My first Twissup

11:45am, March 26th the morning of my first Twissup.

This would be it, first contact with the blogging world (well I say first contact I already know one or two bloggers but out of this group Woolpacker Dave would be the only one I had met previously). Our journey would begin outside the York Brewery for a brewery tour before an epic pub crawl around York. 

As everyone arrived my first surprise was how many bloggers are actually familiar with Rob's Beer Quest. I felt a bit guilty that I had only glanced at the sites of other bloggers I met from time to time . But you know how it goes, you just get used to following the same old blogs and when I get round to it I do follow more and more sites.
 The UK beer blogging scene is sure becoming big these days, but much thanks to Rob from HopZine and others for providing acquaintance early on. Soon enough I finally managed to meet the likes of Leigh, Woolpacker Dave and the mighty Dredge, as well as various website owners, newcomers to blogging and those just tagging along because they know people from twitter.
Overall a great day filled with great beer and many interesting people to meet. My only regret is not knowing about some the awesome bars visited a year and a half ago when I could have visited them on my stag night, but it doesn't matter.

The first of these previously unknown bars is a little place called Pivni. An interesting yet slightly hidden tiny three level pub with a great range of cask and keg beers (many of them Brew Dog). This was where I got to try the excellent Camden Park Pale Ale and some exclusive pre release samples of  Aether Blaec, kindly handed round by Woolpacker Dave and his wife (above). I also had a good chat with Thornbridge brewer Dominic Driscoll, who made blogging news a little while back when he left Marble brewery. We talked about everything from hops to the joys of Belgian yeast strains and I got a taste of the new Punk IPA from Mark Dredge (which reminds me, I still owe him a beer).

Leigh and blogging master Dredge upstairs at The Bottle

Following this various pubs were visited all of them harboring great beer. To be honest I couldn't remember them all and in what order, it was all too much of a blur of talking about beer, drinking beer and then talking more about beer to various other beer obsessed folk.
What concentration I did have to spare was used to not get lost from the group. But I do remember Schlenkeria Rauchbier Weizen, Tripel Karmeliet and Sharp's Cornish Stout alongside various other beers I got noted down in my beer diary/tickers notebook. But even though I got the early train back at half six I have to admit the whole thing ruled and I hope to join the next Twissup whenever it is.
Many thanks to Beer Reviews Andy and Dredge for the organisation.

And a bit from the Mrs. Rob failed to add that despite getting the train home at 6.30pm he didn't actually make it home until 1.30am. You see he fell asleep, missed the stop, ended up in Edinburgh. The had to get a coach to Alnwick, which forgot to stop, and he finally got off in Morpeth, 20mins down the road, where I had to collect him at 1am! And all in the name of.......BEER!

Harrogate Beer Festival

Last Thursday was the first night of the Harrogate Round Table 21st Annual charity beer festival. Making the most of my time left in Harrogate I decided to go along and join Daleside number one dray Dave and former Daleside brewer Ed Sutcliffe. Both Ed and Dave would be carefully watching over operations, I would be quality control checking any beer I liked with the help of my special 'free beer' arm band  (for sponsors, beer festival workers etc) all my beer was free. Happy days.

To start things off Dave kindly pulled me some Brewdog Trashy Blonde, Following this Acorn Bullseye, drank more or less like the 4.5% Brown ale it was. Not a bad choice at all. Mordue Millenium Bridge seemed light, subtle and quaffable whereas Old Mill Spring Eternal seemed a bit sulphury, oxidised and slightly wrong. But this was compensated for quickly by the luscious smooth roasty mild that is Thwaites Nutty Black. Then from the same bar York Motueka brought instant memories of that all Motueka brew I did way back last year. My brew was an Amber, but this was a delightfully clean 4% session golden ale that seemed to be very popular.

After this it was back to the Theakstons bar for a Leeds Best Bitter and some Saltaire Cascadian Black, a black IPA that after a while drank more like a very hoppy stout, with hop pine and chocolate notes combined.

After this me and Ed hung out with the barrel master/copper himself Johnathan Manby of Theastons, creator of Elizabeth, who was carefully watching over operations. It appears that everyone now knows about my move to Mordue, even those I didn't think would know yet. All found out from the grapevine as they say. But head brewer Craig is already re-training his elite team of brewing monkeys he keeps in his shed. By the time I leave they will be ready to deploy as my replacement.

Coming soon, twissup coverage.

Announcement

Today I am officially announcing to the blogging world (or at least those who read this stuff) that from March 14th I will be officially terminating my employment with Daleside Brewery. From then on I will be working back up north in my homeland for a little brewery that a lot of North East drinkers may well have heard of called Mordue.

Am I serious? I'm deadly serious. Look, this my deadly serious face.

It's rather similar to my serious face.


