhow, it now lives in the lobby of Hopbunker!) mammoth "double hogshead" cask we've acquired a new one to play around with... although this one is much, much smaller and much cuter!

Say hello to our new cask which I think is Acacia wood (although don't quote me on that) and is a mere 50 litres or so.  We've filled it with Spanish Main (our 5.8% Jamaican Stout) today and we'll see what magic it imparts to this over the next month or so... we've already named the beer "el barril del Diablo" or "The Devil's barrel" for reasons known only to us... 

If this experiment results in something palatable then look our for the very limited results in our bar in Cardiff, Hopbunker, or you may be lucky enough to score a bottle of it.  Very lucky indeed as there won't be much about.

Brew 150!

Tomorrow is our 150th brew which has snuck up on us quickly, so quickly I've not had chance to plan anything special (not that all our beers aren't special, obvs...) so the honour falls upon the pineappley, tropical riot of a brew which is "Mate Spawn and Die"... (almost) all New Zealand hops and always vanishes out of the coldstore super-quick.

It's taken us just over 2 years to get to this point and, although some may say about 1.5 brews a week isn't really that impressive, I'd argue that we have a reputation many times bigger than we should have for the size we are.

I'm hoping the next 50 brews are done in even faster time and may be right if the current sales are anything to go by with our coldstore being almost empty yet again...  best brew some more beer then I reckon!

So, cheers to everyone who has been along for the ride, and I hope you stay with us as we continue to try ans make the very best - and, importantly, most interesting - beers we can.

Cheers from Gazza and Gav.

Pre-prohibition IPA collab at Celt

Today we brewed our collaboration beer with the guys at Celt Experience of Caerphilly; the hospitality was pretty good and encompassed bacon butties, coffee, tea, chocolate cake, beer and gin in various quantities!  As for the beer, well it'll be about 7.5% and has flaked Maize, demerera sugar and lots of pale malt (1,5 tonnes!) in it, plus oodles of Cluster, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook and Galaxy hops.... should be a good one!

Gazza adding hops

Gav with a Chinese FV

Hops and sugar!

Matt messing with the copper

Gav adding hops

Gav digging the mash

Raking the mash out

Gav adding sugar

Visit to Brains....

You know the old zombie call of "brains, brains!"?  Well, that's what we said today, although in a less respectful way...

The Green Man festival in King's Cross this weekend has ordered 18 casks of beer from us, but the pallet delivery to London was scuppered for some reason (they did say why, I forget what the reason was!) and so the alternative was for us (and everyone else in Wales!) to deliver to Brains in Cardiff for them to trunk the whole lot down in one hit.

Talk about industrial scale brewing... just look at this wall of casks in their yard to see what I mean by that, and there were a lot more around too!  Certainly an experience, I'll say that....

Collabs No.2 - Caerphilly!

Not quite Philadelphia, admittedly, but next week we're off to our mates at Celt Experience in Caerphilly to knock up what we've rather grandly called a "Pre-Prohibition Double IPA"... this unlikely sounding concoction contains demerera sugar, corn and pale malt for a taste of the old times (well, sort of...) and is bittered with the oldest American hop, Cluster, for that olde-skool bitter, catty flavour!  We've then gone a bit off-piste and planned to use hops such as Citra, Centennial and Chinook, but then again this is a modern brew so no apologies from us!

We've not got a name for this yet but it'll be around extensively as we're making 30 barrels of it I think, so look out for the first of a new style of beer....  maybe...

Collabs no.1 - Transatlantic!

Well, it's not a "proper" brewing collab as you'd expect it, but it's still an exchange of ideas across the ocean which has resulted in a beast of a brew!

Gav's mate Brian in Philadelphia is a damn good artist and, as such, he's designing the clip for our "Devilfish Black IPA" which we brewed the other week.  It's a big bolshy 5.8% super-hopped up beastie with US hops Azacca and Mosaic in the copper and Mosaic for the dry-hop, a larger than usual dose too.... 

Look out for it very soon, but beware because it bites....

Out of beer, and other stories...

Well, not quite out of beer, but it's not far off!!

