Lets Have a Beer @ The Chequer Inn

This is a brand new concept, dreamed up on the hoof all of 10 minutes ago: me and the miscreants go to the pub for a beer. That sounds mundane, everyday even, and so it is. Only, this time, perhaps once a month or so, we tell you which pub and what time, giving you all ample time to change your plans to ensure you aren't caught in the same place, at the same time, as a bunch of boring idiots who just want to talk about beer to you.

The first such event is posted on our 'Events' wall on our FB page.

Lets Have a Beer @ The Chequer Inn, tomorrow, April 1st, from 07:30pm.

Really, it isn't a joke, I've yet to think of one of those. Anyway, should you be stuck at the bar with me just mention Blackpool and I'll buy you a pint.

National Cask Ale Week

..starts on Monday next, the 29th of March and runs for, yes, a week. It's been an annual for a few years now but as with most such 'National this and that week' no one really knows what to do during them, neither organisers, vested interests nor public. However, the cask ale industry has breweries and it has pubs, both splendid places to visit. 'Tis pure coincidence though that we're opening our doors tomorrow for Kent's Big Out Day Open Day tomorrow (as heard this morning on the BBC, all welcome 10 'til 3) and that we're 'launching' (I hope that *isn't* the right word) GADDS' Uberhop Traditional Lager Ale at next weekend's Thanet Ale Planet Fest at Margate Winter Gardens (I believe I may have mentioned that before but it bears repeating).

So, remember, celebrate National Cask Ale Week by drinking good beer, in a good pub. Or at our gaff. Or in Margate Winter Gardens.

talk talk

Now that I've got a more proper job, you know, one where I sit at desk finding stuff to pretend to do for half the week as opposed to making stuff everyday, it's time to move on to the next project. The idea that I'm in someway skilled in the esoteric art of communications and information management can be adequately, and rapidly, quashed to dirt by the vaguest surftrip through our on-line presence, but I fully intend to learn, to improve and to triumph! My goal is to use such tools as are (freely) available and generally used, to talk to you, in a more or less one way manner, from dawn 'til dusk (when my local opens and when I can go and talk to someone else) about beer.

With that in mind, my first fumbling attempts at cyber-intercourse can be found here and here.

As you can, I've a long way to go.....

I've got no fans, as is advertised on my FB 'badge' in the sidebar. But you know what? I'm too old to care.

Lobbying

Ken Clarke MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Tuesday March 23rd, 2010

Dear Mr Clarke,

I read recently of your taste for a decent pint of beer and that you particularly liked 'Dogbolter' (A Pint of Dogbolter shouldn't be beyond our Ken, Telegraph January 19th). I used to brew that beer as an employee of the Firkin Brewery and after they closed down I set up shop with my wife here in sunny East Kent. We resurrected the beer and now distribute it throughout the local area. It may have changed a little, grown up a bit, perhaps mellowed somewhat but it remains a dark and heady brew, one to hit the spot.

As a socialist type of chap I experienced mixed emotions upon reading that a member of the Tory party shared a liking for this particular brew, but my Dad always liked you and so too do I (you're a Europhile, that's a good start). So please find enclosed a bottle to enjoy late one night after a particularly gruelling day in opposition (where long may you remain, no offence intended). I ask nothing in return except that you do something about those neo-prohibitionists intent on making our lives a complete misery. Do, please, shut them up.

Yours etc etc etc

Big Kent's Day Out

The good Mrs Gadds'beershop is a hospitable soul, happy to welcome all manner of visitors to both brewery and home. I'm not. I'm the very counterpoint to her generosity (I'll stop there I think). Anyway, via Kent's Big Day Out she'll be entertaining all manner of curious folk on Saturday from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon. You too are invited. It doesn't cost anything, you get to see the new brewery, to sup a little ale and you can even ask questions.

Yes, ask away, for I won't be around to answer them. I'm going football.

Justification, a statement.

I expanded our little brewery recently, trebling available capacity. You may have heard me mention it. Along the way it became obvious that one question pervades amongst a reasonable portion of the population I come across: why expand? On occasion I became slightly uncomfortable fielding questions along the lines of 'how's world domination coming along?' and the like. It got me thinking, and I've been meaning to do that thinking out loud for a while now.

So, why expand a small brewery? (I didn't know any of this when I started brewing).

Firstly, some context: we had a teeny, tiny, mini capacity before, and now we have a small one. We were probably about 650th of 700, now we might be up to 350th. We were, and still are, far smaller than most think. Just so you know.

Anyway, reasons to grow:

1. Technical - the bigger the vessels, the more justification there is for adding bells and whistles. Now B & W's of themselves are (normally) a useless waste of money, but well designed ones, ones the brewer wants and can use, are a real boon. Yes, I can make a decent batch of beer in a bucket but doing it day in, day out is more difficult. So there's a natural desire for a brewer to want to grow, simply to get better spec toys to play with to brew better spec beer, more often.

2. Fear - if there is demand, and if you don't meet that demand, someone else will. And then they'll come after the rest of your business. There appears to be no plateau - just a slope, and most of us don't want to slide down, so we crawl up. Not a pretty picture. But if you get in a stride it's serene and almost beautiful.

3. Fun - gotta keep life interesting. It's taken too many years to gain a root hold in this rocky ground not to make the most of it.

4. Duty - with a family to provide for, and mates needing work, given the opportunity to grow and create a more secure future for those around you, it would be churlish to wimp out.

5. Cold, hard cash - I'll settle for a salary and a pension, thanks.

In summary: one never finishes building a brewery, there's always something to work on, to improve. Without that mentality you aren't leaving the starting blocks. So, given that, the path ahead is set and if you find yourself in the right place, at the right time, you too will be expanding capacity (and plotting to rule the world).

