Uber-Happy New Year!

It's back - let the good times roll!

Happy New Year!
:p to 2013



 

Little Cracker, Big Cracker

This year, as well as Little Cracker, we brewed its bigger brother, Big Cracker. More of the same basically; crystal rye & pale rye in abundance, with a bigger hop bill to suit, commanded by Kentish Bramling Cross for spiciness. It's a lovely big ruby ale, full of fruit, berries and spice with a touch of warming alcohol.

We casked some of it for sale in selected East Kent ale houses whilst rest went into Kentish Pinot Noir barrels for a little crafty oak aging. Vanilla, the tiniest touch of oak and more spice is evident in this, the bottled version, and a more perfect beer to go with your Yule dinner I can't think of.

Get in our shop, and some other notable East Kent retailers.

Yule approaching.

It's fruity (though there's no fruit in it) & a little spicy (and there's none of that in it either) with a good rounded body & a pleasant hoppy flavour. I have attempted to craft a festive character without the usual nuts, fruits & spices (just the usual malted barley, rye & hops) and I think I've done ok. Judge for yourself: the Yule Special is available on draught in good pubs throughout east Kent and direct, from the brewery, for the entire month of December & early January.

Bock!

As you all gear up to celebrate the passing of another year we brewers are busy crafting beer for drinking in 2011. One of those will be a German style Dunkel Bock, brewed right here by me and Mark (if he can get through the snow) tomorrow.

This dark, strong lager is commonly bereft of a noticeable hop influence, but we're not common, so we're breaking with that tradition and lugging a bale of Hallertau's finest spicy Saaz hops in the copper (and, knowing Mark, I'd hazard a guess that he will feel the beer needs more than that, so who knows what pungent variety he'll turn up with).

Fermentation will be long and cool with an eight week lagering period at -1° C on another bed of hops. Then I think we'll keg most, cask some and bottle the rest ready for supping in the spring.

Fantastically expensive, imported German speciality malts will provide some wonderful aroma and flavour.

Le Voyageur

Canadian brewer Iain Shuell is leaving for his homeland next week after a 7 year spell here in Blighty. To me he has been, variously: a colleague, an employee and a close friend for around 15 years now, here and abroad. And I'm going to miss him, so we're brewing a farewell beer together.

On Iain's insistence we're keeping the styling English on a brown ale, but with a distinctly Canadian twist: maple syrup. So it's all about crystal malt for sweetness, with roasted barley and chocolate malt to lend some toffee notes and colour, oats to smooth it out and a twist of wheat for the head. Kent grown fuggles in the boil for a very light bitterness and, late on, for an earthy touch. We ferment with a gentle ale yeast, adding a flagon of maple syrup early on, and another just before casking. Mature for 3 weeks and send it out for New Year.

Oh, and there will be tears in there too.

The story of the voyageurs is pretty cool and very Canadian - look.

Oatmeal Stout

Dark beer alert.


Roasted barley lends a near pitch black quality along with notes of coffee and chocolate; brown malt brings a slight grainy texture and an earthy character; mellow, silky smoothness is found with the addition of generous amounts of wholesome malted oats while Kent grown Fuggles hops impart a deep, satisfying bitterness.

Serving suggestion: oysters, chocolate ice cream (with rosemary) or all alone.

Summer's Day

Pale, hoppy ales are all the rage in these summer months and justifiably so: they do have a knack of refreshing the parts during the warm weather and our own seasonal offerings sell ridiculously well. But down here by the sea the summer months stretch away for half a year, from start to finish, and we look to break up the monotony with something to contest the notion that only gold works in the heat. We re-write the rule book, casting aside conformity and received wisdom in search of progress and enlightenment. Into the mash tun goes Munich malt to create body and sweet fullness. In too goes crystalised rye and with it colour and juicy, red berry flavours. As for the hops, well it's easy to gain thirst slaking quality from high bitterness so we avoid that, choosing instead a level of hop addition to balance the malt sweetness rather than smother it. And for hop flavour we look to varieties that will deliver a little citrus and a lot of lychee, gooseberry and white grape. The consequence is a full amber ale, replete with the flavour of summer and fashioned for contemplation at the end of another long, hot day on the beach.

