GADDS' comes of age

It’s 21 years this March since the first casks of GADDS’ Number 3 Premium Kentish Pale Ale (Number 3, for short) were tapped and drunk in the Ramsgate Royal Harbour Brewhouse and
Bakers (The Belgian Bar, for short). 21 years of ups and downs and changes and no changes, and we’ll all have time to reflect and recount on all things GADDS’, Kent, brewing, and beer over a few pints of iconic cask ale at the Brewery’s 21st Birthday Cask Beer Festival, at the GADDS’ Taproom, this Good Friday and Easter Saturday. 

But I’ll likely be busy serving you, so I’ll take this opportunity to look back, and look forward. 

Those first casks of #3 were delicious, and in our naivety we thought we were poised to take over the Kent beer scene very quickly (whatever that meant). But the casks we sent out to local pubs were sent back a week later, not having dropped bright. And the replacement casks were also sent back, for the same reason. This was a very early lesson in quality control – we had been filling the casks in the beer cellar, a place where beer gets spilt and wild yeasts thrive. Also a place with a big fan blowing cold air around the casks, and blowing the wild yeast into the beer as the beer went into the casks. And although we figured out our mistake fairly early on, at least one of those early pub customers didn’t trust us again for a few years (looking at you Artillery Arms!). No grudges held, to be honest I’m surprised the other two pubs did trust us again so quickly. Following that, and to this day, we don’t send any batches of beer out until we’ve checked how they’ll behave in the cellar (and we’re not fussed about taking over the Kent beer scene, either). 

Whilst building the brewery, one Saturday evening a certain local pub magnate (on his way to the casino opposite) found his way into the building site and enquired politely what kind of beer the brewery under construction was going to produce. ‘Real ale’, I replied, ‘No one drinks that around here’ were the kind words of encouragement (curse) I received in return. He was right of course, the number of pubs in Thanet with active handpumps could be counted on one hand. That didn’t change for a few years until the Thanet branch of CAMRA held that first, game changing beer festival at the Monkey House in 2006. The rip-roaring success showed that not only was drinking beer on a bank holiday Friday popular round here, but that the local population really were looking for the good stuff, and would enjoy it in great quantity given the opportunity. At last, the curse was broken, and the success of the festival catalysed a Thanet revolution, transforming the beer and pub desert landscape into the oasis it is today. 

Of course, timing is everything and the worldwide craft beer movement (taking encouragement from Thanet CAMRA, no doubt) got underway. New breweries were springing up all over the place and the number in Kent began to rise from the 9 it had been stuck on for a few years (OK, name all 9?). Change was afoot for GADDS’ too, as we moved operations from the Belgian Bar to our new home up at Hornet Close, and focused on producing cask ale for the pubs and people of East Kent. But whilst the number of Kent breweries was rising, the number of handpumps available wasn’t (yet) and sales were flat, at that just-about-enough level. In the ‘old days’ we’d always get a decent mid-summer boost from the Canterbury branch of CAMRA, and their Kent Beer Festival, who could be relied upon to buy up to 10 kilderkins from each of the Kent breweries, equating to a 25% uplift in sales in a week for us at GADDS’. As the number of new brewery openings accelerated, this much appreciated bonus diminished, and we went off to music festivals, where cool, local cask ale found favour in an otherwise sea of short poured Heineken. 

A couple of years after the big move to Hornet Close, a combination of a localism movement, the ongoing annual success of the Planet Thanet Easter Beer Festival, an emerging craft beer revolution, and a rise in the number of Kent breweries, produced a growing interest in (and demand for) local beer that finally began to take effect, and our phone started to ring. Local publicans were at last open to the idea that cask ale might just work for them. Sales rose strongly and we rebuilt the brewery, purchasing Dark Star’s old kit and tripling capacity. By this time we had long had our core beer range of Numbers 3, 5 and 7, alongside Seasider and Dogbolter, and we organised our specials into an annual seasonal range, adding such beers as She Sells Seashells, Rye Pale Ale and Summer’s Day. 

