Yay Us! Again.

More lovely awards, this time "taste cumbria" Cumbria Life Food and Drink awards.

I'll expand on this later.

Cask Vs Keg. Summary of findings.

OK?

In other news, I've invented "Kask", or possibly "Ceg". It involves a keg, a handpump and an optional cask breather / aspirator.

Oh! Xmas tree!

Not Brewers of Europe HQ

Went to Belgium t'other day for the "Celebration of Beers from NW England" thingy at the Brewers of Europe house in Brussels. One of the best free Eurocrat piss-ups of the festive season, I'm told. Chap from a family brewer stood up and made an impassioned plea for tax-breaks to reward him for watering his beer down.

What are they like?

Meanwhile, out in the city, the light-hearted hunt for the weakest beer bottomed out at 5.2% abv. Granted, we weren't trying that hard (so don't tell me about all the sensible beers missed), but heck.

We had to deliver our own beer to the reception after a transport hiccup. This involved much running around with heavy wheely cases. But it did mean that we had empty cases for the bringing back of beer, glasses and chocolate.

Yay! Us!

Still childishly pleased to walk off with armful of certificates. Even CAMRA ones. (I kid. Am Chuffed)

Becky also v.pleased to get her hands on CBEN Gold! That's for environmental stuff.

We have a SIBA (North) bronze in here somewhere as well, but we're in such a mess, what with the "on-going facilities upgrade", that I can't find it.

P.S. "Furness Abbey" (that's the one that got the gold RAIB there, i.e. some people who drink a lot of beer, and might therefore be expected to know something about the subject, thought it was the best bottle conditioned beer in Cumbria, for what that's worth, while beating our own second-placed "Mutiny") is named for the ruined Cistercian monastery nearby us. The beer is not intended to be a copy of, or even, particularly, in the style of, a Belgian Dubbel. Look on it as a beer from an alternate reality. It's the beer that might have been brewed if things had gone differently. So it'll be like those belgo beers, at the same time it'll be like a British strong bitter. But mainly, it's from our imagination. Y'dig cats?

P.P.S. We're off to Brussels shortly, as it happens, which should be nice.

Hazy beer. After all this time.

Now, here's a beer that's meant to be hazy.  If anything, it's meant to be a little more hazy than this, but this cask has been in store for 4 months and it's difficult to produce a completely stable haze. 

We keep the odd cask hanging around in our cold room (~10°C) so that we can do a bit of due diligence on shelf life / cask washing etc. 

Update: For the avoidance of doubt, this beer ("Wheat") is the only pale beer we make that's intended to look like this.  There's a stronger, more heavily spiced version on the drawing board. Later.

It's a wheat beer of course -  "one grain in three" being wheat.  Wheat malt, that is.   This leads to relatively high protein levels in the finished beer which helps us with the haze.  There's some oat malt in there too. It had a fairly short mash, the pH dropped with a touch of lactic acid, and a quite hot sparge.  We've found that this helps a bit also.  The boil was shortish and on the gentle side.  As well as (some) hops, it was boiled up with  Lemon Balm (stalks and all) so I think we picked up a fair dollop of tannins and other hazy plant stuff.  No kettle finings of course.

We used a yeast that isn't terribly flocculent (altho it does clear, given time)  and of course, there's no fish-guts or anything in there.

It looks good.   And (even after all this time) it tastes good. So, we're pretty pleased with ourselves.  All the effort we put in was worth it.

You can imagine how well I take it when someone complains that it's "not clear".

Stringers / NorthBar / Leeds

We're planning to be there.  We're not doing one of those FIGJAM* MTB** type efforts. We just fancy going to Leeds for a few jars and this looks like the best place to be on a Wednesday in August, in Leeds.  Say "hello" if you spot us.  We'll be the ones drinking "West Coast Blond", "Best", "No. 2 Stout", "Hop Priest", plus the fizzy muck "Wheat" and "Mutiny".  There's a few cheeky bottles there also. The "Damson" (last year's, of course, also featuring some bullaces) is very good.

I must remember to take a camera. If I do, I'll post some pictures.

* F_ck I'm Good, Just Ask Me
** Meet The Brewer

That'll do.

No more opinions, nothing about the beer business (which I understand less the more I find out) and deffo no more taking offence at interweb dimwittery.

From now on, nothing but naked marketing messages.