Brew 2 Hits the Mark

A little while ago, I discussed the problems I had had with yeast for my Brew No 2 (see here). Having sorted that out, the beer fermented vigorously for three or four days and then settled into a slower, gentler ferment.

After seven days, the specific gravity had remained at 1.018 for three days, and so I considered it time to transfer the beer to a pressure barrel. The target SG for this brew was 1.015, but it clearly wasn’t going to get there, and I had measured the original gravity at 1.060, again slightly higher than the target 1.058. With these gravity readings, I calculated the ABV to be close to 5.4%, which was quite acceptable for my purposes.

The recipe was supposed to be an approximation to Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, a superb 6.0% dark ale with an army of dedicated fans all around the country. Now the actual recipe for Dark Ruby is very complicated and includes such ingredients as ear of bat and eye of newt*, and is constantly being tweaked by the brewer, so there is no chance that this beer will taste the same, it’s just an approximation.

One of my bugbears is “that homebrew taste” that everyone knows, but which is notoriously difficult to pin down. I certainly can’t describe what the “homebrew taste” actually tastes like, and I’m not sure many people can. You know it when you taste it. I’ve had beers from professional breweries with that taste, which goes to show that it can happen to anyone. In a previous post, regarding the results of Brew 1 (my first full-mash brew (here)) a discussion ensued in the comments, and a few suggestions were made. One which struck a chord with me was post-fermentation oxidation. Not only did it seem possible, indeed likely, it was also relatively easy to do something about.

Bearing this in mind, the transfer of the beer from the fermentation vessel to the pressure barrel was made with very great care. As the beer began to flow through the siphon tube into the barrel, I ensured that the beer ran down the inside of the barrel, and the beer was not allowed to splash. As soon as there was enough beer in the barrel to make it possible, the end of the siphon tube was placed under the surface of the beer, thus ensuring no air got into the beer through splashing. The barrel was sealed tight and moved to a cool place for secondary fermentation.

After two days, I returned to the barrel and gently unscrewed the lid. There was a satisfying hiss, and when this died down, I resealed the barrel. In this way, I hoped to remove most of the air trapped in the barrel after the transfer from the fermentation vessel. The capacity of the barrel is much larger than the capacity of my boiler, so the barrel was not much over half full. The carbon dioxide produced by the secondary fermentation is heavier than air, so in an ideal situation, the gas that is vented off the beer is air, not carbon dioxide. Of course there is some mixing, and you can never get all the air out of a barrel by this simple procedure, but it’s a whole heap better than nothing. I replaced the escaped air with a blast from a CO2 cylinder.

If it had been possible, I would have repeated this procedure after another two days, but I was out of the country by that time and couldn’t do it.

Brew 2

So, did it work?

I believe it did. The beer was tapped after six weeks in the barrel. The colour was a deep ruby, but nowhere near as dark as the Sarah Hughes, which is virtually black. There is also a bit of haze in it (not so important in a dark beer, but something to look at for next time). The taste, I am really happy to say, is utterly fantastic. It tastes like a proper strong dark ale, malty and sweet with the tiniest hints of chocolate and clearer notes of treacle. The head is strong and remains in place all the way down a pint pot. I can honestly say that if this was on a handpump in a pub, I would stay on it all night. And as for the “homebrew taste” – completely absent. This tastes like a proper, professionally made dark ale.

I’m using this ‘anoxic’ technique on my current brew, Brew 3, though there have been hurdles to leap in the making of this one which may work against me - more for a later blog,.

If you’re in the process of brewing at the moment, give my experience some thought. After fermentation, the beer in your fermentation bin is pretty well anoxic. It seems to be important to keep it that way. Try it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*This is a joke. Please do not refer Sarah Hughes Brewery to any animal welfare organizations. No animals are harmed in the making of beer. Except fishes, occasionally. And old cocks.

 

Tasting Beer for Sainsbury’s

Every year, Sainsbury’s invite customers to have a say in what beers the supermarket will be selling the following year. They call it the Great British Beer Hunt. This year I was fortunate enough to be one of those beer testers. The event took place in the Salford City Reds Rugby Stadium in Eccles, Manchester.