Licensing laws had changed in 2005 and a certain off-licence owner not too far from Thanet took advantage, adding an on-licence to his modest, beer only establishment, hailing it as a micro-pub and evangelising the concept. Eventually, in 2010, Colin Aris from Ramsgate answered the calls and opened Thanet’s very own micro-pub, The Conqueror, on the westside of town. The Bake and Ale House and the Four Candles followed, and the flood gates opened. Today there are around 14 or 15 micro-pubs in Thanet, adding to the many existing pubs now serving cask ale and helping to create the beer oasis of today. 

It was in September 2009 that, taking inspiration from a visiting brewer from Falling Rock in California, we tentatively brewed our first batch of Green Hop Ale, not really knowing what we were doing, how it would turn out or what might happen next. The brewing gods smiled upon our efforts and the rest is history. The popularity of Green Hop Ale far exceeded anything anyone expected and continues to grow year by year, so much so that today we brew nothing else during harvest. Sadly in 2020, following a global collapse in demand for hops due to a big fall in beer consumption during lockdowns (I know, the headlines would have you believe we were all pickling ourselves in booze, but the truth is that the drop in hospitality drinking far exceeded the rise in home tippling), our much loved local farmer, Humphrey Hulme, was forced to quit his lifelong love of growing East Kent Goldings hops, and focus on his core fruit business. We’d used Humphrey’s EKGs in most of our beers for 18 years, and they had become the very lifeblood running through the brewery. These kind of blows can knock a business sideways, but this one turned out to be not so bad afterall – we moved our hop contracts over to the fabulous growers on Syndale Farm, John Clinch and his daughter Anna, who have produced, in the last two years, the most amazingly good EKGs this author has seen in 30 years.

GADDS’, of course, is really about the people that make it and the people that drink it, and no potted history of it is complete without remembering absent friends. We lost our Chairman, Dave, in 2020, and our Grahame in 2022. I’m sure that the cosy back street pub in the sky stocks GADDS’: Number 7 on cask, and Number 3 in the bottle (served in a Fosters glass). 

Today, in 2023, in a post-pandemic world, with certain parts of the country (principally London) reporting plummeting cask ale sales, and brewers all over the UK moving into keg, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the future looks bleak for both GADDS’ and for CAMRA. Quite the opposite, in my mind – cask ale is the fastest, freshest way of producing beer, with the very least amount of processing, and, delivered to (and drunk in) a local pub it has the smallest carbon footprint of all the beers. It’s also extremely delicious, and these attributes will ensure cask ale will survive, and flourish, long into the future. And where there is cask, there is a local CAMRA branch. 

So come on down to GADDS’ Birthday Beer Festival of Iconic Cask Ales from Across the Land this Good Friday and Easter Saturday, and raise a glass to another 21 years of great cask beer in Thanet.

Cracker Time!

Deck the halls and all that, it's December and the holiday season is just round the corner. As has become trad', we here at GADDS' have been brewing up a sturdy ruby ale for you to enjoy with your kin, and with your tofurkey (with all the trimmings).

Crystal barley malt, and some crystalised malted rye, bring a deep warming colour and festive red berry character to the beer, whilst a team of Kentish hops, led by Bramling Cross, add the fresh green contrast. It's a comforting ale, capable of driving the damp away and leaving you with a jolly glow.

We're launching Little Cracker at the Taproom tomorrow afternoon, with GADDZUKES providing the seasonal carols, and our dear friend Chutney Paul the Xmas curries. It's an unticketed celebration so just show up anytime from 12:30 to 3pm. Or go the whole nut roast and book yourself on a morning brewery tour to whet the appetite.

If you can't make it tomorrow don't panic: you'll find this fine celebration of the Yule in all self-respecting East Kent alehouses over the next few weeks, and you'll be able to order it here for home delivery in 10 or 20 litre polypins.

Cheers!

The GADDS

Green Hop Pilsner - a Utopian Collaboration

Utopian: "modelled on, or aiming for, a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic."

Collaboration: "the action of working with someone, to produce something."

Also Utopian: "a fabulous craft brewery in Devon, specialising in perfecting the art of lager brewing with British ingredients."

Also collaboration: "the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts."