On July the 25th ten summers ago, my first kid was born and my life changed in the most profound way possible (believe me, that's no understatement, ask my Mum). We called her Summer and I brought sunflowers in the morning.

Festiv'Ale

In a couple of weeks' time Van, Bob, Debbie and many of their friends are having a bit of a knees up down at the hop farm and they've asked for a cask or two of the good (and local) stuff to help things go with a swing. We'll be taking some Seasider and GADDS' Number 5 Best Bitter but the main offering will be Festiv'Ale, our pale, hoppy, fruity thirst slaker brewed to be enjoyed while dancing on grass in the sunshine. Or moonshine.

Obviously technical support is all part of the deal and, in a rare show of leadership, I've decided to do it myself - well it *is* on a weekend. I'm taking the Coyote and his camper van; he's very excited because blue-grass style Mumford & Sons will be there.

Early summer ales

Crack some coriander seeds and they release a pungent, spicy aroma with surprising citrus notes of orange, lemon and lime. Add some dried orange peel (careful now, the pith is bitter) and chuck the lot in the copper just as you're finishing the boil on a pale wort (a wort containing 30% malted wheat and hopped to a low bitterness level). Throw armfuls of soft, fruity Perle hops in afterwards (perhaps some Saaz hops too), cool and ferment warm with an ale yeast.

Cask condition the beer and enjoy it, served cool, on warm, sultry afternoons when you should be at work. Watch the world go by. Relax.

Feel better?

Good.



SHESELLS SEASHELLS, with its pale straw colour and clean (Northern Brewer) bitterness, starts as if it might be a lager style beer. But then the zesty, juicy Cascade hops kick in and you know you've got a thirst quenching summer ale in your hand. And a straightforward, easy drinking one at that.

Obviously local weather conditions ensure these beers are suitable most of the year and we only stick to form for the sake of our poor customers who live inland, where it's cold and raining for much of the year.

I love it when a plan comes together

I wrote a little about GADDS' Thoroughly Modern Mild a couple of weeks ago, after brewing it. The basic challenge we faced was to brew a mild ale (for it *is* Mild Month) that would sell very well. We've tried the traditional dark, sweet and weak route over the years but, despite a core of enlightened followers, it simply lacks a wide enough appeal to move quickly; beer that hangs around in a pub for a few days, especially beer fortified with little hop goodness, starts to taste poor pretty quickly.
So we hatched a plan to modernise the style, drag it into the 21st century, give it a right kick in the pants. A wide variety of tasty malts were employed alongside a more modern American grown hop variety, used only for flavour. We brewed it pretty strong, strong enough that two pints satisfies. And we didn't want it to be overly fruity, since we had no bitterness to balance that, so we fermented the ale under 1.5 bars of pressure. The beer was produced pretty quickly, to retain freshness and vitality.

Pomegranate, the designer, has a thing about irony, and duck tails.

Steve brought a cellar sample up to the office this morning and he bore a grin that said only one thing - we'd f^^&&&g nailed it. And he's right, it's a damn tasty brew and I can't wait to nip out for lasties, one night next week, and get a pint in some East Kent hostelry of (ill) repute.

Curses! That jpeg above is from the draft version; the real one says 'deep, golden mild' which is both far more accurate and grammatically fun.

