Saturday 21 December 2013

Christmas Crawl 2013 - Camden and Kentish Town

Christmas. Time for tradition. You know the sort of thing; the same inane rituals, the same shit decorations you won't throw away, the same ranting at another year without a late night Marx Brothers' film to munch cheese and pickles to.

And so to an event now firmly lodged in the Christmas schedule. We've done the family stuff, we've even had a few days to relax. So it's time to hit London with Dr. B. and drink some beer. And, as usual, the planning is interesting/stressful. Will the pub be open? Will the beer be ok? Can I get away with drinking in London without having to overstretch the mortgage? Can I get some decent nosebag for less than twenty quid for a plate of chips? (Gastropubs! Christ!). So here's this year's plan, with a thankful nod to Stig and his Foursquare list:



View Christmas Crawl 2013 in a larger map

Unfortunately, the Camden Town Brewery is shut when we plan to go...ah well, another day. The Grafton seems best bet for food without being fleeced (is it me, but to get a decent bit of scoff in this bit of London it seems like gastros all the way?.....I can eat Scotch Eggs 'til the cows come home, but I regard the Scotch Egg as a snack!). I am sure Brewdog will both amuse and infuriate me, and I look forward to the more homely atmosphere of the Bree Louise at the end of the day.

As ever, a round up will follow!

Sunday 15 December 2013

AG #15: Blackberry Hefeweizen

Elsewhere on this blog, I have posted the recipe for this.

The yeast, after being a bit slow, really kicked into action, and then stopped in a cold snap. THE FG was still rather high, so I roused and put it in somewhere warm. Nice bit of krausen, and then stopped again. My final gravity is still really too high (by about a full tenth of a point!!).

Well, it went in the keg anyway. A hefeweizen tends to primed scarily high (about 100g of sugar in my 10 litres). I replaced 10 g of this with the crushed juice of 200 g of foraged blackberries (assumed a 5g/100g sugar content, as per the Internet). So this could all go wrong in a scary pink explosion!


This efficiency/gravity thing is getting annoying now. So much so, I am thinking of mashing in a large esky to make sure I maintain heat. Yes, the yeast may have been a bit old - it was on the last month where I could use it. But it had been in the fridge all that time, and smelt OK. The beer also smelt and tasted fine....it just won't ferment out fully.

Given that I have experienced this phenomenon more than once, with different yeasts, suggests that it must be me and my technique, not my ingredients. I am sure my worry about hitting temperatures leads me to warming the water too much, adding the grain, mashing high. As the saying goes M.A.L.T. (more alcohol, less temperature).

To be honest, the temperature loss in my kettle/mash tun is pretty small over 90 mins, so I wonder if it is better to dough in a few degrees under, and the add hot water?

As it is, I've ended up with a lighter beer than I thought (3.7% not the 5% I aimed for), perhaps sweeter (thank goodness I added more hops than I did in my original attempt), and potentially explosive to boot :-{

Tuesday 3 December 2013

The Session #82: Beery Yarns

Well. Some of these yarns could be ribald, some long and convoluted in the telling, and others could be as fishy as they are beery. However, for this Session (and apologies for not contributing since my last rant many months ago!), I wanted to focus upon beer as being the excuse for the story; the stimulant for the tales that unfold, not the story itself.

In fact my first yarn hardly features beer at all. Back in the day, as a postgrad student in Cardiff, in the early 90s, beer was Brains (or, if you were unlucky, Hancock's....or if you had committed one of the most heinous sins known to Man, Ansells). So a chance to sample something else was always welcome, and one pub where this was possible was out of town, up a hill, at a pub where we had to direct the taxi driver - the Ty Mawr in Lisvane.

On a summer's evening, the garden looked down to the coast, with a great view. But this evening was a wintery one. It was blowing a gale outside, raining sideways. I don't recall what I drank, probably something dark and deeply flavoured. I almost cannot recall who was in the intrepid party, except a few brave souls from the Department. But what I recall is the pub, with its fire roaring, shuttered against the elements, the gentle hubbub of conversation, gradually loosened by beers we had never tasted before was the antidote we all needed. I just remember laughter, warmth and friendship. I also recall visiting a few years later, as a friend left to I study in the US. It had now become a family friendly pub. For all this, the warmth it had on that winter's evening had disappeared in a haze of menus and child friendly policies...

My other tale is also wintery. Christmas morning to be exact. My sister and I had taken a walk up to the pub whilst mom finished cooking. Our destination was The Beacon Hotel, not 20 minutes walk up a relatively steep hill. The day was crisp; snow on the ground from a previous fall, but the sun was out. Glorious. We sat, with many, in the back of the pub. The landlord had tapped a new barrel of Ruby Mild. After the walk up, it tasted utterly superb. The boss came in and individually wished all of his customers a "Happy Christmas" and there was much chatting between strangers. If you don't know the pub, and I know many do, it is an old Victorian building, with furnishings to match, and the decorations consisted of holly obtained from the Beacon Hill behind the pub. No music, no fruit machine, just the cracking of coals in the grate, and the sound of people happy and contented. It was almost as if this scene was a replay of the same moment, recreated over 100 times on the same spot. After a second pint, lunch beckoned, and I left this fantastic bit of the Black Country behind me, knowing full well that however things change outside, what happens inside would represent what is good, and will persist, for many Christmases to come.