An awesome gift!

It's not what you know, it's who you know, that's what they say.

Luckily in the business I'm in you get to know some useful contacts. One of these just happens to be Theakston's breweries Jonathan Manby, one of the youngest coopers in the UK. Just the other day he dropped by work in his Theakston's van. We had made a little arrangement; he makes me a 2-3 gallon capacity wooden barrel in exchange for some home brew and a few cases of free beer. Like I always say to the office staff, 'the other brewers are our friends'.

That right, my baby, my precious, I'm stroking it now... No that sounds wrong

The oak used was previously used to hold Theakston's beer and I'm informed to soak this baby in salt water between and before filling. This is an area I have to pay attention to as various sources have claimed that wooden beer barrels can be difficult to clean if left unattended after emptying. This is one of the reasons casks today are stainless steel, infections can't embed themselves in steel like they do in wood. I am also aware that whatever beer I fill this thing with must be brutally strong, and must fill the cask right to the brim or else oxidation will be a problem (meaning I need to deliver on volume and extract). For this reason my currently pending Kurgan Imperial Russian Stout and Vintage 2010 ale could not be used, both are 2 gallon brew lengths.

The question is, what do I fill this thing with? My imagination goes wild. Firstly I thought I could soak and wash it out in Sherry, Whisky, Port or Rum and do another Imperial Stout? Or I could do a brutally hoppy new world or old school style IPA, hire a boat and take it on a sea voyage to the Maldives and back (look out Pete Brown)? I could brew some crazy Belgian style offering, pre-soak the wood in Merlot, deliberately infect the resting beer with Brettanomyces or other bacterial strains and blend it with fruit? Or I could use the wood the same way it was used in it's previous life, fill it with an old school British beer, Porter, Stock or Old ale and just leave it for ages? Or I could do another two gallon Imperial stout to be blended with the same brew brewed by another home brewer? Like a collaborative brew.

Frankly I've ruled out the idea of crudely soaking it in any kind of wine or spirit, the wood was previously used for beer, I will take it how it is. Up to now I'm thinking of brewing a 8-10% traditional Old Ale style beer but I keep changing my mind. But I'm open to any suggestions.

Tonight's the night. Daleside on tour: Meet The Brewer, 25th August, Three Hulats, Leeds. Be There!

In conjunction with the Six Spoons Beer Festival in Leeds, Daleside will also be attending a few 'meet the brewer' events across the six participating wetherspoons.

Now I’ve been to one of these before. Daleside’s head brewer Craig does a talk on brewing while I act as a kind of roadie, passing round samples and holding back those crowd surfers. Tonight Craig reckons I can do a short talk about my Festival ale if I like. Joining us will be office ace 'Vince' Daleside’s main man of sales. This will be a good opportunity to try my 'Spoons Festival Ale' from the hand pump. Starting around 7:30pm, all bloggers are welcome as tonight is the night to ROCK! I mean hand out free beer and do a lecture with a little diagram thing. It’s all good fun.

So this is what all the fuss was about

OK I admit it, I got the dates for the Six Spoons Beer festival in Leeds wrong (24th to the 1st not 21st to the 30th of August). The hotel was already booked for a weekend away of trying my Spoons Festival ale from the pump at the actual festival and this had fallen through. So what can me and the wife do for a weekend in Leeds, I thought, a city I have very little familiarity with. Well, I have heard good things about Leeds. It's lively, metropolitan and most importantly has many good pubs. This we found out ourselves with highlights being visits to Mr Foleys, the Scarborough Hotel and the Ossett brewery owned The Hop.

Last weekend I also managed to cash in on a big opportunity. Taking the train straight from work on my way to Leeds I decided to take a short break at Headingly station. From here I could embark on a special mission to hunt and find what I was hoping would be one of the best speciality beer shops in Northern England, owned by fellow beer blogger Zak Avery.

A half hour walk the multimap assured but navigating though street after street laboured with baggage and the humid heat it felt considerably longer. This was hard core beer hunting. One man and his map hunting the beer paradise, the gateway to hopefully many different beers I have been longing to try.

After a good 35 minutes my destination was reached.

