Blackberry Blonde

You’ve heard me say it before on this blog: the best laid plans and all that…

We’d got it all worked out – our latest highly experimental brew was to be a Lilac Blonde ale – genuinely, as the name suggests, a blonde ale flavoured with lilac petals. You can make lilac wine; you can make elderflower blonde ale, so why not lilac blonde ale?

So what went wrong? Well it was just timing really. The lilac flowers are only at their best for a week or two, and a weekend away, a load of hot weather so they never really got to full scent and my wife coming off her bike and breaking her pelvis meant that we were just never in the right place at the right time. So that brew has gone in the diary for next year.

So we needed a fall-back plan because we were determined to do some sort of flavoured blonde ale. Hence the Blackberry Blonde, which we made this Monday. It’s a fairly standard continental blonde ale recipe (think Leffe) – lager malt, carapils, munich malt and a little wheat. We fermented it for two days, then added 1.5kg of pulped blackberries to the fermenter. Actually, to be honest, we used mixed bags of frozen dark fruit which we carefully separated on a tray. So in fact it was blackberries, cherries, raspberries, blackcurrants and a few strawberries. But we’re calling it Blackberry Blonde. Maybe Black Berry Blonde is a little more accurate.

As you can see in the photos below, it looks like an alarming amount of fruit in 5 gallons of beer. It fermented like crazy until today, and now it’s slowed right down. I expect it will take another week to finish off, then we’ve got an interesting problem of how to get all the fruit pulp strained from the beer when we put it into the keg…

Spent Grain Bread

We’ve just finished making the Rushton Imperial Stout, and are sitting down feeling good about a creative day. It was a massive brew, and we ended up using both the borrowed mash tun and our own mash tun.

9.2 kg of grain!

Running off from TWO mash tuns

When we’d finished mashing I started scooping out the masses of spent grain, which tasted rather sweet compared to our usual brews. This is because the beer is very strong so we didn’t want to let it down too much by sparging a lot (washing the grains with hot water), so we ended up with some of the sugar left behind in the grain.

Bread! Surely some of the spent grain would make an interesting loaf of bread? I pulled out the breadmaker and dumped in a large scoop of grain – probably about 200g (so a drop in the ocean). I also added about 350g of white bread flour and the usual yeast, salt and fat. No sugar – I reckoned the grains were sweet enough anyway.

The result is highly dark (despite only white bread flour), very doughy and (eaten still hot with butter) utterly delicious!

Rushton Imperial Stout

I know we try to avoid puns as much as possible in our beer names, but I couldn’t resist this one! (OK, so actually there have been a few puns: Bohemian Wrenbury, Wheat Nancy, Knutsford Brown Ale, Audlem Unusual. So this one joins a long tradition of puns at Cheshire Peaks).

Anyway, for those that don’t know, Russian Imperial Stout is a beer style that takes stout to extremes – as big, rich and bold as a stout can be. They are usually about 9% ABV and highly bitter, then bottled and matured for at least a year. You may have had Courage Russian Imperial Stout – this is the classic. It’s something of an acquired taste, being so dark and roasty. I remember it being rather like drinking burnt toast.

So why now? Well we’ve just made a couple of lighter beers: An “English Pale Ale” (based on Marston’s EPA) and a southern brown ale (very malty and low bitterness, a bit like Mann’s Original Brown Ale). This has left us with a huge yeast cake, which will be ideal for fermenting such a big beer as a Russian Imperial Stout.

There’s a slight problem however. The malt bill is huge! To achieve 8.5% it requires about 9.2kg of malt. (82.7% Maris Otter, 6.5% Roast Barley, 4.3% Special B, 2.2% CaraMunich, 2.2% Chocolate, 2.2% Pale Chocolate). Way back, we made our own mash tun out of a freezer box, and we’ve found that this can hold no more than 5.5kg of grain. So we’ve borrowed our friend Andy’s larger mash tun (also a freezer box, but a commercial one from Brupaks) – this, he says, will hold up to 10kg of grain.

Talking of grain, we have neighbours that keep a few chickens down the road. We’ve tried them out with a bit of the spent grains recently, and they seem to love it. So they won’t be going hungry after Monday’s brew day.

Giving away beer

I have recently discovered a true joy in life: giving away something that I have made to friends. I don’t make beer to save money, nor because I particularly need lots of beer to drink; I make beer because I enjoy the process and the satisfaction of creating something. So to be able to share it with friends just adds to the enjoyment of the whole process.

I’ve recently given away bottles of the Audlem Smoky and Coole Pilate to John, Harry, Simon, Steve, Bruce and Ernie.

I had some lovely feedback from John (and I know he reads this blog), so I thought I’d share some of it with you.

“Wow. Loved them both. Neither would appear in my list of "normal tipple of choice" but that said, I really did enjoy them. The lager was very well gassed and sparkled quite merrily on pouring. The fizz didn't last much past halfway - I don't know how the commercial breweries manage to keep a drink sparkling to the bottom of the glass but there must be a trick to it - but the flavour was delightfully fresh and distinctively lagerish, although to my palate it also had echoes of a pale ale.

“The Audlem Smokey was a revelation… I wouldn't want more than one glass on any one occasion, but as a sipping beer on a Friday night (when I drank them both) it was near perfect.”

Cheers John! Glad you enjoyed them!

Brew Dog Bar, Manchester

This is a little off topic, for which I apologise in advance. Andy and I visited the Brew Dog Bar, on Peter Street in Manchester yesterday, and I thought I’d write a few words about it and share a few photos in case you live locally and are interested to try it out.