I arrived on time at 2pm and after a short introduction, we were given our scoring cards and asked to start. There were 23 bottled beers on offer, of which we had to choose eight, and of those eight, vote for four. In no particular order, I chose Two Roses First Edition, Weetwood Eastgate, Cropton Yorkshire Moors, Little Valley Stoodley Stout, Cropton Blackout, Little Valley Tods Blonde, Bateman’s Mocha and Cropton Madman’s Slaughter.

The bottles line up

I took my tray to the bar where the chosen beers were served into small plastic beakers. I also sampled different beers from my mate’s tray.

Eight beers for judging

When it came to voting, the eight that I picked, two immediately presented themselves as winners, but then I was left with the decision of which two out of three very good beers I was going to vote for. In the end, my votes went to the following four beers:

Two Roses First Edition, a 4% golden ale with a lovely pale yellow colour. The smell was bright and hoppy, and the taste was wonderfully fruity and hoppy with plenty of grapefruit pith. This beer just blew me away, I really hope it gets selected, as it would be perfect for a summer’s afternoon. A truly wonderful beer.

Little Valley Stoodley Stout. I recently had this beer on tap at the Port Street Beer House in Manchester – see here. It’s a 4.8% stout, just about black in colour with a fine brown head. The taste is rich, sweet, malty and dark with some smoke and a touch of dryness. The mouthfeel is distinctly creamy. A fabulously complex taste.

Cropton Blackout. A 5.0% porter. I had this from the cask at last year’s York Beer Festival. My review of it is here. The bottle didn’t disappoint. The smell is inviting – sweet, toffee notes promising something really good. The taste includes toffee and chocolate hints with a smooth, dryish finish. Beautiful.

Bateman’s Mocha. With a name like ‘Mocha’, there’s a certain expectation of what it’s going to taste like. And yes, it does. It’s a very dark brown in colour, 6% ABV. The smell is a subtle mix of chocolate and smoke, with the chocolate being dominant. The taste is very smooth and creamy with chocolate and dark coffee notes. It’s a stunningly good beer.

The one I had difficulty with and only dropped reluctantly, was Weetwood Eastgate, a beer I haven’t seen in bottles before (one of the stipulations for entry into the Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt was that the beer should be new, or new to bottles). I’ve had it on draught, and the draught version is superb. Slightly deceptively, the beer looks like a fairly ordinary bitter, amber in colour, but the taste is utterly gorgeous – smooth, creamy, fruity, sweet and beautifully rounded. My difficulty is that the bottled version is not quite as good. It’s still very good, but perhaps lacking a little something that the cask version has.

Having cast our votes, we walked along a corridor into another large room, where ten brewers had stands and were offering tastes of their beer and were either giving bottles away free or selling them at a much reduced price. Brewers present were from Two Roses, Weetwood, Cropton, Little Valley, Bateman’s, Thwaites, Lees, Stringer’s, Beartown and Holts.

Beartown stand in the ‘Meet the Brewer’ room

I spent longer in that room than I did in the tasting, and drank considerably more beer!The brewers were all very approachable and interesting, and I learned a lot from chatting with them.

Two Roses stand in the ‘Meet the Brewer’ room

In all this was a fantastic free way to spend an afternoon. I’ll be looking out for next year’s event, and booking my ticket early.

 

A Pub Crawl Round Sheffield – Part 3

This blog continues from Part 2 of my pub crawl round Sheffield, which can be found here.

The Bath Hotel, sadly too full for a visit

Leaving The Hop, we ventured out into the night, initially making for the Bath Hotel on Victoria Street. This pub has been sympathetically restored to its 1930s splendour, and has won a place on CAMRA’s National Inventory of historic pub interiors. Sadly, on this occasion, it was very crowded and we were unable to sit, and standing was quite a jostly affair, so we moved on to our next target, a long walk to the University Arms on Brook Hill. This pub is owned by Sheffield University and is cosy with a well-preserved interior with the bar filling one end of the long main room. Six handpumps were in operation, offering a good range of beers and styles.

The University Arms

Straight away, I spotted a Milton brew on the bar – Saturnalia. Having been impressed with Milton during a visit to their native Cambridgeshire last year (see here), I ordered myself a jar of that. I’m not quite sure what this is classified as, but it ticked all the boxes for an IPA in my book. It’s pale yellow in colour and has an ABV of 5.3%. The taste is superb, lots of hoppy bitterness with an excellent citrussy pithiness. A first class IPA.