We've been hammered for sales this last few weeks and, owing to us gallivanting around on jollies and such things, we've just not brewed enough to fill the gaps!  Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but such have the level of sales been recently we're now on a mad beer replenishment mission...

This week we're delivering to London, then brewing twice to try and get the stocks of beer up a bit!  Wednesday sees us creating a new beer, "Path of Least Resistance", which will be a very pale brew with Summit, Chinook and Cascade then dry-hopped with a new US dwarf hop so new it hasn't even got a name yet; it's called ADHA-464 and it smells pretty damn fruity in the Citra vein, although we'll see what comes out of the casks before comparing it to anything so amazing!

The other brew will be a new version of the award-winning "Slave to the Wage" pale ale which uses lovely New Zealand hops - Green Bullet, Waimea and Rakau - and promises to be even better than the original version.  Or so Gazza reckons....

Through the porthole

A view not often seen!

This is a view into our conditioning tank 12 with Mosaic and Cascade pellets just added; within a day they will have broken up and be in suspension then, after a few more days, will sink to the bottom of the tank, by which time they will have given up their lovely fruity and citrussy flavours and aromas.

The Deutsch Projekt is reprised!

Well, you thought it had finished... and in truth, so did we.... but no, for one last time (maybe...), we present a Deutsch Projekt beer!

This series of brews - tomorrow's is number 5 - was devised to showcase the new wave of German hops which are challenging the accepted wisdom that all German hops taste like chewing a privet hedge (well, to be fair most of them do...) and that there might be something else to offer in the hop department from the world's biggest hop producing nation, namely some new world-esque flavours.

All beers have had a very similar - sometimes identical - malt base (mainly low colour Propino with a touch of wheat and Melanoidin), and a 3 out of the 4 have had the same base hop (Opal) to keep comparisons between the hops fair.  

So far, we've had....

1 - Mandarina Bavaria; orangey, green tea, flowery

2 - Huell Melon; wild strawberry, subtle

3 - Hallertauer Blanc; lean, leafy, some citrus and petrol

4 - German Cascade; this had German Cascade as the base hops too; citrus, tangerine, green tea.

And there we thought it would end.  However, we'd used Opal as the base hop in brews 1 to 3 which had caused a flutter of interest as it seemed to be quite orangey and characterful despite not being one of the "new wave" hops, albeit it's only 12 years old!  So, a quick board meeting later, and DP5 was on the cards...

Return of the little bloke

It's been a while since we brewed Napoleon Complex, but quite a few people have been asking for it to return and so, being eminently reasonable fellows, we decided that this was a plan of action worth following, albeit with a few provisos....

The original recipe had been, let's just say, cobbled together as a "store cupboard clearout" brew and so included all manner of hops in small quantities.  Gazza spent an hour going through the recipe and working out a better one although as similar to the original as possible and so, eventually, v3.0 was writ in stone (or more correctly in Beersmith)!

The major change is with the dry-hop; previously, the new German hop Polaris was used (amongst others), but as this tastes like chewing an Eucalyptus bush we've sensibly done away with it and gone 100% with a hop which was in the original so shouldn't alter the finished beer too much... the illustrious Nelson Sauvin.

Pixie on Parade brewday

Tuesday 4th August saw us welcome the two Kevs and Tufty to the brewery to brew up a split batch of beer; one half would become Golden Pixie, whereas the other half would become a special for Newport RFC's beer festival in late August.  This splitting would be done in conditioning tank with Golden Pixie receiving Cascade and Citra hops whereas the Pixie on Parade would be dosed with a larger amount of Cascade with an addition of blackcurranty Mosaic hops.

The brewday went well, the beer ended up in FV1 almost exactly on gravity, and all being well the beers will be out and about in a couple of weeks; Newport RFC beer festival is held at the club's Rodney Parade ground on Friday 21st / Saturday 22nd August, see here for details and if you can make it there will be a good range of mainly local beers.

Kev Jarvis mashing in

Dean (Tufty), Kev and Kev enjoying the refreshments

Kev and Dean add the yeast

Kev, Kev, Gazza and Dean

Fermenting!

Gazza swapped for Gav...