Brew Dog are based in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, and were formed in 2007. They pride themselves in utterly shaking up the brewing format, claiming they are a “post Punk apocalyptic motherf*cker of a craft brewery”. What does that mean in beer terms? It means they take just about every style of beer that exists and warp and twist it to the maximum degree. Some may not be to your taste (in fact a lot may not be to your taste!), but you have to admire them for tackling an industry steeped in tradition head on. (In fact, regarding that, have a read of this previous post).

So, enough about Brew Dog themselves (if you want to know more, see their web site). What are the beers like? And what are the bars like? And what can Cheshire Peaks learn from all that?

Beers

Well the first thing to say is that they make a LOT of beers. In the bar they had about 12 beers on draught, plus dozens and dozens in bottles. All Brew Dog beers. So no shortage of choice then. But wait, these are no ordinary beers. Many are too strong to sell in pints. The majority are between 6% and 10%, and they go up to Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%) and Sink the Bismarck (41%). Really. Both these are sold in 25ml shots, at £5.

As for the rest of their beers… well they do like their American hops. And their IBUs. I had a pint of Dead Pony Club – it’s light at 3.8%, but the hop flavour takes the lining off the roof of your mouth. I loved it, but not to everyone’s taste.

Andy had a half of Goldings. A half? Well, it is 6.7%, and hopped to hell (again) but this time with an English hop. It was very interesting to see what happens when you take such a hop to its limit. (Again, it was very nice).

Gill had their Tayberry Berliner Weisse. Berliner Weisse is a very traditional style, which is extremely sour and very light in alcohol, and usually served with a fruit syrup. In this case the ABV had been pumped up to 5% and the fruit already added. It was delicious but intensely sour. (And I was delighted that Gill liked it – it seems she’ll drink beers as sour as they come, but she won’t touch bitter beers).

Finally we had to try the Tactical Nuclear Penguin. This was served in a large wine glass. It is a dark dark conker colour and has an intensely oxidised aroma, like a really dark old sherry. Taste-wise (sipped like a whisky), it has more deep rich oxidised flavours, but was not vaporous like a whisky. More like a really intense and concentrated PX sherry but with added bitterness. Mad, but well worth a try.

What can Cheshire Peaks learn from all this? Well the main thing is anything goes! This is the great thing about beer – there are so many flavours to work with that there are an almost infinite combination of possibilities. You don’t have to stick to “styles”. That may be a good place to start, but after that you need to branch out and experiment. We have already discussed making a “Goldings++” beer – to see how much bitterness we can extract out of this English hop.

Bars

As you can see from the photos below, the bars have a hard industrial feel, with bare walls and exposed concrete and girders. The seating was either comfortable bar stools at tall tables or low armchairs. No TV screens, but there was a pinball machine. The staff were chatty and friendly. Clientele was, not surprisingly, mostly students. No one batted an eyelid at having our kids with us.

We had a very enjoyable drink, and I’d gladly go back again. Long may Brew Dog cause waves in the beer market.

Filtered water

I’ve heard some people talk about the fact that the chlorine or chloramine added to drinking water can be detected in beer. It’s not something I’ve noticed myself, but in the spirit of trying to make the best beer possible, I’ve been giving it some thought.

Traditionally water companies use chlorine to kill bacteria in drinking water. Some people can smell this in the water. For this reason some companies are switching to adding chloramine. This has the same anti-bacterial effect, but cannot be tasted or smelt in the water. But it does, apparently, react with the beer itself to produce off-flavours in the finished beer. It’s also harder to get rid of.

Chlorine can be removed by boiling the water. Well wort gets boiled so that ought to cover it. Chloramine cannot be removed through boiling. It has to be removed by charcoal filtering the water, or using a campden tablet.

Since I have a water filter in my fridge, I have filtered the water we used in the last three brews. See the photo below for the ingenious method we used for making the filtering process a bit easier.

But having said all that, I am starting to feel that this is solving a problem that we don’t have. I’ve checked on our local water company web site, and the implication is that they still use chlorine, not chloramine. And whilst we have been working very hard to identify the cause of “that homebrew taste” (note to self: must do another post on this soon), I am coming to the conclusion that chlorine or chloramine isn’t it. But you have to consider these things!

Rauchbier

You may remember that back in January we made a very successful brew called Audlem Smoky – a smoked old ale. The smoked flavour comes from rauchmalz – a Bavarian beech-wood smoked malt that imparts a distinctive smoky flavour. As I mentioned in the post, another common smoked beer is Rauchbier – a malt-rich lager with a sweet smoky aroma and flavour.

Well, we had 2kg of rauchmalz that needed using up… so that was yesterday’s brew. Being a lager, this is fermented at 10C, so we need to use the garage fridge and the temperature controller to maintain the right temperature. The brew day went well and fermentation appears to have started.

I’ve only had one rauchbier (at Wincle Brewery, when I did my brew for a day). It’s a fascinating beer: both cool and clean flavoured (being a lager) but also sweet and intensely smoky. Rather like a soft Bavarian smoked cheese (funnily enough).

Andy hunted for an idea for a name for our rauchbier – looking for a Cheshire connection but also something to do with smoke. He discovered that there was a Great Fire of Nantwich in 1583 which was, ironically, started in the local brewery. And so the name was found: Nantwich 1583.

Photo: http://www.nantwichtowncouncil.gov.uk/?page_id=657 with thanks.