For a number of years we've harboured the desire to create a delicious pilsner using freshly picked, undried, 'green' hops (East Kent Goldings, to be specific) - crisp and clean, with an elegant, floral, green hop aroma. So when the good people at Utopian Brewing suggested a collaboration, we jumped at the chance. 

It's finally ready, and you can order it here, in time for the official launch on Wednesday 23rd at both the Ravensgate Arms in Ramsgate, and at Topsham Brewery and Taproom, in Exeter, if you're down that way. Read on if you're interested in how it was brewed.

One of the secrets, the main secret in fact, to brewing great pilsner is in the fermentation - to secure the 'clean' part of the specification, this must be conducted at distinctly chilly temperatures of around 10°C, slowing the yeast down to a relative crawling pace. Now, our own yeast wouldn't get out of bed for anything cooler than 14°C but, luckily for us, the Utopian strain, no doubt (nefariously) first obtained from a centuries old Bavarian craft brewery in a hollowed out walking stick (or such), is a master of the colder arts. These ninja strains possess a princess and the pea characteristic, and must be protected from the real world at all costs - basically, if it isn't at just the right temperature, in just the right fermenting beer, in just the right shaped fermenting vessel, it has to be undisturbed, and close to freezing, in the dark confines of a medieval cellar below Munich. For this reason, very early on the morning of our brewday, the yeast was rushed up from Devon, packed in ice in the back of a brewers' campervan/yeast ambulance, compassionately cared for by the very highly qualified, German trained, Utopian Brew Master. This set the tone for our collaboration.

Syndale Farm near Faversham, towards the end of harvest, was the early morning meeting venue. Farming father and daughter, John and Anna Clinch, grow the very finest East Kent Golding hops in the world here - the 'brick earth' land blessed with cool, springtime, on-shore breezes and warm, sunny, mid-summer sunshine that this hop variety loves. Walking this land is essential to set the tone for green-hop-brewing, followed by hop chat with pickers and, finally, collecting a van full of freshly picked, green, and aromatic hop cones. It was a tough harvest this year, the bines coming under a lot of water stress due to drought conditions. This isn't good for the farmers as the crop is consequently short, but it's great for brewers and drinkers as the hop flavour and aroma tends to improve. These are the best EKG this author has seen in 30 years.

Once back at the brewery we made beer, mashing UK grown 'Czech' pilsner malt and loading our hop stash very late in the boil, before pitching the sleepy, unsuspecting Utopian yeast.

German trained brewers behaving strangely

Fermentation was cool, and slow; if it's a super clean brew you're looking for, you need to be patient. Once all the sugars have been used up, the temperature is dropped slowly, and daily, to get below zero without upsetting the pernickety yeast (most off-flavours in beer are due to brewers upsetting pernickety yeast).

After 2 weeks of fermentation, and 6 weeks of cold lagering, the Green Hop Pilsner was canned, and kegged, unfiltered. And here we are - it's in warehouse, and ready to ship on Monday. 

We do our own thing at GADDS', and rarely collaborate, but we do strive for Utopia, and when we find it, this beer will be on tap.

Get some here, and use the code "sawitontheblog" for a 5% discount (a reward for reading all this way down the page, thanks). 

CO2 capture in a small brewery – a case study

The UK’s small brewers (those producing below 100,000 HL/yr[1]) account for the production of approximately 215 million litres of beer, at an average ABV of 4.6% (3.65% ABW)[2]. Taking into account fermentation vessel (FV) losses (10%), stoichiometry[3] informs us that the total amount of CO₂ produced by this fermentation is: 

1.1 x 3.65% x 0.9565 x 215 = 8.26 million kgs, or 8,260 metric tonnes (t), or 0.038 kg/l. 

Until very recently, all of this was vented to the atmosphere.               

Of this beer, around 100 million litres are packaged flat, into cask[4]. Therefore, 115 million litres of small brewery beer is carbonated, and, whilst some of this will undoubtably be carbonated via a spunded fermentation, the vast majority will rely on liquid CO₂ purchased on the wholesale market, not only to carbonate the beer, but also to back pressure vessels and fillers in order to prevent that carbonation from escaping. 

