…and this time I hope it’s for good!
This website has been hosted since I created it on the server in our spare room. This was perfectly adequate, if a bit slow, but unfortunately last Monday one of the disks went down and the whole, creaky, lot of it stopped working properly.
So now we’re at a proper host and everything should be working properly again, and a lot quicker than it used to. There may be the occasional image or attachment that’s missing, but nothing major.
This is more of an aide-mémoire than a beer review…
We were staying outside Chester earlier in the year for my parent’s ruby wedding anniversary, and while we were there we took the opportunity to pop into the Frodsham Brewery and collected a mixed case of their many beers. I’ve enjoyed, to greater or lesser extents, all of them, but wanted to make a note about this one.
It’s described as “An English wheat beer with distinct elderflower aromas.”, which sounds rather appealing. On drinking, I didn’t get the elderflower particularly. It was remarkably clear for a wheat beer, and with noticeable though subtle banana notes to it.
One thing it did remind me of was, ignoring the wheat beer characteristics, the hoppy notes in Sharp’s Monsieur Rock. It’s been a few months since I drank M. Rock, and it’s not like I really know what I’m tasting, but for me it was like a subtle wheat beer with distinct saaz hoppiness to it.
I really enjoyed it, so it’s definitely worth considering a small (10 litre) experimental batch later this year of the wheat beer recipe, but with saaz as the hops, and with increased bitterness levels. Maybe late hopping most of it, too, to try and keep more of the flavour.
All the bottles of Frodsham we brought back, the yeast at the bottom of the bottle (they’re all bottle conditioned) was very loose and there was quite a bit of it, so great care has to be taken when pouring – more than once I ended up having to wait quite a while for the yeast to settle before I started drinking, as I’m not keen on lots of floaty yeast in my pint! It’s a lot more noticeable than in my own homebrew, even the stuff I’ve fined with gelatin, which is reputed to make the yeast more fluffy and easily disturbed.
The last three brews have been just great – without wishing to tempt fate, I think I may have hit my stride now with this all-grain brewing lark!
The Oatmeal Stout is rich, coffee-like, smooth, with a great mouth-feel and subtle bitterness. The Deuchars is a bit more bitter than the original, but a zesty light IPA, very refreshing and easy to drink. The Angry Yank IPA is chock-full of those American hop flavours. Very lightly carbonated in the bottle, rather bitter but without being too much, and a pleasure to drink a pint or two of, thought I may not want to spend a night on it.
Right, what shall I brew next??
Proud of British Beer from Society of Independent Brewers on Vimeo.
Hat tip: Peter Brown’s Beer Blog
Just a very quick post….
I’ve now done two proper all-grain brews, the Big Lamp Bitter add the Erdinger Weißbier. Of all the brews I’ve done in the last year, these are both by far and away the best I’ve done.
The Big Lamp Bitter was great at 6 days, and just seems to be getting better by the day- we’re now at 15 days in the barrel, and the Weißbier is almost carbonated (kind of a moderately carbonated ale by now – I’m hoping for it to get about right at 14-21 days in the bottle).
It may be because I’m now being paranoid about campden rinses after cleaning with VWP, thereby getting rid of the chlorine bits and bobs, but I’d like to think that it’s the all-grain-ness that’s done it.
I have no idea what it is, but until these two brews there was something in my beer… some kind of taste… that just wasn’t right. Maybe it was that oft talked about “homebrew tang”, but whatever it was, these last two are without it and, to my palate at least, taste great.
So: to all homebrewers who are contemplating a move towards all-grain… go for it. It’s not much more in the way of kit, but it is so worth it!
I’m planning on a third attempt at Riggwelter this weekend – partly because I can do it with what I have in stock, and partly ’cause it’s one of my favourites. Blog post to come on (probably) Saturday…
Ok, the site is now up and running. I’d like to point out that the photo of hops used in the banner was taken from an image I found on Flickr – that has suitable Creative Commons licenses on it to be used here… So, thanks to Martin LaBar for the original photo, which can be found here.
The picture of the cat’s eyes is of our female cat Pepsi. I’m told she has evil eyes, but we think she’s really a big fluffy soft lump!
The dried hops and the grains were photos I took when documenting the extract brewing process for the Fortyniner recipe. I was going to post a “how-to”, but there are enough of those available, so there seems little point. I found the guide on the British Brewer website to be a handy guide to print out when I did my first brews. Now I just print the recipe, and refer to Graham Wheeler’s book if necessary (pictured in the side bar at the right).
The photo in this post is of my first ever brew, a Brupaks Fixby Gold, from a kit. Very nice beer, which provided me with enough confidence to continue and get suck in to this brewing lark!
I’ve also added my brewing notes, dated for when I brewed the ale rather than when the entry was posted (which was all on the evening of 7th August). They’re a bit terse in places, since they are just the notes I was making for myself as I brewed. With luck future brews should get a bit more text with them!
