Coming to a Wetherspoons near you this October

Apologies for the lack of posting folks, but recently things have been rather busy at Mordue Brewery. On top of the seemingly endless hours of racking, brewing, washing casks, sorting out brew schedules, rescheduling brew schedules and so forth has come the risks of utility and ingredient shortages and the burden of watching over so many fermentations. Why do they come to me to die? Why do they come to me to die? For the last few sundays now (the only day I'm not working around 12 hours) I have felt unable to do hardly anything at all but sit slightly traumatised for most of the day within a fantasy world of lying on a reclining chair sipping camomile tea in a Japanese garden with no sound but that of the running water features.



Brew 1, first mash, 7:30am: Check ma bad invincible brewing self.

But anyway, one of the best things about Riwaka hops, apart from there broad spicy lime and Thai spice like characteristics is the sound of the name spoken in a North East accent. Here you can really exaggerate on the Ri-WA-KA! It sounds almost like a word of the native dialect but sadly these hops aren't grown on the banks of the River Tyne but hail originally from the Riwaka hop research centre of New Zealand. They are quite up front, and combined with a couple more of my favourite hop varieties, malted rye and various caramel malts the results are intriguing.


For my first Mordue beer, I'm chuffed I've pulled off something quite individual and it seems more composed than my home-brewed version. Like I wanted it bouncing with lime and spice intertwined with dark berry and stone fruit before finishing with dry peppery notes. Not over the top but commercially the craziest beer I've ever produced.

But even though were working our asses off, the best thing is that this stuff's going to be served to the Wetherspoons pubs around the whole nation during the Wetherspoons annual Octoberfest beer festival, which is quite an exciting prospect. I myself am hoping to get myself down to one during the festival for some quality control tastings. As you can see ma man Matt is helping himself already to the pre-conditioned stuff.

The boss man brewing in the crib, Matt Fawson help himself to a Red Rye Riwaka

I sure can't wait for the festival, but for now readers, see you on the other side.