Bottling, canning and kegging in small brewery packaging facilities typically uses up to 0.05 kg per litre to carbonate the beer and run the filling machines[5]. Therefore, as an industry, we are on the one hand releasing 8,260 t of CO₂ into the atmosphere as a result of fermentation, and, on the other hand, purchasing 5,750 t of CO₂ from the wholesale market to put back into the beer. In the days of plenty, marrying these two CO₂ streams up (one out, the other in) via technology wasn’t considered worth the hassle, despite the engineering being already fully available (albeit in a macro form). Recent price rises in wholesale liquid CO₂ (and a couple of industry-wide droughts of the stuff) have changed the dynamic; two firms have entered the market, seeking to provide a solution that matches up this supply with the demand, by capturing the evolved CO₂, rendering it fit for use and liquidising it for storage and transport. Earthly Labs, based in the US, have developed a CO₂ recovery unit for craft brewers above the 15k hl/yr scale, and have some units operational in the US. Dalum Beverage Engineering from Denmark have developed a unit suitable for brewers producing 5k+ hl/yr scale, of which there are two already operational in Denmark, a third recently installed at GADDS’ The Ramsgate Brewery in the UK, with more units on their way to the Faro Islands, Norway, Bristol and beyond. This paper is an attempt to explain the principles and reality of capturing fermentation-evolved CO₂ from a small brewery, and transporting it to a craft drink packager for reuse, in place of wholesale gas.

 

The installed system consists of collection pipework, a foam trap, the capture unit and transport/storage vessels.

 

Collection

CO₂ is collected from closed FVs via the CIP arm. Following the lag phase, active fermentation clears the vessel headspace gas (air) and the O₂ content is monitored via a handheld unit held at the CIP arm. Once below 0.6%, the collection can begin. The CIP arm is connected, via a 1-inch braided hose, to a manifold leading to a 1-inch collection main, a PRV (in case of unit failure) and a foam trap. The system is designed to operate at 0.25 bar, a low enough pressure not to trouble the yeast or flavour profile of the beer.

 

O₂ monitoring

From the foam trap, the CO₂ enters the capture unit and is now monitored for O₂ content by the unit. Should the O₂ content stray above 0.6%, the gas is vented until O₂ levels lower. In reality, oxygen levels in evolved fermentation gas fall to below 0.6% within a few hours and don’t increase thereafter.

 

Low pressure scrubber

The gas enters the base of a 3m tall, narrow cylinder filled with surface area busting stainless steel pall rings. Cold water is trickled down the column as the gas makes its way up it. Here, alcohols, esters and other impurities are picked up by the water (thereby separating them from the gas) and the resultant effluent is collected as a ‘grey’ water supply.

 

Compression

On leaving this column, the clean gas runs through a solids filter and onto a 3-stage compression process, with intermediate cooling and water removal stages. The Dalum designed, oil-free, variable speed, single stroke, 3-stage compressor is right at the heart of the unit. Gas is compressed to 35 - 45 bar in the multi-cylinder piston chamber, regulated to 60°C, and the moisture removed is collected as grey water. Between stages 2 and 3, the gas passes through a high-pressure sulphur scrubber.

 

Dehydration

The dry gas, now at ambient temperature and high pressure, passes through a column containing inert aluminium oxide desiccant, for super drying. The degree of dryness of a gas can be expressed in terms of the dew point – the temperature at which, under constant pressure, the gas has 100% humidity. The lower the dew point, the drier the gas. On exiting the dehydration columns, the CO₂ has a dew point typically of -60°C.

 

Rectification/liquefaction

At 35+ bar, the super dry gas now only requires cooling to 3 or 4 °C to liquify and enters a Dalum designed glycol cooled condenser, and on to a reboiler. Constant boiling releases O₂ molecules from the liquid phase CO₂, which migrate back through the condenser and are vented off periodically. Purified, liquid CO₂ collects in a small tank at the end of the system and is pushed into 240 litre transport vessels.