Next, I ordered half a pint of the unappetising sounding Acorn Ancient Grease. This is a dark beer, very deep red in colour, with a comfortably quaffable 4.1% ABV. There is a clear ginger aroma to this brew, and the ginger continues into the taste, where I also found a nice, smooth, chocolate flavour. It’s a curious combination, but it works surprisingly well, and I found myself enjoying it more than I expected from the name.

The bar in the University Arms

There followed a couple of rather disappointing beers. Derby Masterplan, a 4% bitter(?) failed to raise any interest in its dull, boring taste, and Kelham Island Bohemian Rhapsody, a 4.7% bitter fared little better, being somewhat hoppy, but not terribly interesting. Time to move on to our last pub of the first day.

I have to admit to being a little beer-weary by this point in the evening. I wasn’t drunk, just full. Imagine, then, my despair when we arrived at the Rutland Arms on Brown Street and found a bar positively bristling with handpumps dispensing beers from the Dark Star brewery. They must have had a Dark Star festival or something. It was, as I’m sure you will concur, not possible to pass up on such an opportunity, and before I could say ‘Slap me with a wet fish, Mother,’* there was a pint of Dark Star’s superb 4.2% Espresso Stout sitting on the table in front of me. Dark Star brewery, from Brighton, is one of my favourite brewers. Over the years I have sampled 32 different beers from this brewery. One disappointed and two I found to be average. That leaves 29 fabulous ales. The Espresso Stout was on top form, rich and malty with a huge wallop of coffee flavour.

Not content with just one sample of Dark Star’s art, I followed the Espresso Stout with a Sussex Extra Stout, marginally stronger than Espresso at 4.5%, the taste is much more restrained. It is mildly malty with some hops present, but definitely not to the fore. The overwhelming taste is sweetness. A very drinkable stout.

By this time, I really could face no more, and Lady A and I left our by now very happy friends with the Dark Stars and made our way back to our hotel (uphill all the way!)

I slept soundly that night, and awoke the following morning keen to resume the crawl.

More later…

* I have no idea why I might have considered uttering these words, and you may be relieved to know that in fact, I did not.

 

Some Bottled Beers from a Spar Shop in Rome

Lady Alebagger and I recently had the great pleasure of spending eight days and nights in Rome. As we were not in a hotel, but in a rented apartment, we had to provide all our own food. So on our first afternoon in the Eternal City, our priority was to find a nearby supermarket for our needs. When we arrived at the apartment (in pouring rain) we were met by a lady who spoke no English, but went on to explain a great deal about the apartment, neatly ignoring our blank faces. Obviously, it would have been good if we could just have asked ‘Where’s the nearest supermarket?’, but ’twas not to be.

Off we set, then, slowly spiralling out from our apartment (about 100 yards from the Piazza della Rotonda and the Pantheon). We picked up a couple of essential items at little shops (milk etc.) but it took us some time to find the first real mini-supermarket. Of course there are no really big supermarkets in the centre of Rome, but we were delighted to find a Spar shop (or Despar, as it’s known in Italy) on the Corso Vittorio Emanuelle II, very close to the spot where Julius Caesar was murdered to death.

As Lady A went off to ferret around and hunt for essential food-type stuff, she left me to look after the wheely-basket thing we’d picked up at the door. She should have known better. She left me next to the beer shelf. There were quite a few familiar brands on the shelves, brands that I wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole, but I noticed three beers that were new to me, so I surreptitiously slipped them into the bottom of the wheely-basket.

The three beers, when I examined them more closely back at the apartment, turned out to be quite an international bunch: La Biere du Demon by Gayant in France, Ceres Stout from Royal Unibrew in Denmark, and Splugen from Poretti in Italy.

Poretti Splügen

The first to be cracked open was the 4.7% Poretti Splügen. Don’t know what Splügen is, but it’s as good a description of this beer as I could come up with. It’s definitely Splügen. Uninteresting sweet lager with no actual flavour. Splügen.*

Ceres Stout

The Ceres Stout is described on the label as a ‘double malt brown beer’ and promises ‘Doppio malto scura, ricca e corposa. Intenso aroma tostato e sapore unico’ (Double malt dark beer, rich and full-bodied. Intense toasted aroma and unique flavour.’) It is quite strong at 7.7% and is a deep black colour. The mouthfeel is thick and sweet with lots of treacle. There’s some small trace af malt in the flavour, but it’s mostly lost in the sweetness. Nice – worth a crack, if you can find it.

