MONTHLY BEERIODICALS

May has treated us well, The month started with a bang! We unveiled Midstream Mild on May Day at the top of The Giant in Cerne Abbas with the Wessex Morris Men at Sunrise, 5:40 am from memory, but it all is a bit vague, The climb up this year was more pleasant with the help of Chris Parsons and without the sideways rain and howling gale! The sunrise was spectacular and the beer was outstanding, She was brewed at 8bbl (32 cask) with over 30 kg of Fresh Honey, This was from the  beehives on the orchard where our cider apples are grown in Melplash, Keeping the whole thing “in house” It sold out instantly so we will be brewing this again next May. It has been suggested that it may be a good idea for me to have some breakfast at next year’s may day celebrations and that way I may keep both my eyebrows and job!!

 

We have also brewed #No.1 This is a Bohemian lager style beer, brewed with Lager malt and Pilsner hops. This has gone straight to bottle and Keg! Yes folks that means we can raise it through a chiller, gas it and serve it out a lager pump ice cold and fizzy!! We will be trialling this on our outside bars over the summer so keep your eyes on the website, facebook, twitter etc. for details of up and coming events. There is even talk of a launch frenzy in the brewery. As a brewer of beer using malt, water, hops and yeast I personally feel this is completely different from mass produced Lager made by the big boys using syrups and hop extract! I use only the finest ingredients and hand craft it in the same way I do with all my ales, for the tech heads i have used our own strain of yeast and then lagered it over a few weeks prior to bottle and kegging.

 

Next on the monthly special list for June is, “Bursting Out” a 4.4% Pale Ale with floral and fruity characteristics, Brewed with a simple Marris Otter Pale malt base with no adjuncts and heartily hopped with Maryanka from Poland, Vic stumbled across this hop whilst chatting to his good friend Will from the hop merchants, It isn’t widely used and gives a lovely floral, resinous and at the same time a herbal essence. This will be available throughout June in all good pubs. We have Q.C’d this from stillage and it is absolutely stunning.

 

The July special is on the drawing board, (or more to the point a big bundle of papers, illegible scribblings of a madman and a few ancient books on Rob’s desk,) we are waiting for elderflower to appear on the hedgerows on Mr Horsington’s farm, this is a bit late this year due to the soggy spring, but rest assured the trees are budding nicely as I write this. So in true Piddle style our seasonal beers are very much dependent on the seasons. As folklore can be shorthand for remembering important information, I surmise that the hag in the following tale represents death... The wood in the elder tree contains cyanide, which when burned in confined quarters, such as one roomed hovels many peasant farmers would have lived in the middle ages, can fill a room with noxious smoke, killing its occupants instantly. I suspect then, that the hag in the elder tree is always a bit moody when it comes to asking for her firewood, although she is just as likely to say “Help yourself to the flowers, just leave enough to turn into berries in the Autumn” Vic has come up with a cunning plan upon cropping the flowers that involves the freezer. He has also sourced a secret delicate hop to complement this in the off boils but sincerely intends on bittering with the traditional favourite of all true English brewers the noble Golding. The name of this brew has yet to be decided but rest assured we are confident that our usual inebriated “think tank” will come up with another memorable offering.

 

Production has increased again, we now brew 2 double brews a week bringing our weekly tally to 48bbl, not bad considering I brew Monday to Thursday! Please feel free to come and see us this week-end as I am off to join the Piddle team at "The Royal Bath and West Show" at Shepton Mallett. I shall be doing 3 talks in the food arena, I hope they are ready for it, all i have to do is work out what to say, i have been told to make it like a womans dress..." long enough to cover the important bits, but short enough to keep you interested" No doubt the obligatory bottle of Royal Bath and West 150 ale lovingly crafted by my good self will help oil the vocal chords... Until next time Piddlers, be nice to yourself and each other.

Cheers

Vic

 

 

LOT 71 and Sacks of Gold

So today we are brewing IPA LOT 71 again. The strongest of all our brews. This beer is jam packed with the finest hops. We have decided on a more conservative amount to brew this time as 6bbl's was a tad ambitious with an 8bbl mash tun! There is more malt in 5bbls than 8 bbls of Piddle. We don't up the gravity with sugar, preferring to go with the traditional extract from malt alone. As I am writing this Simon is ceremoniously cleaning off Great Uncle David of Dagenhams antique hop paddle and getting the fermentation vessel squeaky clean.

Well as this blog has that "live" feel to it we have just finished the final transfer and cool down, we had a most magnificent rolling boil and have ended up slightly over our 1071 target on specific gravity, we had excellent viability on the yeast so a vigorous fermentation should ensue. Most of this is going to bottle, but as we love our beer we have decided on putting some to cask, and making it available for selected beer festivals and the odd soiree of our own.

"There's Gold in them there sacks I tell thee" GOLDSACKS. Named after our infamous boss Mr. Paul Goldsack, this beer has been in the prospective annals of our production for longer than we can remember. The briefing was simple, keep it light, golden and fruity with an easy to go down characteristic, I guess this one will live up to its name then! I started with a malt base of Lager Barley and as you can see from above a heady mixture of Maize blended in. I kept the whole Pilsner theme with some Bohemian hops from behind the Iron Curtain, that is not an euphemism for metal store cabinet, Hallertauer Hersbrucker is the predominent hop used. We ended up with an ABV of 4.0% bang on. 

