Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

So folks it's been a while since my last offerings in cyberworld. What's been happening you may well ask... So I'll tell you. Today I am brewing "Flying Low" this one-off special beer is to celebrate the imminent arrival of All Hallows Eve, or Halloween to the rest of us. This is what we have called the fruits of our freestyle method of brewing. Leaving the creative influences down to the beer gods and the availability of ingredients depending on our success at of the noble art of Forraging. Forraging is concidered an art form in these here parts of Dorset. I shall be blogging at different intervals throughout the day.

It is currently half past eleven. The wort has come to the boil and I have added the first offerings of hops to the copper known as the bittering hops. I don't usually disclose my recipes but today is different. I am using hallertau Aroma, an organic hop from New Zealand. These have been forraged from our hop store. I will be adding more of these "later" in the brew as late hops and then I have also forraged some Mount Hood hops from the Hallertau family from Portland, I will then blend the two for off boils. I have to go now as Henry from 3core pumps has arrived to do the pump juggle and change the seal on the final pump, the one that does the transfer to FV from the copper, This new pump not only has a SPECIAL sticker on the side but comes complete with "brewery seal" inside, so the pressure is on to get it back in time.... Elsewhere in the brewery today there has been a sporadic deafening din as Simon has been putting the second brew of the season of Pointing Percy to cask, this is a Munich style beer with a light mouth feel, delicately hopped with no lasting bitterness to the follow. A stunning crisp beer you could drink pints galore, given half a chance. We are coming to the end of the crazy season for outside events, so it's time to repack the mobile contents of the travelling beer bordello back in the shed for winter and Ian to have a day off. Marin Clunes Buckham Fair went remarkably well, and we helped raise over £40,000 for this years charity, Julias House Hospice, please take a moment to look at the link, these people are truly amazing, I cannot say anything that will give the magnitude of this http://www.juliashouse.org/Home.aspx The Dorset show once again was a blast,naughty behaviour was a credit to all our staff and bosses. We peaked at 3 events on one day, I was at Joseph Weld summer fair with Ian. Paul whizzed around everywhere and ended up at Stomping on the Quomps at Christchurch, Ashley started at the Food and Drink Festival at Weyouth Pavillion grazing on fine cheeses, chutneys and networking with the sausage men, he also ended up at Stomping with the rest of the gang, I slipped away into the evening to the 3rd Cerne Abbas Beer Festival with Simon for some intensive market research. Back to today... We're on the final leg of our beers journey, Henry has excelled himself again and with minutes to spare realigned my life and got all the pumps doing what they should, We've had a call from Paul who is out in the field with the "Hedgerow Harvest Team" This is the bit of the Halloween Brew i haven't mentioned yet, The freshest local blackberries, nedless to say our boss now has purple fingers, grass stains on his trousers and about an hour ago almost had the target amount of 2x 20lrt buckets full of wild blackberries, that was until a chance meeting with a lovely old swiss lady walking her dogs gave up much of his harvest to her, and she has promised to bring him back a blackberry and apple strudle later on this afternoon, as they say there's plenty more berrys on the bushes.

That's it for now folks, my transfer is nearly complete and then we are off to find the 2012 Fagin of the counrtyside and his band of merry pickers and what ever is left of their bounty. Cheerio for now. p.s. All done and looks like we're on target for 4.6% abv.