Archive for April 2013
Northern Craft Brewers American Pale Ale Competition at Saltaire Brewery
Saturday 13th April
The day started before 10.30 with a few jobs and setting up to do in the brewery, around 11am people started arriving the sun was shining and the pints were starting to be pulled. By 1pm all the competition beers had been signed in and entry fees paid so judging could start, our panel of 6 judges was pretty similar to last year with Zak & Rob beer-writer & beer-blogger a couple of CAMRA judges, a National Guild judge and of course Tony the Head Brewer and owner of Saltaire Brewery.
We had around 44 (42 turned up on the day) beers entered into the competition, thats no mean feat for a single style homebrew comp, entries from as far afield as the far North East to the South Coast & Plymouth… this year really has drawn together a great group of like-minded homebrewers, its been good to meet new people, put names to faces , catch up with old friends & swap and taste a few exceptional homebrewed beers.
This year we had 9 Handpump beers across two of the bars in the brewery, each handpull having a beer donated by a homebrewer… Now we’re not certain, but does any other homebrew event in the UK offer 2 fully stocked bars like this, we’d like to think not and we’d like to thank all of our brewers for brewing and getting their beers to us for the day… Fantastic Work!
Each brewer using American Hops in a range of beer styles from light to dark and 3.5 – 5.5% ABV.
All the beers were given for a donation, we suggested £2 a pint inline with what the Brewery normally charge on its BeerClub nights, we raised a massive £640 for the charities below:
- The Alzheimers Society
- Water Aid
- Yorkshire Donkey Sanctuary
- Macmillan Cancer Support
- Cancer Research UK
- Make-a-Dream
- Beagle Welfare
- Yorkshire Cat Rescue
The Hop Talk
While judging was underway we had lined up Andrew Whalley of Charles Faram Ltd to come along and keep us entertained with an interesting talk about hops. These are exciting times for hops and hop growing and Andrew had brought along a variety of hop samples, needless to say we made a big mess of rubbed hops all over the floor and got sticky hop hands 🙂
Andrew started out at York brewery so knows a thing or two about brewing. Thanks for the talk, I know a lot of us are keen to try the new English varieties in the Farams Hop Development program, Cheers
CharlesFarams on Twitter
@BritishHops
After much deliberation the results were announced for the American Pale Ale:
Kevin Bagshaw from Doncaster took first place:
2nd – Andy Black from Leeds
3rd – Steve Syson from Derby
4th – Giles Strother from Oxford
Louis Cowdroy from Harrogate got the Highly Commended
42 Beers entered Judges stated all were of a very high standard & they found it very hard to split 1st and 2nd place.
The Best Cask results, voted for with a show of hands:
‘Pray for Mojo’ by Matt Darcy from Harrogate took first place:
2nd Neil Gardener from Guisley
3rd Zak Avery from Leeds
Louis Cowdroy got the Honorable Mention
Sincere thanks to all who took part, brewed beer, entered the competition, turned up to drink beer and talk brewing… we have done our 8 charities proud, well done 🙂
Major thinks also go to Tony Gartland for yet again letting me organise a ‘Piss-up in a Brewery’, Shane Swindells for sorting all the competition entries, our excellent team of Judges, the brewery staff, our Barmen Dave & Neil (Even if Neil didn’t have the power of speech by the end of it!), and my wife Emma for running the upstairs Bar, Thanks for a cracking event and here’s to next year! Cheers
The full photo gallery is here…
Northern Craft Brewers APA Comp Saltaire Brewery 2013, a set on Flickr.
I’m still editing and updating this post… so hold yer horses, let me know what I did wrong 😉
Scans of Charity reply letters here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdtnc/sets/72157634103463615/with/9035519874/
AG#99 – Boomstick
Posted on: April 20, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
BoomStick – I’m brewing this for NCB member Paul Bromley who runs a back-garden charity event, he asked me if I’d brew something pale for it, so here it is, its an evolution from my Chinook Blonde recipe, using some of the same hops (but more of them) and adding some Weyermann Munich Type I, and mashing at 69°c, fermenting with Safale us-05.
This time the name again comes from a line Ash says in Army of Darkness “This… is my Boomstick!”
Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This… is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That’s right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 20%
Flaked Oats – 5%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Hops:
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 60 mins – 21g (FWH)
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 30 mins – 21g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 10 mins – 21g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 21g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 49g (94c Steep for 25mins)
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 49g (94c Steep for 25mins)
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.037
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.7% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 9 EBC
Mash: 69°c for 70mins
Boil: 60mins
The malts, all pretty pale:
The hops:
Second batch sparge liquor going in at 78°c:
In go the Cascade & Chinook for the flameout steep:
I decided to rehydrate my yeast today to try and get things underway faster, I want a speedy ferment with time to put this beer in cask to condition before Paul’s event:
The money shot, I got 1044 and liquored back to 1037 with 4 litres giving me a total volume of 25.7 Litres, a goodly amount for filling a plastic pin cask:
No messing, done and dusted.
*25th Apr ’13 – Steady gravity reached, exactly as predicted FG, chilling down before casking this beer.
*Casked 27th Apr ’13 – with 20g white sugar and Allkleer finings, got a few 500ml bottles from it too which I give 3/4 Tsp white sugar each.
I’m going to give the cask a couple of days of warm then chill it down to cellar temps.
*1st May ’13 – Had a cheeky bottle of this, and its bloody good, plenty of juicy hops with a nice balance between the Cascade & Chinook, Chinook not overpowering just nice 🙂
A Brewday with Matt at Truefitt Brewing
It was last June during our wedding anniversary week in Whitby that me and Emma paid Matt a visit in his new Brewery, less than a year later Matt was coming up to his 100th brewed Gyle and had plans for brewing that beer the day I was there. He was not working full time last year, but now having stopped working for The Lions Den and taken on his first employee, he is out on his own.
Best laid plans! The day before our brewday a fused spur had blown and Matt had to cancel a brew doe to lack of hot liquor, so our brewday was Gyle #99 though I suppose in spirit it was still #100, it was to be a big 7%+ IPA hopped with recently released Mandarina Bavaria Hops from Germany.
I was on holiday, it felt wrong getting up this early but I got to Truefitt for 7.30am and found Matt had just started mashing in:
Run-off starts from the Mash Tun via the converted Keg Underback:
He said he was attaching the hop filter!:
The Copper Stand, this is where the last or late hops get to steep in the hot wort giving them time for the hop oils and flavours to infuse into the wort:
He aerates the wort via a sprayball while transferring to the fermenting vessel:
Matt is currently contract brewing for the one for the last breweries he worked at so was going some back-fills for us at Saltaire:
The Beer was named ‘Trembler’ after a previous and differently hopped brew of the same strength, its 7.4% and a Double IPA… I’m hoping to get my hands on some of this in bottle so I can add some tasting notes to the blog.
I had a good day with Matt and his new apprentice Jack, I hope to see Matt down at Saltaire sometime.
The last thing to note is that a Sausage & Tomato butty in Middlesbrough is at least 40p cheaper than in Shipley!!
You also can catch Matt on:
@TruefittBeers
Facebook/TruefittBeers
Some of his regular beers are:
All Bottle-Conditioned, Matt has chosen to hand bottle his beers to keep the full flavour, I’ve also got some other bottles from Truefitt Brewing to try soon 🙂
Click the Pics below to see what i thought of the beers 😉
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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