Friday 21 January 2011

Brewers Weekend

What do Brewers do on a weekend?  Go away with other brewers to talk (and drink) beer!  Pip and I spent last weekend at Llantrwrtd Wells near ...... well it's not near anywhere really - maybe 20 miles north of Brecon.  We stayed at the delightful Neuadd Arms Hotel which has what all good hotels should have - its own microbrewery.  Recommended for a weekend of complete relaxation.

Anyway it's amazing what you learn in brief conversations with other brewers about yeast, heating elements, hopping rates, prices, maturation times, the SIBA DDS scheme - anything really.  We always keep our beer for two weeks to mature/condition before release but quite a few brewers seem to sell it as soon as it's in the cask. Some pride themselves on producing an enormous range - black, gold, brown, black, weisen, copper, chestnut - you name it.  Makes one feel rather inadequate with two!

The first time we went on one of these weekends last year we had only been brewing for about six weeks and I asked how people got the brown staining off the inside of their coppers as I was spending about an hour after brewing  scrubbing it with caustic soda solution to get it bright.  The answer I got was "what on earth would you want to do that for?" so my copper is now the colour of the inside of a well loved teapot - clean but a nice shade of brown.  That piece of advice has probably saved me a week of work since.

Thursday 13 January 2011

All In A Brewer's Day?

Wednesday 12th January started as an ordinary brewday at 7.00 in the morning putting the mash on for an 8bbl brew of Scholar.  This promised to be interesting as we are swapping a hop out to build the flavour profile (Scholar uses five hop varieties introduced in three stages).  Somehow it turned into a media day with BBC TV South Today filming bittering hops going into the copper at 13.00 and carrying out a news interview.  Then quite separately I was called by the BBC Radio Oxford Drivetime show at 2.30 for an interview.  Was this a new upsurge in interest in local brewing?  No.

It was because we responded to a BBC South Today item on the previous evening concerning late/missing post in Oxfordshire.  They asked anyone who had suffered from this to email in which we did because we have had letters taking weeks to get to us since November - it's a bit embarassing to chase money from customers to be told they sent it weeks before.  Anyway, before you could say "crap royal mail" we had a media invasion

Well, I did enjoy my 15 seconds on telly as "grumpy old man" at 6.30 which I just got home in time to see.  And the beer?  Well the late hops went in a bit later than usual but hey, what comes first, telly or beer?


Media Tart Brewer