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Magic Rock Brewing Co.

Posted by: pdtnc on: November 11, 2011

In: Brewing
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One of Huddersfield’s newest breweries is Magic Rock , Rich is the boss who you might already know of from myBrewerytap, Stu is Head Brewer (Famed for eating Pork Pies on Youtube), recent addition is Scott the Drayman.

I’m not going to waffle on about Magic Rock too much when there is a great article in the Independent by Will Hawkes.
Needless to say, Magic Rock are brewing some stunningly excellent beers with my current personal favourite being ‘Highwire’ a thoroughly hop-forward & dry-hopped mouth coating loveliness of a beer.
The brewery was built and installed by www.malrexfabrication.co.uk who, as you can see from the following photos, have done a very professional job.

Its a bugger of a job making a Glass & Bottle look good with a torch in the kitchen!

From Left to right and anti-clockwise, Mash Tun, Bottom of Copper, Hopback:

I’m sure on the inside there is a sticker that says ‘Caution – Hop Surface’:

Bottoms of two conical fermenters:

The long-legged gas-fired Copper boiler:

Wort flow sight-glass and pipework, wort from the mash tun is re-circulated for clarity before being pumped to the copper:

Stu & Scott preparing the ‘Curious NZ’ hops for the Hopback:

Top of the copper:

Fermenter top hatch:

Another angle of the copper, through the plastic flaps is the Malt Loft; you can just see the grist case which is above the mash tun downstairs:

Filling the Hopback with lots of lovely whole-leaf hops:

Obligatory Sight Glass shot:

Two of the other fermenters, front filled with tasty Imperial Stout and the back has RockStar (the MagicRock & DarkStar collaboration brew):

Check them out on Twitter…
@MagicRockBrewCo @MagicRockRich @MagicRockStu @MagicRockScott @MagicRockJonny

Thanks for talking the time out of your day to let me take photos and talk beer ‘n brewing, it was good to hear Stu’s alternate views on yeast. I’m sure I learned a few things from you all 🙂

Tags: ale, beer, beers, bitter, brewery, Brewing, british, double IPA, hoppy, Huddersfield, ipa, magic, magicrock, microbrewery, pork pie, rock, stout, west yorkshire, yorkshire

Mallinsons Brewery, Huddersfield

Posted by: pdtnc on: October 21, 2011

In: Brewing
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Today I drove the 50-or-so minutes over to see Tara & Elaine at Mallinsons Brewery in Huddersfield.
If you’ve never heard of or had a Mallinsons beer you’ll be sure to enjoy them as they make some really well balanced beers, nothing too mental and they hit a lovely hoppy-middle-ground… Something like the Beer equivalent of the Goldilocks-Zone.

Have a look down their rather long list of brewed beers on their website & Check the brewery installation photos too.
Out of their beers I’ve had they have always been superb, bags of flavour & aroma, and a nice amount of body, and all hand-filled & bottled-conditioned (even veggie & vegan friendly) and they even sacrifice their office space to lovingly warm condition them before a cold conditioning phase.

Tara and Elaine started life as school teachers, Before starting the brewery Tara was experimenting with small homebrew batches making beer with Malt Extract & Hops before doing a 3-4 day Brewlab course and a Mossbrew course, then the first brew was done with David Porter… after that they were in at the deep end! Doing 2 brews per week was all that one person could manage with sales / racking and deliveries, during this time Elaine was still working in her old job to help pay Tara a wage while the business found its feet. I think they’ve found their feet now and the all girl team is now three strong with Elaine now brewing too (When Tara is not around!).
They now brew four times per week to keep up to demand, a success story from Homebrewer to well respected commercial Microbrewery.

Here are a few snaps of the brew-house, this is the 6-Barrel Copper – Mash Tun – Hot Liquor Tank, all wood-clad / built & installed by David Porter:

Another view of the kit:

The 4 Stainless steel Fermenting vessels:

Sterilised bottles ready to be filled:

The simplistic approach to hand bottling, straight from un-fined casks, I thought it would be a bit more technical than this so its nice to see things kept simple & straight forward: