Late Brewing...

Don’t be brain washed by some the main stream brewerys producing sub-standard beer. Thats the driver behind Bullhouse’s awesome new lager. For years lager was standard and the craft beer revolution has changed that. IPA’s have seen a vast amount of experimentation and development as have stouts and even sours...now we are seeing smaller independent breweries taking lager to new levels and this 4% vegan friendly unfiltered lager from Bull House is no exception. http://bullhousebeer.co.uk

We’ve dabbled a bit with 2gallon brews and to be honest over complicated the process for no reason, so this time we took it back a notch, kept it a little smaller and brewed a 1 gallon Chocolate Stout that should be ready in time for Christmas.

Smash IP fermenting nicely - Single Hop Citra IPA - 2 gallons in different 1gal demijohns. Its a 7 day primary fermentation then we are transferring to a secondary for dry hopping.

We are huge fans of Brewdog, their story, their approach to ‘business’ and especially their PunkIPA. Its our go too beer. Its good fun to experiment and try new beers and try new breweries, thats what its all about and its one of the things we love about craft beer. But sometimes you just aren’t up for risking it, sometimes you need something you know is going to taste delicious, smell delicious and tick that box everytime. That’s PunkIPA and you won’t often see our fridge without at least one can in it. 

So here ya go... look after the kids today says the wife. No worries says I. I can do it all. So pick up Jo, go to the brew shop, nibble about looking at stuff, buy that one thing we came to get. Leave, get the kids lunch, get ourselves lunch, park up and eat lunch. Drive home, set up the kids with something to entertain them. Get out all beer equipment... spend 6 hours making beer while answering questions from two under 5's about what we are doing, fixing iPads, pouring juice and trying to work out what is going on with the beer...introducing "too much in a day IPA". Needless to say we were a day late making this beer. We wanted to make something fresh and hoppy with a nice balance of bitterness. We used extra Pale maris otter malt with a little bit of roasted barley, hopped 7times in 5 minute intervals during the boil with a mix of Chinook, Amarillo and Cascade. Fermented with American Ale yeast and dry hopped with the same hops in two different demijohns... one is way more heavily hopped than the other. Those demijohns could not hold any more hops without having to sacrifice fluid. Because of the narrow neck on the demijohns we decided to chuck the dry hops straight in without a muslin bag, this is fine but makes bottling a little more difficult. So we wrapped the racking pipe with a fine mesh filter bag and popes it into the demi. We then filtered it to a secondary vessel and bottled from there. Seems to have worked fine... just have to make sure you sterilise properly and try not introduce oxygen. Bottled 7.5bottles from each demijohn and now we are leaving them for 4weeks. Can't wait to see how they turn out...

Finally bottled the Crack Stout - pale ale / Stout hybrid. Only a gallon to see how it works out but it was super fun to do and a great learning experience. Main lesson: if it says 1hour mash and 1hr boil.... it does not mean 2hours!!! More like 6 hours, there is a lot more prep required for all grain brewing and there are more variables. I think we'll get quicker as we go along but it definitely is a slow process.

Love sampling other local beers and this was a first try of the Rockin' Goose... it's nice. I find the Ards Brewing stuff a little bit watery but actually it works really well here, really refreshing, nice malt flavours and a soft foamy head. Quite enjoyable. 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺👍🏻

We’ve been doing a bit of all grain brewing. Working on a stout for Christmas. We took a trip down to our local home Brew store ‘House of Home Brew’ to chat to them about some ingredient and we left with a decent instruction on a Pale Ale / Stout hybrid. Off course we changed it a bit - with absolutely no idea how that would work out we did what we do best and just charged on. Generally though - it was a lot easier than we had initially thought it would be - the difficult bit was the process of seeping and boiling. It’s hard to get the pot up to the heat and to keep it consistent the home hob is just not suitable - need to do something about that for the next batch. We did buy a new coil chiller instead of having to mess about with an ice bath but to be honest for a small batch like 1 or 2 gallons an ice bath would work a treat. Its so much fun working with the fresh ingredient, gives you a much better understanding of what is actually in the beer - yeah it takes a hell of a lot more time to do - but its much more fun that the beer kits as long as you enjoy and can be bothered with all the fuss. Check out http://www.houseofhomebrew.co.uk

Finally got round to visiting Against The Grain. It's a craft beer pub on Wexford Street in Dublin. Not far from St Stephens Green and about 15minutes walk from the dreadful Temple Bar area it's a nice friendly bar in a busy little area. With a range of international and local craft ewes on tap, last night it had a full selection from Galway Bay on tap plus a mix of others. Tried an All Day session IPA on tap from Founders Brewing which was lovely, I have had it before from a tin so it was nice to try it on tap. For a bit more flavour I had to try a Big Red from Rascals Brewing... it's a potent DIPA with strong malt and hop flavours. Cool bar, check it out.

This is my second home-brew. Its a pack brew, a Coopers basic IPA, but we dry hopped it with Cascade for extra aroma, makes it more similar to an american IPA. So while pack brewing isn’t all that glamorous, I feel really confident in my understanding of sanitisation and temperature control during fermentation. Really happy with this beer, its fresh, subtle tropical aromas with a slight citrus taste and sweet malt flavours. I think its time to have a dab at some Malt Extract Brewing.

Got to taste the latest sampling on tap from @guinness this time it's their 5.3%abv Wheat Ale. This is a nice easy to drink beer, it has hints of that German weissbier but only hints. It's quite similar to the #fulcrum from @clearskybrewing but not as good if I am honest. The main issue I had was it was just a little watery and bland. It's a lovely yellow golden colour with a decent head. It has a decent body and generally it's a well created beer. But if you are looking for that sweet powerful flavour you get from a German beer this might disappoint a little. 

This thing is pretty good. It's a blonde and its sweet and delicate. It's available from @marksandspencer #flavourful #beerlover #beerblog #bavarian #munchnerkellerbier 

Gotta say I was totally pulled in by the punk all black can design on this #kustom #lager from @pistonheadlager this beer itself was good. It's a lager. But it was pretty decent. It's a blend of #munchner and #Pilsner #malt so it does have a slight my fuller body. The mix of spalter and peeled hops give it a subtle spicyness. All round though it's light and easy to drink. Interesting if you like lagers. @letsbruup . . .

This thing is pretty interesting! First try from @wildbeerco and this is their #evolveripa basically they experiment with a variety of wild yeast strains. This IPA is fermented with #brettanomyces apparently it changes flavour the longer you leave it continually developing new characteristics and living up to its name "evolver" . Off course I opened it then read up about it... So I am gonna buy another bottle and see what it's like after 6months. But generally it was pretty good though some interesting aromas that I hadn't experienced before.

Bee17 from @backyardbrew - it's a Pilsner dryhopped ... Why not! I got hooked by the can design. But the flavour is pretty decent. Brewed in Sweden with ABV of 4.7% It's got some great aromas and flavour similar to Czech Pilsners. There is a nice bitterness but it's a refreshing drink.

I think I prefer beer from a tin, it feels fresher and gets colder quicker. Nice sample here from @fullersbrewery #frontier is a lager where #oldworld Malts meet #newworld #hops it's Fullers attempt at creating a #lager with more #character and more a interesting #taste it lacks a bit of head but I quite like it. It's fruity and refreshing and has a nice golden colour. 

This was the bottling process for our latest homebrew APA :)