Our apartment was so tiny that I very quickly ran out of places to photograph my beer

The last of my Roman Spar shop beers was the pale orange Gayant La Biere du Demon (Demon’s beer), very strong at 12%, the bottle was disappointingly small at 25ml. The label says ‘La biere blonde la plus forte du monde. 12° de plaisir diabolique’ (The strongest blonde beer in the world. 12% of diabolical pleasure). I was looking forward to this. When I took my first taste it wasn’t quite what I expected, but it didn’t really disappoint. It’s sweet. The mouthfeel is slightly thick, but not as thick as you would expect from 12%. The beer holds a little fizz and there are hints of wheat in the taste. It’s not a complex flavour, but it’s pleasant enough. It really doesn’t taste like a 12% beer. Perhaps that’s a downfall. If I’m drinking a 12% beer I want to taste every one of those percentage points. This would have been fine for a 5% beer, but for 12% I expect a little more kick. Maybe if I’d had more than 25ml, I would have got it.

That’s better – now if you hadn’t seen the previous picture you would never have known, would you? Gayant La Biere du Demon

*OK, Splügen means a light coloured lager. Good word for it.

 

Two Bottled Beers from The Maltings in York

The Maltings, York

I have mentioned The Maltings pub in York once before in these blogs (see here). I have had occasion to visit the pub again since I wrote that blog, and again found an interesting range of beers. Unfortunately, I hit peak time and found the corner I was sitting in to be very crowded and jostly with loud and noisome customers who thought every noun should be preceded by an obscenity. There are signs up in The Maltings declaring it to be a no-swearing venue. It’s not. One day, I hope to get to The Maltings at an off-peak moment and just sit and enjoy the beers and what I imagine would be a fine atmosphere in this charismatic building.

Two bottled beers from The Maltings

When last there, I did manage to buy two bottles labelled as The Maltings own brews. I’ll be honest here, I’m not sure if these beers are actually brewed on the premises or are brewed for them by another local brewer. There is no mention of ‘The Maltings’ brewery in the Good Beer Guide, either in the breweries section or in the entry for the pub itself. Nor is any brewing activity mentioned on their website.

It seems that the brewer (whoever he or she is) had a surfeit of raspberries when brewing the two beers I bought, a Raspberry Wheat Beer and a Raspberry Stout. These two were the only Maltings bottled beers available that day. The labels on the bottles are plain and look like they’ve come off a computer printer. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that.

The Raspberry Wheat Beer fairly exploded out of the bottle when it was opened, leading to a mad dash for towels by Lady Alebagger. It’s not usually a good sign when bottle conditioned ales leap out of the bottle, but there appeared to be nothing wrong with the beer itself, apart from the fact that a proportion of it was spread liberally over Lady A’s furniture. The ABV of this beer is 5.6% and it presents a cloudy orange colour, more or less what I would expect from a wheat beer with raspberries in it.

Maltings Raspberry Wheat Beer

The initial mouthfuls of this beer were very gassy - hardly to be wondered at after its explosive entry into the world. The gas came out of solution within a few minutes and a more moderate texture followed. I have to admit that wheat beer is not my favourite style, so I may be a little biassed against it, but I found this beer to be fairly pleasant, though with that wheat beer kind of taste that I don’t really like very much. Ah, colour me fickle, I care not. Alongside the wheaty taste was a decent amount of spice and some distinctly fruity notes, though I’d be pushed to say that I could definitely taste raspberries. As with wheat beers in general, there is little sweetness in this beer, and after the swallow there is a good bitterness that grows in the mouth. One for wheat beer fans to try.

Maltings Raspberry Stout

The second bottle was Raspberry Stout, at 4.4%. Cautiously, I opened this bottle over the sink, but the precaution proved unnecessary. The beer poured nicely, producing a good pale brown head. The beer is a very deep red in colour. Again, I found this one very gassy to start with, but the gas soon passed (ahem!). I’m not sure what I was expecting in this beer, but it certainly wasn’t what I got. It is dry and bitter, almost sour in flavour. There is some fruit present; again I would not say that I could definitely taste raspberries, and what fruit there was did not lend any sweetness to the taste. I found the taste of this stout to be drifting into the arena of the unpleasant and rather hard going, and I’m afraid that the kitchen sink drank a fair bit of it.

