GADDS' Number 3 - Best Kentish Beer

An ecstatic Summer Gadd celebrates the brewery's success before school this morning.

The Ramsgate Brewery won a coveted TOKA at last night's award ceremony held at Leeds Castle, following last year's 'Best Kent Brewery' award with 'Best Kentish Beer' ('Best Beer of Kent').

In a closely contested final, GADDS' Number 3 beat Shepherd Neame's Spitfire Ale and Chapel Down's Brut to emerge victorious.

Many thanks to everyone who voted on-line to get us to the final; if you show up at the brewery over the next 7 days and mutter 'TOKA' I'll make sure you get a free bottle.

Cyclops Tasting Notes

Regular reader Ben bemoans festival tasting notes that talk fancy and much prefers the simplified 'Cyclops' system. He wants me, at great expense, to send 1 gallon samples of my ale to the boys at Everards Brewery (owners of Cyclopsbeer) and get them to tell me what they taste like. After forking out a small fortune I'll be sent a jpeg with simplified, standardised tasting notes on it that Ben understands.

OK, will do. In fact, have done. Find them here.

Ben does have a point - I'm just naturally sceptical of joining in with anything.

Califermentation

“One day if I do go to heaven...
I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'”

Herb Caen.

I went there (SF, not heaven) for a week back in the nineties and I sort of understand the sentiment; it's the only city I've ever remotely pined for (most pining is reserved, of course, for Blackpool which is a town, not a city).

Even further back though, during the mid-nineteenth century gold rush, necessity (mother of invention) forced thirsty bavarian migrants into fermenting beer with lager yeast at the slightly higher ale-yeast temperatures due to a lack of refridgeration. The result was known as 'steam' beer or 'common' ale. It was quickly brewed and therefore cheap and plentiful.

'Anchor Steam' ale, brewed at the Anchor Steam Brewery is the defining example of the style and since I, US Steve and Young Phil have all visited this brewery (albeit a decade apart) we decided to pay homage to the famous ale/lager beer with our very own interpretation.
'Common Conspiracy', true to style, is an amber ale with a gentle, sweet hop aroma. It starts of beautifully malty before the German grown 'Northern Brewer' hops kick in and lend a refreshing long bitterness. It really doesn't know, or care, whether it's an ale or a lager - I don't think you'll care either.

It'll be available from next week at all decent East Kent ale houses.

GADDS' Number 1 Barley Wine

By mixing malted barley with brewing liquor (water treated with salts and acids) we create a porridge like infusion called a 'mash'. Enzymes in the malt quickly go to work converting the cereal starch into simpler sugars such as glucose and fructose. Later, brewers' yeast will metabolise these sugars into alcohol.

You'll have deduced by now that the strength of a beer is reliant upon the amount of malt employed to brew a fixed amount of it. The above photograph shows the mash tun as it is just at the moment: filled to the absolute brim. More full in fact than it has ever been before. The majority is a quater tonne of pale malted barley but there is some crystallised malt, a little roasted barley, some chocolate malt and a judicious weight of crystallised rye in there too. We're brewing a barley wine, already titled 'GADDS' Number 1' and as yet of indeterminate strength.

More on that later.

Like I said, it beats working for a living.

HSSOS1

Say hello to our new addition, HSSOS1. It's a rather large in-line hop-seed strainer suitable for a brewhouse 10 times the size of ours. Cunningly, I'm going to fill it with fresh hops and pump beer through it, completely reversing it's design use.

Hops contain an extraordinary amount of flavour compounds and by using them in different ways we extract different attributes. Tomorrow I'll brew a barley wine and look to get some peppery spicy notes by using the HSSOS1.

Well it's better than working for a living.

Note to competition - this was the last one and getting one fabricated will cost more than you're prepared to pay. You can borrow this one though if you like.

Ancestors Whisky Cask Porter

I made a strong brown beer last year and left it in some Islay whisky casks for 50 days. The aroma is all peat and smoke and wood and whisky. The flavour starts off as whisky before mellow ale takes over, occassionally displaying hops and finishing with wood and peat.

It was my first attempt and it is ready for sale, from the brewery, in small bottles.

Come and try some, sitting down.

News update

Here's a quick roundup of brewery news:

The White Cliffs Winter Beer Festival kicks the beer season off this evening (sorry for the late notice) and a sell out crowd will inevitably leave you outside in the cold. However, tomorrow is also a good day to visit and is not sold out.

Here is last year's post about it - not much has changed. This year we sent a cask of INDIA - it's a strong pale ale. A very strong one, with lots and lots of hops in it.

Our bi-monthly specials, 80 Shilling Ale and Great Scot!, are selling very well indeed - the latter, you'll remember, is malty and sweet whilst the former is something unique: a pale beer brewed with Islay peated malt for that juicy smoky flavour, unavailable anywhere else, to my knowledge. This is such a strange brew that I'm completely dumbfounded by its seeming popularity out there - you are a bunch of nutters! I've already brewed thrice as much as I intended to and it has still sold out with three weeks to go - well done, you deserve an 'open-minded beer drinker' T-shirt.

The next bi-monthly installments have both been brewed this week and will each spend two weeks reposing on a bed of hops - Dragon's Blood ESB is back to stay for two months this year, partenered by 'A Common Conspiracy' - another collaboration with the Saints and Sinners Brewers, Steve & Phil. I'll tell you more when I have the time but for now, know that it's an amber ale in the Californian Steam (or Common) Beer style - a beer that transcends the lager/ale boundary. We brewed it just 24 hours ago and the fermenting room smells of gorgeous German and American hops.

The shop shelves are largely bereft of euro-beer at the moment and nothing is yet on order - I'm waiting for the Mighty M to fill some of our casks and hoping the exchange rate swings in favour in the meantime. Watch this space.

That's all for today, now, when's the next Dover train?

CCV YP01 - welcome aboard.

A new vessel arrived on Thursday last week - it'll be pressed into service as a part of a yeast propagation system just soon as I find the various bits that I think I still need. This shiny newcomer hails from the North and I've rather taken to it already.