Year in Beer 2010 - Thoroughly Modern Mild

Where I grew up the men drank bitter: proper Boddington's for the Dad's and Wilson's Fizzy Keg Chaz and Dave Bitter for us lads. Mild was enjoyed too but not in the legendary volumes of folklore, rather as an occasional alternative. The style is typified by low alcohol, low hop flavour and low bitterness. The only highs being roasted, coloured malts and sweetness. If it doesn't sound exciting that's because it isn't, well not in the volumes we drink today. To properly enjoy mild of olde one needs to sample far more of the stuff in a single sitting than is currently acceptable simply because, in order to really *get* it, one needs to tune into its very raison d'etre, that is, to slake the thirsts of parched miners and mill workers as they return home from a hard days graft. The stuff is brewed to be enjoyed by the gallon and so a few sips here and there isn't going to cut it.

So it follows that since the reason for drinking mild has disappeared, so too have the sales and thus the brewing of it. Anything going out of fashion like that is red rag to a bull where our friends, CAMRA, are concerned and so, yearly, May becomes 'Mild Month' and we're all cajoled into brewing and drinking the stuff completely out of context. We spend a less than physically gruelling day at our desks, returning first to home to play our parental roles and have dinner, then to the pub for lasties, a satisfying couple at most, and you want us to drink a 3% beer that hasn't got any hops in it? No way.

We did try and join in. For several years GADDS' Dark Mild was wheeled out during May, and pretty good it was too: Best Mild in the SE and finalist in the Champion Winter Beer of Britain. But it failed to excite the modern beer drinker in East Kent and just got harder to sell as the years went by. So I dropped it and, realising 'tradition' was not going to keep my brewery busy, I dropped any further pretence of *being* traditional. Besides, what's the point when Britain's Oldest Beer is brewed nearby?

Back in the olde days, to before the days of heavy industry, to when my Lancashire was still green, mild and bitter were brewed to varying strengths. Essentially, 'mild' meant young and lowly hopped, not bitter. There was 'mild' and 'bitter' of varying strengths and styles to suit most pockets and occasions. And so, the term 'mild' has never, necessarily, meant dark, weak and fairly bland. It meant, and means, *not bitter*.

So, with that in mind, we now brew a Thoroughly Modern Mild, a beer to speak for every East Kent office worker in need of satisfying sustenance during May, on a school night, with limited time available. It's brimming with delicious malt flavours: sweet crystal rye, toasty amber, aromatic melanoidin and juicy caragold, all smothered with a grassy, slightly resinous and earthy Willamette hop. There's no bitterness to this beer, but it is stacked with full flavour and a massive 2 pint satisfaction rating absolutely guaranteed.

I'm brewing it tomorrow (if I can fire the boiler up) and you'll be drinking it in May.

Dragon's Blood ESB

ESB - eh? what's that all about?

Well........

Easy really: Extra Special Bitter, that's what it's all about. A bitter for special occasions, though brewed with the usual extra high quality ingredients and with the usual extra special attention to detail, this one is Special, and Bitter, in an Extra sort of way. It's for people who like their bitter trad': brown, balanced malt sweetness with tangy hoppy bitterness. Only, because this is ESB, it's a bit maltier, a bit tangier, a bit hoppier and far more bitter. It's Special alright.

This is Great Great Grandfather George's Special Recipe (he was an early advocate of the metric system):

(serves 3,400)

Crushed Pale Malt - 290kg
Crushed Crystal Malt - 28kg
Crushed Malted Wheat - 8kg
Twists of Roast Barley and Chocolate Malts
East Kent Golding Hops - 3.5kg
Kent Fuggles Hops - 3kg
Kent Northdown Hops - 2.5kg
3000 litres hot liquor (75 degrees Celsius)
1 kg Brewer's Yeast

Method:
Splash 150 litres of the liquor into a large pan with a false bottom and leave to warm for 5 minutes, splashing a further 1000 litres in along with all the malts. Mix well, but don't over do it. Leave to stand for 90 minutes, then drain the 'sweet wort' from the base of the pan and collect it in another large pan. Sprinkle the remaining hot liquor over the malt grains, collecting sweet wort from the base as you go along. Once the second large pan has 1900 litres of wort in it add half the hops and bring to a rolling boil for an hour. Add the remainder of hops, holding back the Fuggles, and switch off the heat. Cool through a heat exchanger and collect in a large bath. Add the Brewer's Yeast and leave for a week. Add those Fuggles, put a lid on and cool for another week.