So, I find myself with two good reasons to return to the Maltings. Firstly I want to experience it outside lout-hour, and secondly I want to try more of their home-labelled beers. These two, however, I will not be buying again.

www.maltings.co.uk

 

The Day I Thought My Beer Had Died

As a first solo brewing venture, Brew 2 was slightly ambitious. My first brew (see here for the brewing  and here for the tasting) had gone quite well, but I had been supervised during the brewing process. For my second brew, I decided to go for a stronger, darker beer. Specifically, it was to be a shot at something like Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, a multi-award winning strong beer, and one of my personal favourites. Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby is a very dark red ale, called a ‘mild’ because of low hop usage rather than as a reference to its strength, which is 6%. It has a wonderfully complex smooth, rich flavour. No pressure then.

I had a recipe for a similar ale which is supposed to brew out at 5.7%. I duly bought the ingredients and on a Thursday a couple of weeks ago, I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in. After some serious sterilizing, I brought the boiler up to a steady 66C and gradually introduced the grain to the mashing liquor. The grain bill for this brew is fairly high – 5kg of grain in 12.3 litres of liquor. Once the grain was settled in and I was sure there were no dry patches, I left it to steep for 90 minutes.

Heavy grain bill - pale and crystal malt

Once the mash time was complete, I sparged the grains with a further 12 litres of sparging liquor at 75C. Even after this, the liquid draining off from the sparge was still sweet. Now I had read that you should sparge until the liquid loses its sweetness. However, I had over 20 litres of wort now, and no room in the boiler for any more, so I returned the wort to the boiler and set it to boil.

This lovely coffee-and-cream head forms just before the boil

At the moment of first boiling, the wort produces a huge foamy head that can boil out and make a horrible sticky mess everywhere, so I stood by with a jug, and as the boil began, I frantically scooped the foam out and poured it down the sink. After a minute or so, the foaming died down and the wort settled into a nice, steady rolling boil. I continued the boil for 90 minutes, after which I passed the wort into a fermenting bin. I had lost quite a lot of liquid to evaporation during the boil, and measured 14 litres going into the bin. I topped it up with 5 litres of cold water to make it up to the 19 litres that this recipe was designed for.

All well and good so far. I clipped the lid onto the bin and left it to cool. I had a packet of highly recommended Munton’s Gervin English Ale Yeast. The instructions on the packet told me to rehydrate the yeast by soaking it in 50ml of water at 35C and half a teaspoon of sugar. I did as I was told and sure enough, the yeast foamed up pleasingly. The instructions then said to add this foam to 250ml of the wort. The wort had cooled to about 20C by this time, so I scooped 250ml out of the fermenting bin with a sterilized jug and added the yeast to it, giving it a good stir.

24 hours later, the little jug of wort sat on the kitchen unit with only the occasional feeble bubble struggling to the surface. I was perplexed, and left it for another 24 hours.

48 hours on and this yeast isn't doing anything

Still nothing. I was wracking my brain, trying to remember what I had done so wrong as to make my wort toxic. Had I forgotten to sterilize anything? Had I forgotten to rinse anything after it had been sterilized?

It's dead, Jim

As I struggled with my thoughts, Lady Alebagger returned from a shopping trip and handed me something she had bought for me. It was a packet of Safale S-04 yeast. I ripped the top off the packet and sprinkled it directly onto the surface of the wort in the fermenting bin. Last hope.

IT LIVES!

The following morning, the wort had a fine head of lively bubbles that developed over the next couple of days into a bizarre sculpted foamy head.

Whoa!

The original gravity was 1.060 and the fermentation was all done at 1.018. This works out to an ABV of 5.4%. That’s not bad.

Brew 2 is now sitting in a pressure barrel and will remain there for six weeks before I taste it.

Munton's Gervin, left, and Safale S-04, right

So what happened with the Munton’s yeast? As I said, it came highly recommended, and Munton’s is a company with an enviable reputation. The yeast was well within the ‘use-by’ date and I followed the instructions to the letter. Is the rehydrating temperature of 35C too warm (I wouldn’t pitch yeast into wort at this temperature)? Was it just a bad batch? Will I ever try it again? Probably, but not just yet.

 

A Pub Crawl Round Sheffield – Part 2

This blog follows on directly from Part 1 of my Sheffield pub crawl here.