 

Collection, storage and transportation

The brewhouse at GADDS’ produces 26 hl of wort per brew, fermented in either single or double batches under a top pressure of 0.25 bar. After a lag phase of around 8 hours, a single fermentation will evolve gas with an oxygen content below 0.5% and at a rate of 1.5kg/hr for approximately 48 hours. A handheld O₂ monitor lets the brewers know when to hook up the fermentation to the collection system (generally 16 hours from yeast pitching). Some CO₂ is lost through the initial stage of fermentation, due to high O₂ content, and some remains in the beer at the end. With good management, 75% yields have been achieved, with an oxygen content of <6 ppb, measured with an Orbisphere (wholesale liquid CO₂ at the bottling site measures 20 ppb O₂). A burette is used to demonstrate purity >99.99%.

 

The vacuum insulated transport tanks, mounted on a skids with casters, and equipped with internal vaporisers, are used to store and transport the collected gas to the bottling site. Under the ‘small limit’ threshold of 1000kg for CO₂, these can be transported legally without any onerous specialist safety equipment.

Once off-loaded at the bottling site the tanks are connected to the CO₂ systems simply via a standard 3/8-inch line and a secondary regulator. Due to the high quality, this recovered gas is reserved for carbonation rather than providing back-pressure in vessels and fillers.

 

Review

This compact unit has a footprint the size of a pallet, but delivers a game-changing service to the small brewer. The engineering is inspired, and the quality of the build first class. This isn’t a noisy machine; it sits and rumbles quietly, hissing every now and then to let you know it’s still working. And though reliability is excellent, you won’t get the best out of the unit unless you make the effort to engage with the principles, learn to drive it, and flex your collection system to suit. This is all well within the reach of the practical brewer, and there’s a handy remote management system that records and rewards your efforts. In the interests of balance, I’m desperately trying to find something negative to say about this, but I can’t. In my opinion, as an engineer turned brewer, this is awesome.

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[1] This report is primarily about technology that has recently become available to the smaller brewers – it has been available to those brewers above 100k HL for some years.

[2] SIBA Members Survey 2021

[3] Balling, Carl. J. N., Die Bierbrauerei. Verlag von Friedrich Temski: Prague, CHZ, 1865. 

[4] SIBA Members Survey 2021

[5] South East Bottling internal audit. 

Carbon capture in a small brewery

 

Very funky engineering

Brewing beer involves the fermentation of sugars (from malted barley) by yeast, producing alcohol, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) which is largely vented off to the atmosphere. The very largest brewers, your Heinekens and your Molson Coorses, have huge great bits of equipment that capture this CO₂, purifying it and condensing it into a liquid form they can then use for the kegging, canning and bottling of the beer. The smaller brewer, however, cannot capture this CO₂ and must let it go, and then, in a cruel twist of circumstance, buy liquid CO₂ to put back into the beer and to run the kegging, canning and bottling machines. Crazy eh?

But not for much longer. A genius Danish engineer, Kim Dalum, has successfully miniaturised the CO₂ capture technology for use in smaller breweries, and the very first one in the UK is here at GADDS’, undergoing full sea trials.

To give you an idea of the scale of the CO₂ given off during fermentation – here at GADDS’ it accounts for around 25% of our carbon footprint. We’re hoping to capture 2/3rds of this, reducing our fp by 17% in one go. We then sell the purified CO₂ to our bottling company who will put it back into our bottled beers, reducing their footprint at the same time. Our aim is to prove the technology and concept, and then show other small brewers how it can help them, and their footprint.

Back the engineers, they have the answers.

The purity is very high indeed - this showing 16 parts per billion oxygen, which is better than most CO2 on the wholesale market.

Solar update

Our current electricity rate is about 15 pence per kWh, ignoring the daily standing charge.

The solar array cost us £13,000.

Therefore once the solar array has produced 13,000 / 0.15 = 86,700 kWh (86.7 mWh) it will have paid for itself.

It's cloudy today.

28 months after installation the array has produced 35.85 mWh, or 41% of target, suggesting that, in a further 40 months time, pay back will have been made in full (in a total of 5.7 years). 

Of course, this doesn't take into account the fact that the current rate of £0.15/kWh will at least double when our pre-crisis contract runs out early in 2023. If we factor this in payback will be achieved in 25 months time, a total of 53 months (4.4 years) from installation.

These are 20 year panels, giving us 15.6 years of totally free electricity, and given the present direction of travel, that is going to be worth a substantial amount of savings.

One of our better investment decisions.

The Chairman's Beer Festival