I hope that clears that up. Now, when I am in charge, tangerine will become, by decree, the colour of choice.

2010 Year in Beer - Uberhop Traditional Lagerale

My buddies in Thanet Camra run a beer festival each year in Margate Winter Gardens. This Easter weekend will be their fifth bash and they thought it might be fun to get a beer specially brewed, to mark (and drink on) the occasion. We came up with the idea of brewing a pale beer utilising Germany's finest noble hops, the kind they use to flavour lager.

Anyway, we got a loads of flashy Teutonic hops from the Hallertau region of Bavaria and knocked up a pale Lagerale with them, storing the finished brew for 6 weeks at 1 degree Celsius before casking, and a further 2 weeks storage after. It's pretty good: crisp and properly refreshing, moorish too.

The first you'll see of this is at Planet Thanet Easter Beer Festival, 2nd April. Although......... I do have a pin ready for tasting at the Big Kent Open Day, on the 27th. But don't tell anyone that please.

Finishing touches

My mate Fat Andy: (Trumpet & Ale)* gave me a couple of flash Bose sound monitors about 12 years ago. I promised I'd find somewhere to use them, and now I have.

It looks like it's balancing on those (very hot) pipes, but it isn't.

'Bout time you visited mate (I'll protect you from the kids).

*I'm not calling him rude names, this is the way he's identified on the album cover of Live at the Hive.

Job done?

My minor epic is close to done and dusted. The new (second hand) brewery was put through its paces on Friday and Saturday, crafting batches of GADDS' #7 & GADDS' #5 respectively. It performed wildly better than I could ever have imagined and to be honest, I struggled to keep control of it for a bit. Finishing touches have already begun: a temperature probe here, a hook there, Bose music monitors in the corners, all the usual stuff one finds one needs shortly after the first brew.

So, back up and running; beer in the system and ready to deliver in 8 days time. Stock left from the brewathon? Erm, little really. Just enough to squeeze us through for the next 5 days. A quick look at my original schedule........damn! 4 days late, but that could have been worse. And budget.........double damn! £10k over. That's a vast miscalculation on my part down to the known unknown of the Emmanuel the Boiler, but the money isn't wasted: we're the proud owners of one hell of a high pressure steam system.

So, pats on backs and beers all round.

Though I promised a blow by blow account I never really delivered one. It felt a bit weird to publish accounts of events that those with malicious intent could use against me. Not that they read this. Not that anyone reads this really. But you never know, you know?

Who's the f**&ing Daddy?

We shut down 4 weeks and 5 days ago, ripped out the old system, rebuilt services, rebuilt malt store, cold room, brewhouse and hop store, installed new (second hand) plant, installed a high pressure boiler, commissioned the lot and are ready, willing and able to brew tomorrow. And we didn't let our regular customers run out of beer.

We're the f**&ing Daddy, that's who.

Pride comes before a fall and brewers know this better than most. However, I just can't contain my excitement. Besides, f%$k superstition: human ingenuity, hardwork and dedication usually renders it irrelevant.

Steam heating 1.0

Our new (third hand) boiler is almost ready to go: all associated tanks, vents, flues and drains are done and there remains only a few yards (these pipe fitters are old school) of return mains to pipe in. We'll be testing the lot later today.

In the past we've used vessels with great big electrical elements in them to heat brewing water and boil the wort, but we're on a different scale now and there are more efficient ways available to us. High pressure steam, costly on installation - cheap to run, gives excellent light touch control and a wonderfully clean heat transfer through stainless steel coils, eliminating burnt or caramel flavours that can otherwise arise from this area.

The boiler delivers steam at about 80 psi (15 is atmospheric pressure) and 160 degrees Celsius through an inch and a quarter diameter 'black iron' (steel) pipe to a 2 inch diameter stainless steel coil (total length 5 meters - apologies for mixing my units: I'm quite comfortable doing it, I hope you are reading it). It's here that the steam gives up its heat (well, energetic enthalpy really, 2000 kJ/kg) to the wort, subsequently condensing, whereupon it's forced through a funky gate (the steam trap) to a three quarter inch return main, at atmospheric pressure, returning to the boiler for a repeat performance.

Thermodynamics is the subject - this time it's practical so I may just, finally, get it.

We haven't named the boiler yet - feel free to make any suggestions. The lucky winner gets to have their photo taken next to the big fellow.

Year in Beer 2010 - Common Conspiracy

Students of style will already have accessed the various databanks and followed the blogs that detail the history and specifications for every beer under the sun, including Californian Common Ale. For *my* reader however, I'll summate, from memory, the salient points necessary to pass muster in the pub this month.

Gold rush days, West Coast United States. It's the mid-nineteenth century and California is teeming with prospectors and associated traders, including of course, brewers. Many involved are recent immigrants from Europe and bring with them their brewing yeasts and techniques developed in cooler climes where facilities are suited to the production of the new fangled, bottom fermented pale beers stored (lagered) in caves to the point of delicious maturity.

But this climate is warmer and ice a rare and prohibitively expensive commodity. What to do? By building broad and shallow fermenting vessels the cunning brewers allow the heat of fermentation to dissipate quickly and, though temperatures are more akin to top fermenting ale regimes, tasty and consistent beer is produced. This lager/ale cross-over is brewed extremely quickly and drunk fresh before ambient temperatures cause spoilage.

Today's Common Ale is typified by the use of German 'Northern Brewer' hops to impart a straightforward, crisp and clean bitterness with flavours of fresh grass, mint and a little wood. We used some German grains for fun (and for a juicy amber maltiness) and chucked in a small amount of West Coast grown citrusy hops for balance.

Pale amber, unapologetically bitter and deliciously drinkable.
Available in the usual quality licensed establishments across East Kent from today. While stocks last.