The Frog & Parrot

As we left the last blog, I was in the Waterworks, a ‘Spoons. Leaving there, we walked along to Devonshire Street for our next two pubs. The first was the invitingly named Frog & Parrot. At first glance, it doesn’t look like a pub from the outside and perhaps aware that the name does not immediately shout ‘Pub!’, the owners have helpfully added the words ‘the pub’ to their signage.

The bar in the Frog & Parrot

Inside, the pub is attractively laid out with tables on different levels. The bar sported beers from Greene King and St Austell. Being something of a contrarian, I opted for the beer with the oddest name, Lord Parrot by ‘Domo Cervesia’, which I suppose just means ‘house beer’. I have no idea who actually brews this, but I realised that I wouldn’t be able to get it anywhere else (at least under that name) so I duly bought myself a jar of it. It’s a 3.8% bitter, orange coloured and slightly cloudy. It has a fairly ‘modern’ taste, not really like a traditional bitter. It’s smooth with hints of grain and cream, and it actually slid down quite nicely. I’d be happy with it for a session.

The Old House

Back to warp speed, no time to waste, we headed off to the next bar, just across the road. The Old House has a rather grand frontage, and inside is surprisingly roomy. The tables are mostly against the walls, leaving a large open space between them. The atmosphere is friendly and comfortable, and importantly, there is a well-stocked bar. Somewhere on the pub premises there is also a proto-brewery, True North. Their very first beer was on offer that day, so I had to go for it. First Born (also the name I coined for my first ever beer brew 20 or so years ago) is a 4.3% bitter (similar to my own Firstborn). It’s a nice pale yellow in colour. The hops are present more in flavour than in bitterness. It’s smooth and really quite a pleasant beer.

Inside The Old House

I next opted for another local Sheffield brew, Kelham Island 45rpm (I’m old enough that 45rpm means something to me! Try telling a kid these days ‘You sound like a broken record’ – ‘A what?’). 45rpm is a 4.5% bitter (hence the name, I guess), with a nice orange colour. My first thought was that this beer was distinctly odd. It was bitter, but there was a strange rough edge to the taste that I couldn’t identify.

Finally for the Old House, I went off at an obtuse angle and plumped for a Franziskaner Weissbier. This is a traditional Bavarian wheat beer, cloudy white with an ABV of 5%. Frankly, I’m no expert on wheat beers, but this had all the flavours I would expect, but seemed rather sweeter than most examples of the style that I’ve tasted, and was very good. A nice palate freshener.

The Hop

We’d dawdled long enough in the pleasant environs of The Old House and so we moved on to a far more modern looking pub, The Hop, a very fashionable venue for fine ale and live music which still somehow manages to maintain the comfortable atmosphere of a traditional pub. The bar is long and sports an impressive array of handpumps. To the left is a large, semicircular room with a completely glass exterior wall. At one side there’s a small stage where the bands perform. The beers on offer were quite varied. There’s a good range of beers from Ossett brewery and from Ossett’s offshoot, the Rat Brewery. Ossett Brewery’s other offshoots are Fernandes and Riverhead. I also noted beers from Hawkshead and Fullers.

The bar in The Hop

As Rat is fairly new (it only started operating in September 2011), I went for a Brown Rat, a traditional 3.8% brown ale. It was surprisingly smooth, with clear notes of malt and treacle, though quite sweet, just as a brown ale should be.

As we sat by the great glass wall of The Hop, darkness descended on the city of Sheffield, and we prepared ourselves for our first night in the Steel City…

Go straight to Part 3

 

Three Bottled Beers from Bowland

Three Bottled Beers from Bowland Brewery

On 28th March, Bowland Brewery announced on its website that their three bottled beers would henceforth be available in all Spar shops throughout the Northwest. Six weeks earlier, I had noticed them in my local Spar and had bought a sample of each one.

Bowland Brewery is based in Bashall, a few miles from Clitheroe in Lancashire. The brewery is located within the beautiful Forest of Bowland.

The three ales that Bowland regularly bottle are Sky Dancer, Headless Peg and Cromwell Stout. All are 4.5%, which stumps me as I like to drink from low to high ABV. This time I’ll go from light in colour to dark.