As far as I know Mordue seem a nice bunch a lads and I'm quite excited about working for them. To tell the truth I'm just as excited about a lot of other stuff. Like getting to come home to my wife and dog in the evenings. Going to the local pubs more often and not having to fork out for rent each month for an accommodation that I only really half live in. The wife was even more pleased, so pleased she made me a Chocolate Porter Cake (pictured above), a recipe adapted from The best of American Beer and food by Lucy Saunders.

I should be excited, I'm about to become a permanent resident of Nothumberland. And I mean this without any disregard to Daleside. I have learnt a lot at Daleside, and had a great time. But since its the only brewery I have ever worked at I'm curious and excited to find out how a different brewery operates. It should be fun. So to all readers, if you can see that little Daleside logo on my page (scroll down a little and its on the right)?
Well from March 11th that little logo will be replaced by this one......

Beer from the Toon. For the Toon.

Am gannin back yem lads! Top a tha Tyne is all mine all mine, top a tha tyne is all mine!

Sundays

As you might have guessed, it's Sunday.

No other day of the week is quite like Sunday. Shops are closed, pubs are open for Sunday lunch and people start to think about the week ahead. Some of the best Sundays can be a calm interlude between the weekend and the upcoming week. A time of careful reflection on what has passed, and what lies ahead. Relaxing in a beer garden with delicious pint of cask ale with lunch is much advised (if whether permits) or simply just chilling out.

But drinking beer on a Sunday is always a cautious affair. It's a simple relationship; the more beer you drink the harder the monday morning (especially in my case, Mondays I have to be up by about 4:15am).

But this Sunday has been quite a relaxed affair. Back in Harrogate Elizabeth II is steadily fermenting away whilst I enjoy a lamb roast accompanied by a 2008 Luis Felipe Edwards Carmeneve from Colchagua Valley, Chile. As far as red wine goes Chilian ones usually win me over, and this one has a nice spicy blackberry flavour, medium body and moderate acidity. It's a good equaliser for Northumberland Cheviot cheese.

So as far as Sundays go, it's been alright. Nothing much on TV, as usual. But there will always be one Sunday I will never forget. It was following one of our Saturday night cheeseboards and a fair bit cheese was left over, much of it from the Northumberland cheese company. The wife had just baked a fresh loaf of bread from the bread maker. It was still warm. At the time I thought, I’ll crack open a bottle of my own home brewed Belgian style Golden Ale it might be 8.5% but just the one.

Soft crusty bread with butter slowly melted into it meets Northumberland Coquetdale cheese meets fresh fruity home brewed Belgian strong ale… That’s what I call a Sunday to remember.

Elizabeth II

Here it is folks. I finally got round to the remake to hopefully compensate for the disaster that was operation Elizabeth I. After dwelling on the various ideas of what to brew I decided to stick to my guns and keep with a similar but different old school formulation than the last (IPA's, Belgian strong ales, Imperial Stouts and experimental spiced ales can all wait, I want to get this one right first). Here is the new formulation.

OG 1084.5.

I'm hoping to bring it down to around 1018 with the Daleside house strain for an 8.8% abv.

Grist.

Optic pale malt 83.5%

Torrified wheat 4%

Crystal malt 9%

Black malt 3.5%

(all percentages refer to the percentages of fermentables each malt accounted for)

Mash stand was 1 hour at 65.5oC.

                                                   The mighty Elizabeth II mash

In Copper boil.

90min: Challenger hops (7.78% alpha) for 25IBU

45min:  Challenger hops (7.78% alpha) for 21IBU

5min: Fuggles 5.26% 5IBU
5min: Goldings 8.6% 7IBU


(Lots of hops!)

                                        The copper boil in action next to the spent mash

In theory the hops are left to settle at the bottom after the boil. In this case the hops were the bottom.


Runoffs (no pumps involved, as my kit is a simple thing) were slow and sparging took nearly two and a quarter hours. An anomaly also occurred during the runoff to fermenter. Sadly, because this was the first of a double brew, I needed the copper emptied of Elizabeth and ready sharpish for the next brew. Usually I can get it all into the fermenter inside of 15 minutes, but not this time.

The copper to fermenter transfer was about as fast paced and dramatic as a world championship staring competition, so me and co-worker Matt had to adopt the old school, rather crude method of lifting and slowly decanting the hot wort from the copper through a series of sieves held above the fermentation bucket (kind of like in extract brewing). The sieves worked well but some small fragments of spent hops ended up in the fermenter with (probably) excess trub. Apart from this all is going well so far. I awoke the following morning to a fermenting tub brimming with a mighty head of yeast and kicking off heaps of wonderful aroma. I learned from Elizabeth not to over pitch so this time instead of quadrupling my usual pitching rate I doubled it. It's going strong and fermenting at about the rate I want. So far so good.