I take my job seriously and never one to shirk any responsibility I seflessly embarked on some quality control in the Giant Inn in Cerne Abbas. I ordered my Goldsacks in a lager vessel, my fellow imbibers found this confusing at first, upon further discussion and "sippers" from my glass a few eyebrows were raised from the lager pop fellas. "What? you mean thats made from the same stuff as lager?" "What real lager?" "I dont drink that real ale but thats not bad" and of course those unforgetable words "I'll have one of them next" Overjoyed and caught up in the moment, slightly missing my partner in crime Johann, I took on the next thankless task in the brewers workload, and that my friends, is finding out how well a gallon sits in the belly. I can confirm, as I did with Jon Absolom at 2 o'clock in the morning, It's a lovely easy drinking brew and will be all the better for a bit of sunshine. No nasty hangovers the next day. In fact the following day, I dropped of some beermats to the Giant to be greeted by Colgate Chris, and further congratulations of a beer well brewed and this coming from a man I have never seen with a glass of anything vaguely brown in his hand. I was happy with the result.
So what's next you may ask? well... I've just brewed Cocky Hop as the March Seasonal and then we have "April Showers" The pump clip is with the designers, 4.2% is the abv and Rob wants "intense peach" So it's just a case of getting on with it, so dust off the hop encyclopedia and get me Will from Farams on the phone...I might just have an idea.....

Cheers

Vic

Perky Pecker and the previous goings on...

Hello Piddlers,

It's been a few months since my last blog, apart from the tale of "Captain Swurve"

So whats been brewing in the noisy part of the madhouse? I must admit I have had to go back to the last blog to see where I got up to! Well of course it was Porter season in November, so this saw the reappearance of Thunderbox, the first brew was the same recipe as last year. I felt the roasted smokeyness complemented the delicateness of the hop bill ok but... when you strive to make the best beer you possibly can you are always analysing the end result, and after much deliberation we decided on a subtle hop change in the off boils, leaving the bramling cross alone as this gives us the wonderful blackcurrent tones, I substituted the Saaz for Hallertau Herzbuker, firmly believing this would give us a softer and more rounded beer. I am please to announce our feelings were based partly on emotion but more so on science with astringency desire and co homulone numbers. The result is a smoother pint without losing the charachter we have all come to know and love. On a personal level I always love the first runnings from the mash tun to copper, the combination of darkness and roasted aroma from the malt gives me a lovely warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Next up was IPA LOT 71. A "proper IPA" This is the third year running we have been brewing this amazing beer. The last cask of the 2012 vintage was drunk within hours of the opening of the Beer festival at Ye Olde George Inn in Christchurch, a bit like Rob was last year! We age this in the time honoured manner of traditional India Pale Ale, except it doesn't go as far. Ian had kindly offered to take some to the Isle of Wight and back next time he goes to see his parents. The incredibly large hop bill matures as time goes by, So we brewed this in November and then put it to bottle Mid-January.We tweaked the recipe a tiny amount, but thats only because we can. This was the first time I used my antique hop paddle generously given to me by Great Uncle Dave of Dagenham.  The official launch of the bottle conditioned rascal is to be at Beer-ex in Dorchester in a few weeks. This is also a good opportunity to try it direct from cask, we strongly recommend someone else giving you a lift home though, Paul suggested the best barrel sponsor for the Beer-ex for this one should be Bob's Cars taxi service! We are once again proud to be the main sponsor of the whole event, so please pop along and have a natter about all things beer.

Within days I was brewing Santa's Potty for cask. I had brewed this a month before for bottles so no suprises with this one. Brewed with a duo of hops, it's a fruity number that complements the biscuit malt base superbly, it also has a cheeky hazel nutty escence. As it's our christmas ale it obviously starred in our gift packs. The least I say about the thousands of gift packs we made the better. It could be the seemingly endless amount, it could be the re-occuring paper cut on the inside of my left thumb, if you have ever cut a cut you will know this feeling. Or it could be lack of daylight, but hey ho (or ho ho ho) they all got done and that was that.

Then of course Christmas came and went, after a long well earned break (as in we were earning well to sit at home and eat and drink like pigs!) It was back early January. It was with renewed vigour Myself and Simon embarked on this year. The days scrubbing and bleaching the brewery from top to bottom before Christmas was all but a distant memory. The pure joy of a sparkling clean brewhouse was an absoloute pleasure. Then Paul gently dropped it that he had designed the "touchy feely" Perky Pecker pump clip and we had better get on with making it. I was given a clean sheet and with the minimal discussion with Our Leader I got to work on the recipe. As I had anticipated this coming I had some stong ideas of what I wanted to brew, A light coloured Amber beer, delicately hopped, not too bitter with subtle fruityness and it has to be 3.8% to match Pauls artistic handy work! It's hard to tell what the end result is going to be immediately after brewing, as wort is fundamentaly sweet barley juice and incredibly bitter at the same time, but not to worry, every morning before mashing in, sometimes before getting the blue wellies on I would eagerly pour some from the FV and let my taste buds get to work. Making sure I had brushed my teeth before breakfast, so not to arrive with minty mouth. It was with apprehensive anticipation I would take my first sip, It was day 3 that I had the Eureka moment. What a beauty, some say a thing of beauty others say a beautiful thing, what ever way you look at it it was marvellous. Exactly what I was striving for, The sweetness of cascade running through it without being that over done "cascade juice" modern beer produced by many other breweries. I personally battled through the snow and ice to deliver a cask to my local "The Giant Inn" in Cerne Abbas last night. It could be on for the weekend fingers crossed.

The next seasonal on the agenda is our eagerly awaited brew...Goldsacks. Named after our more flambouyant boss Mr Paul Goldsack. I have been inspired by the use of Maize in my maltbase, to give it a lovely golden hue, I feel we may be drinking/flavour profiling some golden beers over the next few days, all in the name of product research of course!

Happy Piddling everyone

Vic the Brewer