Sky Dancer

Sky Dancer is named after the Hen Harrier, a rare bird of prey that breeds in the Forest of Bowland. It is a golden ale, pale orange in colour. It has an intriguing smell of hops and peaches. The peaches carry through into the sweet, fruity initial taste, where they are joined by citrus notes. The taste rolls seamlessly into a good hoppy bitter finish.

Headless Peg

Headless Peg is named after a local servant girl, or water spirit (accounts vary) Peg O’Nell, whose headless statue (or at least a statue of St Margaret of Antioch, beheaded by the Romans) stands at Waddow Hall, close to the brewery. It’s complicated. There’s a good round-up of the legend here.

The beer is a deep ruby-red bitter. The initial hit is of dry bitterness, surprisingly bitter, in fact. There are strong fruit notes which go some way to mitigating the bitterness. Tastes like raisins. The finish is really quite dry and bitter which makes the beer refreshing and always interesting.

Cromwell Stout

The last of Bowland’s bottled beers is Cromwell Stout. Named after one of English history’s most horrible men, who apparently passed through Clitheroe on his way to the Battle of Preston in 1648. His ‘warts and all’ image winks cheekily from the label, a gesture which he would have personally frowned on, after all, he made laughing in public and the celebration of Christmas criminal offences. The label states that this beer is a ‘puritanically wicked stout’. Here we see how words evolve over time. In Cromwell’s time, wicked meant really mean, nasty and evil (like the man himself). Now apparently it means really, really good. In both cases the label fits. Cromwell was 17th century wicked, Cromwell Stout is 21st century wicked. It is a deep red colour, black in most lights. There is a distinct hoppiness about the taste, which has dark chocolate notes and a hint of bitter fruit. Wicked.

Looking through my notes, I see that I have also had three Bowland beers on draught:

Bowland Gold. A 4.2% amber-coloured bitter. Very smooth and tasty with notes of citrus. Not really bitter, but with a slightly bitter twist at the finish.

Bowland Hen Harrier (there’s that bird again).  A bright yellow 4% bitter. A lovely ‘summery’ beer with prominent floral notes and plenty hops.

Bowland Sawley Tempted. An orangey brown 3.7% bitter. Quite smooth, light, hoppy and drinkable.

 

Nøgne Ø

If you mention the words ‘Norway’ and ‘beer’ in the same sentence, someone nearby is bound to take a sharp intake of breath and mutter darkly about how expensive it is to drink beer in that country. ‘Ten quid a pint!’ someone will add, knowingly. Well, yes, Norway is known for its high beer prices – not sure if it’s actually ten quid a pint, but there is now more to Norway and beer than the legendary high price tag.

Recently, a quiet revolution has been unfolding in the Norwegian beer industry. It is, at last, the advent of the microbrewery. Whilst micros are hugely popular and plentiful in the UK and the US, Norway at present can claim only 9. But that’s 9 more than there used to be.

Perhaps the most recognised of the Norwegian micros outside Norway is Nøgne Ø brewery in remote Grimstad, a small town in the south of Norway, 135 miles from Oslo. ‘Nøgne Ø’ is a quotation from Henrik Ibsen and means ‘naked island’, a reference to the many bleak outcroppings of rock off Norway’s southern coast. The company was founded in 2002 by two homebrewers who evidently thought they had what it takes to produce extraordinary, comercially-viable beer. The last decade has proved them right.

Their website lists nearly 30 beers that they produce and (bizarrely, it may seem) 5 different sakes (Japanese rice wines).

Fascinated by this success story, I decided to try two different Nøgne Ø bottled beers available here in the UK. The large ‘Ø’ on the labels is becoming familiar to those who seek out fine beers. Both these beers were bottle conditioned and in excellent form.

Nøgne Ø Saison

Nøgne Ø Saison - A strong saison beer. Saisons are originally from French Belgium and are traditionally rather low-alcohol beers, 3.8% or thereabouts, but Nøgne Ø Saison comes in with a fairly whopping 6.5%. It’s a pale yellow in colour, almost straw-coloured, with a massive, wacky foamy white head that is difficult to control during the pour. The bottle warns that there will be sediment in the bottom of the bottle so to pour carefully if you want the beer in the glass to remain clear and bright. Once I’d seen the clear brightness, I dumped the rest of the beer into the glass. It’s a shame to waste good beer just because it’s got a bit of sediment in it. The taste is very sweet, crisp and citrussy. It tastes a little bit like a wheat beer (and it wasn’t the cloudiness that prompted me to think this, it really does taste that way). There is a dry bitterness, especially at the end. There’s pepper in there and something else, something a bit herbal – coriander, perhaps. The taste also carries a spiciness with it that adds a touch of the exotic. This is wonderful beer. I would especially love to drink it on a hot summer afternoon looking out over some great view somewhere. I’m not fussed where I am, just give me the beer.