Then ask your mates round for the evening and drink the lot. If that's too much effort, simply nip down to your local East Kent Hostelry and order up a flaggon of GADDS' "Dragon's Blood, ESB".

It's Bloody Special.

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.

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.

2010 Year in Beer - East Kent IPA

A quick look at our Year in Beer calendar (pdf) tells me it's time to wheel out the IPA I brewed a few weeks ago. Much has been written about this historic, pale, hoppy beer style in the past few years and it would be futile to attempt to bring any new understanding to the forum. Therefore, for those with the time, I'll direct you to my friends at Meantime, who have had the time to compend a web page on the subject. I commend the entire cannon to anyone interested in the modern history of the Western world.

Enough! Right, our IPA is a pale beer stuffed to bursting with subtle, classy East Kent Goldings hops grown right here in, er, East Kent. They display gentle citrus notes, with lemon dominating, and a little exotic fruit. Curry was invented to go with this beer, really it was.

The subtlety of the beer is mirrored by the down-played design and muted colour of the pump clip.

Availability is limited but you'll find it on Friday night at the excellent Festival of Winter Ales in Dover. I'll be the one in the corner eating curry.

Alright, not the bestest post ever but it's Monday morning and 8 degrees Celsius in the office, thanks to me making popping noises with the wiring yesterday. No idea how Shackleton et al managed to keep decent diaries.

Year in Beer 2010 - 80 Shilling Ale

New look pump clips will be a feature of 2010

This year's 'Year in Beer', to be published pretty soon (already done - ed), tells me we're featuring '80 Shilling Ale' throughout January and February and, since late December in the brewery is likely to be a little unsettled (I'm installing and commissioning a total of 140 hectolitres of fermentation space - phase I of GADDS' great expanding girth), I thought I'd best stay ahead of the curve and get the first batch brewed tomorrow.

So I'm sat thinking about Rannoch Moor and sweet, mellow, heady ale (a fairly one dimensional view of Scotland I'll grant you, but it does things for me). I delved through the malt store for a half kilo of the most peated malt on earth (180 ppm) and crushed it up, the resulting aroma one of sweet smokey malt and wild, weather beaten peat. Perfect for a little background atmosphere. I'm using some crystal malt for its colour and distinctive sweet flavour, oats for their general northerliness, aroma, and enriching property, chocolate malt for colour and smoothness, melanoidin malt for aroma and some amber malt for a juxtaposing drying character and toastiness.

As for hops, well, not too many; 80 shilling isn't really about hops. They're there, and they're classic British (Fuggles and Goldings), but they're far from dominant, though the Fuggles will add some smooth grassiness to flavour and aroma.

Come January, expect the kind of ale capable of driving the dampness from your bones, warming you through with its very wholesomeness and leaving you happy and ruddy faced. A fireside ale, one to drink with haggis (quorn) and something to chase a little Islay malt with. The kind of ale winter was designed for.

Apologies for the blatant re-run of this post but there is sound reason: as you can tell, I brew our irregulars two to three weeks (sometimes more) ahead of your chance to find them in Quality East Kent Outlets and it occurred to me that there's no point in telling you about them early. In the future (and it *is* ours, all of ours) I'll write about the brewing when I do the brewing and post-date publication until you can do the drinking - subsequent posts in this category will therefore make more sense, both grammatically and chronologically .

