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!

This week's news...

We're doing two 1500 litre brews this week, as per normal these days...

First up tomorrow is "Graveyard Eyes", our Sorachi Ace porter, with a slightly revised recipe - both malt and hops - which went down really well on it's first outing last autumn so we thought it was time to bring it back, albeit version 2!

Second will be a new beer of low ABV (around 4%) with mainly European hops such as Mandarina Bavaria, Triskel and Kazbek for sociable spring drinking; we've not finalised the recipe (or name!) of this one yet but it should be an easy-going yet tasty one.

We're off to Port Street Beer House in Manchester on Sunday for our official keg launch and meet the brewer so come on down from 17:00 to see us put the world to rights, then on the Monday we'll be brewing with Rob and the PSBH team over at Blackjack with the provisional recipe being a Red IPA although this could change between now and then !!

Back to it...

Gazza has been on a much-needed holiday (albeit a busman's one, beer drinking in Southern Poland!) so we've been a bit quiet this last week, but rest assured we're back at work and doing what we do best... making beer!

Today we re-brewed a beer which was done to test local (and non-local!) response to an easy-going, golden and not-too-hoppy brew and after the whole lot went in a week we've decided to brew it again, albeit with a couple of tweaks to make it even better, so look out for "Chorister's Gold" again in a few weeks.

Tomorrow we are casking up two beers, "No Love Lost" which is our Citra/Galaxy mashup type thing, plus "Steady as she Goes", our 50th gyle, brewed with - amongst others - the citrussy Czech hop Kazbek; these will be out and about very soon so keep an eye out at the usual places...

Next week sees us (probably) re-brewing another old favourite (although whether a beer less than 6 months old can be legitimately called an "old favourite" is open to debate) in the form of our Sorachi Ace-led porter "Graveyard Eyes"; this hop, originally from Japan but now grown in the US, has a bizarre and fascinating aroma and taste of coconut, orange peel and dill and is one of Gazza's favourite hops just because it's a contrary one like him!  We'll also be brewing something else pale and hoppy, maybe a new beer maybe a revisit of a previous brew, we've not decided yet, maybe we need to create a "brewing schedule", a phrase which impressed us this week!

And as if that wasn't enough for one week we're off to Manchester on Sunday for our keg beer launch at the superb Port Street Beer House at 17:00; it's free, so see you there!

Another collaboration brew!

Today we hosted Brian from Northern Monk of Leeds who are due to begin brewing shortly and seem to hold similar views on hops, crystal malt and many other things to us!

We brewed a strong-ish (it should be around 5.7% or so) red IPA - so watch Roger Protz go apoplectic about this further nonsensical beer style - with what must be the biggest hop charge we've used thus far (and probably the most expensive too...!) with over 2kg per barrel of lovely Summit, Citra, Galaxy, Simcoe, Centennial and Chinook all drowned in the name of lupuliciousness.

We're hopeful this will be one of our most interesting and hoppy beers to date so look out for it in a month or so when it's emerged from it's hoppy slumber... It's working title is "Crafty Monk" although this may change if we think of something better in the meantime; any suggestions will be received gratefully although, as usual, the prize is the standard sod-all except for the happy glow of knowing you've helped a worthy cause.  Or so we think.

Weighing out the grain

That's just unnaturally happy...

Bottling getting closer

We're nearly ready to begin bottlig our beer!  We have a table, perecetic sprayer, bottle draining tree, capper, bottles and caps... all we need now is the time to prepare the first cask for bottling and get it done which will probably happen in a week's time.

At first there won't be that many bottles, we'll only do enough to cover the orders we have which will probably mean around 120 330ml bottles per brew, but we see this expanding in the future.

Before any of that happens, however, we're rebrewing Citraic this week after it all sold out in less than a week (and got some pleasing reviews!) and we're also going our second collab with Brian from Northern Monk!  Expect a Red IPA with insane amounts of hops in...

1805 bottles...

Our new bottling setup!

Craftwerk Euro pale ale - not for UKIP members!

Today we had a second go at "Craftwerk", a concept which Gazza has long nurtured to make a beer with the best hops Europe has to offer... which, by definition, doesn't include many British ones as I don't like the taste of mouldy grass (Admiral and Bramling Cross excluded)!

Anyhow, our first attempt at this back in October was scuppered - our only failed brew thus far, touch wood - due to contaminated yeast, so this second try has a lot resting on it's shoulders!  It's comprised of the usual low-colour Maris Otter & wheat malt mash with a dash of Weyermann Melanoidin malt for body and colour (a classic German malt which gives amazing malty flavours without becoming toffeeish or sweet) with a complex mix of the "new wave" and old skool European hops;

• Brewer's Gold, an old variety, for orangey oiliness
• Kazbek, a new Czech hop, for lemon zest,
• Triskel, France's new "craft" hop, giving spicy citrus,
• Mandarina Bavaria, the (expensive!) darling of Germany's new world of aroma hops
• Herkules, a classic German bittering hop of world class stature.

We were going to add some UK Admiral, IMO one of the best British hops with a characterful flavour of 1p fruit salad chews (honest!), but we'd used them all up on our mahoosive brew of Tidy we did on Tuesday... 

So, this should be an interesting brew and, although it won't be a knock-your-socks-off monster in the style of our more usual American or Aussie/NZ hopped examples, it should have enough interest contained therein to make you think twice about European hops; all that remains, once it's fermented, is to stuff 4kg more Mandarina Bavaria into our "hop torpedoes" for dry-hopping and let it gently infuse for a week resulting in, hopefully, a flavoursome and tasty 4.4% golden brew.

Needless to say UKIP members are prohibited from drinking it as it's all foreign hops, coming over here taking our hops' jobs, they're probably all pregnant and wanting benefits too.  And I'd say we don't want BNP or EDL members drinking it either, but they'd probably drown trying to do two things at once like breathe and drink... better they stick to "Ing-er-lish" stuff like Carling, Stella and Heineken then.

(I'm sure you all see the sarcasm - Carling is originally Canadian, Stella Belgian and Heineken Dutch, and if you didn't then you do now.  Don't say we don't fulfill a public service broadcast duty here).

The first bit of our bottling kit arrives

Look what arrived today!!

This, in case you've not seen one, is a manual bottling machine (this being a six-head one) which plugs into an FV, tank or cask of beer and automatically fills bottles which we've then got to cap, warm-condition and finally label.

We've not finalised the label designs yet and haven't got a warm room set up, but the first bit of our bottling project is here and we're all raring to have a play with it!

(Update - we now also have our crown capper, caps and draining tree, so all we need are some bottles!)