Nøgne Ø Porter

Nøgne Ø Porter - Here again, they’ve gone for strength over tradition. 7% is strong for a porter, you’d think they would call it a stout. This strong porter pours a deep black in colour, barely red round the edges even when held up to a bright light. The head is dense and brown. It is incredibly smooth with a velvety, creamy mouthfeel. The flavour is dominated by a sweet roasted maltiness with plum and hints of dark, bitter coffee, which slowly dries in the mouth after the swallow. There are slight spirituous overtones, but not as much as you might expect from a 7% beer. This beer is a real mouthful.

If you want to demonstrate to someone the fabulous range of flavours available from beer, you could do little better than to give them these two beers. Wildly different styles, wildly different flavours. Both hugely complex and utterly wonderful.

http://www.nogne-o.com/

 

The First Taste of My First Brew

Five weeks ago, I made my first ‘full-mash’ or ‘all-grain’ brew. I followed a recipe that was supposed to emulate Timothy Taylor Landlord, an award-winning pale ale (CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain 1982, 1983, 1994 and 1999). I had two good reasons for selecting this particular recipe. Firstly, the recipe was fairly simple, mostly pale malt with a little black, and easily available hops – Goldings and Styrian Goldings. The description of the brewing can be found in a previous blog. Secondly, Taylor Landlord is an excellent beer.

After fermenting for a week, the specific gravity was steady at 1.014, so I transferred the beer to a pressure barrel, primed with a little (50g) sugar. The book I was following the recipe from (Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler, CAMRA Books, 2009, 3rd Edition) recommended leaving the beer to mature one week for every 0.01 of original gravity. As the OG of my brew was 1.043, I waited for four weeks, though not without the odd sneaky sip.

As the beer was supposed to emulate Taylor Landlord, I drank it side by side with a bottle of Landlord that had been kept at the same temperature as the cask.

Brew 1 to the left, Taylor Landlord to the right

Seen side by side, the Landlord was a shade or two lighter than my brew.The head of my brew was slightly whiter and consisted of slightly larger bubbles, though this could have been a result of the method of dispense.

The Landlord was smooth with a warm malty start, and a burst of hop bitterness at the end. There are slight hints of caramel and it is clean and crisp throughout.

My beer, which in a flash of creative genius I dubbed ‘Brew 1′ also starts with a warmish malty taste, and yes, it’s followed by a touch of hoppy bitterness, but nowhere near as ‘clean’ as the Landlord. I thought the hops were far more noticeable about three weeks ago, at my first crafty sip. They seem to have faded a little now, though a distinctly hoppy bitterness continues in the mouth long after the swallow. Also present in the taste are occasional hints of acetaldehyde, though this is by no means as prominent as it has been in previous kit beers that I’ve brewed.

Overall, my biggest disappointment in this beer is that it still tastes rather like homebrew. It’s a subtle flavour complex that I can’t describe, but I’m sure all homebrewers are familiar with. I don’t know what it is. I wish I did.

Having said the above, the beer is tasty and really quite drinkable. It presents well with a bright white head, which lasts well, and only a very slight protein haze. I’m drinking some as I write this.

So, winner? Loser? I’m going to withhold a judgement for now. On the pro side, I’m happy to drink it and happy to offer it to any guests who may visit Alebagger Towers and Brewery. It does taste like beer, it does have a nice malt/hop balance and it slides down quite easily. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, after all, this is my first brew, and young Timmy’s been at it for 164 years.

On the con side, it’s still a bit ‘homebrewy’.

Colour comparison

Next, I’m going for a darker, stronger brew. I’ll report back in due course.

For those interested in the technicalities, here’s the recipe I followed:

The brew is 19 litres.

3510g Pale Malt 25g Black Malt

Mashed at 66C for 90 minutes

Start of boil – 25g Golding hops, 25g Styrian goldings.

Boiled for 90 minutes.

Last 10 minutes of boil – 16g Styrian goldings plus 3g Irish Moss

Mash liquor 8.8l