(BTW - 80 Shilling Ale was a clear favourite at the GADDS' family New Years' Eve party last night, even out doing O's Vodka Cocktails and dodgy fizzy fermented grape juice)

2010 Year in Beer - 80 Shilling Ale

New look pump clips will be a feature of 2010

Next year's 'Year in Beer', to be published pretty soon, tells me we're featuring '80 Shilling Ale' throughout January and February and, since late December in the brewery is likely to be a little unsettled (I'm installing and commissioning a total of 140 hectolitres of fermentation space - phase I of GADDS' great expanding girth), I thought I'd best stay ahead of the curve and get the first batch brewed tomorrow.

So I'm sat thinking about Rannoch Moor and sweet, mellow, heady ale (a fairly one dimensional view of Scotland I'll grant you, but it does things for me). I delved through the malt store for a half kilo of the most peated malt on earth (180 ppm) and crushed it up, the resulting aroma one of sweet smokey malt and wild, weather beaten peat. Perfect for a little background atmosphere. I'm using some crystal malt for its colour and distinctive sweet flavour, oats for their general northerliness, aroma and enriching property, chocolate malt for colour and smoothness, melanoidin malt for aroma and some amber malt for a juxtaposing drying character and toastiness.

As for hops, well, not too many; 80 shilling isn't really about hops. They're there, and they're classic British (Fuggles and Goldings), but they're far from dominant, though the Fuggles will add some smooth grassiness to flavour and aroma.

Come January, expect the kind of ale capable of driving the dampness from your bones, warming you through with its very wholesomeness and leaving you happy and ruddy faced. A fireside ale, one to drink with haggis (quorn) and something to chase a little Islay malt with. The kind of ale winter was designed for.

East Kent IPA

I'm first in, most days, and the moment I open the door I can't help but use both senses of smell and hearing, as well as sight, to check out and understand what's happened in my absence. The smell of the place changes depending on what, and how, we're brewing and pretty often, for instance, the aroma of fresh yeast gives away the fermenting of something big. This morning was a bit different: an unusual hoppiness pervaded the old place, subtly distinct from the daily hop-store greeting.

Last night I made a giant hop-bag out of muslin and stuffed it with Humphrey's East Kent Goldings - 2009 crop; fresh and aromatic - steeping it in the hot liquor tank for a few hours before brewing our annual pale ale (dedicated to Humphrey and his mates on Brooke Farm, who made it all possible, indeed, who make most of our ale possible). In an effort to extract all possible flavours, from what looks like the best season for a few years, I'm ramming as many hops in as many vessels as possible on this brew and it's going to get very messy.

I usually draw a jug of brewing liquor for morning tea but elected for fresh filtered water this morning - I don't think even my buds could deal with tannin from both tea and hops at the same time.

Dark Conspiracy

We're brewing the first gyle (a brewer's term meaning 'batch') of this year's 'Dark Conspiracy' today. It's a wonderfully deep brown, US-style porter, loaded with dark, aromatic, and tasty pale malts and finished with a combination of the blackcurranty Willamette and pineappley Cascade hops. If that sounds like a bit of a car crash of flavours think fruit, chocolate, coffee, toast and candy balanced by a gentle, dry bitterness and served in a pint glass, topped with a creamy beige head. Yup, it's a car crash. But it'll work.

We should be in for a pleasant winter, whatever the weather.

Look out for Dark Conspiracy in East Kent free-houses from ealy November, until further notice. The recipe, such as it is, was conceved and first brewed here in collaboration with the Saint and the Sinner last year.

Oatmeal Stout

October looms and here in the Garden of England we're finding our thoughts leaning towards the dark side. Creamy, rich, luxuriant and very, very dark.

Malted oats in the grist provide a palate smoothness and a homely aroma; roasted barley and black malt give colour, flavour and aroma. Fuggles hops we use only for a decent level of bitterness, there being no other area of employment open to the hop in this style of beer: it's the malts, and only the malts, that we're after here. The hops do a job, and although it's an essential job without which there'd be no beer it is, nevertheless, a backroom job. The main event is roasty, toasty, chocolaty smoothness with hints of orange and porridge.

Luxury.

Next episode: Broadstairs Food Festival