Al' Wheat Pet

Out of all my favourite beers of the North East region, this one has to be in the top five somewhere. Mordue's Al' Wheat Pet is a 4.1% British wheat beer, which in other words means a cask conditioned golden session ale with wheat influences. My fondest memory of this beer was when I first tried it at the Tankerville Arms, Eglingham. It was a few years back now and me and Helen had just moved to Northumberland and enjoyed a great lunch on a laid back summer afternoon in the beer garden. It was crisp, light and well composed with delicate herbal hop notes throughout.

A couple of years down the line and it's selling out early at the Newcastle beer festival. As a seasonal/special it's difficult to get hold of but this year, since I'm brewing the stuff I shouldn't find it too hard to track down. It's sure been a while since I tried this one.

So anyway, friday morning comes along and were ready to rock!

Mash goes in.

Now for the sparge.

The run off was nice and easy, this can be watched from the underback, a peculiar piece of kit I had never used previous to my time at Mordue. This is an intermediate vessel situated between the mash tun and copper that lets you watch the wort majesticly flow between the two vessels (below). It is however very easy to let it overflow if your not careful.

Next stage; the copper boil and in go the hops.

After this the boiled wort was transferred to the fermenter where it was introduced to our friends the yeast. By now it should be happily fermenting away. Next week we shall be tasting the stuff and drinking through my mini cask of Marynka pale ale. But all in all not a bad day's work.