Behold; Beer Ritz/Zak's crib

A great little shop that packs in a great range of beer inside such a confined area. Legend of the video beer review Zak wasn't around though, only his minions. But this made no difference as the beer made up for it. A good number of new wave Italian beers were on offer. Various US, German and Belgian brews, some Brew Dog beers you rarely see (including a bottle of Abstrakt 01), collaborative brews and loads of Beers that are blogged about time after time in the blogosphere. Marble, Gadd’s, Thornbridge and more. The main thing restricting me from buying to excess was the fact that I would have to lug everything all the way back to the station, and then to the hotel in Leeds after that. So choices were made carefully.

What beers did I buy? Well two of them were opened on the Sunday, after returning from Leeds whilst intending to take full advantage of great weather.

Stone, Victory, Dogfish Head
Saison du BUFF. 6.8%.

A collaborative brew involving the bad ass Stone and the crazy/extreme/experimental Dogfish Head has to be at least interesting right? A Belgian Saison style brew was what they went for in the end, spiced up with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. The mixture works just fine, and if you like herbal things like me you will love it. It's bold, yet really easy drinking (like a Stone beer) for 6.8%, it’s also crazy (like a Dogfish beer) that at first tastes like a mouth full of herbs, mainly sage. When you get into it you really wish you had another and your mouth is left with a kind of dry herbal taste. My tip, pour in the yeast from the bottom of the bottle, it really enhances it.

Thornbridge Halcyon. 7.7%.
(Green Hopped IPA 2009 Harvest)

Thornbridge Halcyon pours a clouded golden colour in the glass (somebody mentioned the reasoning for it once and I can't remember if it was yeast flocculation problem or a protein-polyphenol haze from excessive hop material) with a nice fluffy head. The aroma is peculiarly on the sweet side with fruity, sherbert like notes and fresh aromatic hop oils. Don't get me wrong, this is the beer has had a lot of rave reviews and every other UK beer blogger seems to have blogged about it at some stage. I have also read this was a double IPA, which to me means ether a beautiful expression of hops or just extremely challenging. This was defiantly the first one.

It's juicy, beautifully drinkable with lovely voluptuous malt sweetness and cascading orangey, green piney hop flavour throughout. Really easy going. The very distinct fresh 'green' hop flavour reminds me of the only other fresh hop beer I have ever tried, Deschutes Hop Trip, which was outstanding. Being hopped by Target and Target hops only it doesn’t have those zesty citrus, dry resinous grapefruit like notes you would expect from this style of beer. It's zesty alright, but not in the same way. So half expecting a challenging beer loaded with brutal hops, I was pleasantly surprised, and realised what all the fuss was about. Beautiful fresh hop flavour, balance, more hop flavour, and nothing less. It rocks, and would be well suited as a celebratory beer, drank outdoors on a sunny day.

My first beer dinner, "Making Beer and Food Dance", The Mitre Knaresbourgh

Plenty of other bloggers have covered beer dinners before but not I. But since the whole Beer and Cheese evening flop last month I have been searching for the answers. Why did it fail? What went wrong? I already had a good idea why but this event confirmed it a bit more. People turned up, I would say in excess of 30 people turned up, not bad for a tuesday night. Pretty soon the advantages of this event over mine became obvious. For a start the The Mitre is a pub easily accessible by rail or road situated in a densely populated area. The pub itself is part of the Market Town Taverns pub chain and the event owned by feva. Because of the quality of the beer range already available at the pub, no extra beers were bought in. Finally, tickets were strictly pre-paid for, meaning no names on the list of people who had simply just claimed they would turn up but then never do.

Anyway on to the dinner. 'Making food and beer dance' involves six food and beer pairings:


Aubergine Pate

with chestnut puree and melba toast

Beer: Leffe Blonde

Easy going, quite nice, with mainly of rich and sweet notes making it work.


Miniature glazed chicken drumsticks

with bourbon & chilli glaze; served on crisp Little gem lettuce

Beer: Copper Dragon Golden Pippin

Nicely paired and quite subtle. Probably more subtle than the first. A bit more hops (maybe a Sierra Navada Pale ale) and spice would have made it magical.


Crisp Beer Battered Salmon Goujons

With a lemon & herb mayonnaise

Beer: Paulaner Weissebier



This beer pairs great with batter and the salmon itself. At this point I was pleased things were getting better.


Steak and Ale Pie

with handcut chips & vegetables

Beer: Black Sheep Ale

My initial thoughts were; Any amateur can think of this pairing, it sounds so obvious and unadventurous. But you know what, it works, and it works brilliantly. The cask conditioned Black Sheep Ale was beautifully fresh and in perfect condition. Last time I remembered having this beer tasting so good was at the actual brewery. A good lesson, never over look the obvious.


Dark Chocolate Pot

with strawberry and vanilla shortbread

Beer: Timmermans Strawberry

Super sweet fruit beer meets sweet chocolaty fruity dessert. Straight from the textbook, and all the elements seemed to work together well.


Selection of Yorkshire Cheeses

with rhubarb chutney, grapes and biscuits

Beer: Kwak

Looking at the menu, this was the one I was looking forward to the most. Yorkshire Blue and Wendsleydale were the two cheeses I could identify, a third unknown medium-hard goats cheese was also present. The bold, slightly sweetish nature of the 8% Kwak provided a natural contrast for this dish, whereas the Belgian yeast character found harmonies. Both the rhubarb chutney and grapes really integrated well in this and this, as many may guess, was my favorite of the six preparations.


So overall a great night, and I learnt a fair bit too, like some of the obvious difficulties in organising, hosting and running a beer and food event. A big issue is getting the right dishes ready at the right time brought out with the correct beer. This was handled really well on this occasion but felt a certain degree of urgency from the staff at points when the service was slowing up. Everyone must work in synchrony, and is dependant on the kitchen staff allot. Then you have issues I'm already familiar with like getting tickets in, knowing how much food to buy in, how much beer to buy given your estimated sample size per person and so forth.

I managed to get a good chat out of the bloke running the show, Ian Fozard, who owns The Mitre and the Market Town Taverns Pub chains. His presentation was also something to take note of. No talking through every combination on how it works, where the style comes from etc bombarding the audience with information. Each dish started with a quick introduction, then it moved on. The beer selection also caught my interest, all tailored for the curious armature, no extreme beers or anything beyond the vaguely challenging. OK I didn't discover any new and exciting beers but I liked the way it captured the interest and intrigue of the audience who seemingly had little to no knowlege of many of these beers and how they could be paired with food. In the same sense that it's better to teach school children A-B-C before you cover molecular physics. Makes sense. One thing I wish at the end of the night is that Market Town Tavern Pubs could be more widespead. To find a pub with this kind of beer range in Northumberland would be great, as the count on a whole has little to compete with it. And when I say 'it' I mean a diverse, international, quality beer range found on cask, keg and in bottled form, good food, whisky, wine, the whole package. So a good set of pubs which I might be looking out for this weekend as I will be beer hunting in Leeds. 

Tribute brew

A beer inspired by the greatest scene in all film history featuring the greatest villain of all film history. You've guessed it,it's the mighty Kurgan from the 1986 fiction movie Highlander. The brew is intended to embody the very essence of the Kurgan, so I thought it would be most fitting for it to be a Russian Imperial Stout. Taking some reference from another home brew attempt at this kind of thing, and some of the difficulties involved, I set forth. Pale, Crystal, Dark Crystal, Black and amber malts combined with flaked and roast barley were used as the fermentables for this one. Primary bittering hops were Northern brewer and Centennial. Late in the boil some Amarillo, more Centennial and nearly a full pack of Willamette were thrown in to achieve an estimated 88 IBU.

The resulting 2 gallons of viscous black solution at OG: 1111.3 was fermented with White Labs Dry English Ale Strain. I remembered using this strain to great effect a few years back for my 2008 12% Vintage ale so I knew it could do the business with high gravity beers.

    See the mighty Kurgan erupt from the fermentation vessel

 Strangely this time our friends the yeast started calling time at about 1036 and despite much rousing the fermentation basically died. I'm sure my unintended almost 67oC mash temperature could have had something to do with this but never mind. In desperation I re-pitched but only had the Daleside house strain available (these fellas struggle with anything over about 8% so I knew it was futile).

At 1034, that's under 70% attenuation (but still nearly 10.4% alcohol so I'm happy with that) cooling had to be applied and a few days later the batch was split between two demi-johns, one containing heavy toast French oak chips the other without. I shall leave it a while now, until the time of the gathering is upon us until I feel it's time for some tasting to see the effects of the oak aging compared to the un-oaked version. Hopefully it will ferment out a little more over time to squeeze out as much alcohol from this batch as possible. Brutal stuff indeed.