60 minute IPA

Hurrah for my mum! When I heard my mum was going out to Delaware to visit some relatives I asked her to see if she could find me a bottle of Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA. The creative minds behind this beer came up with the idea of adding hops continuously throughout the boil.

Hops added early in the boil add bitterness as alpha acids are isomerised but not much aroma as the volatile aroma compounds are boiled off. Hops late in the boil add aroma but not much bitterness as the alpha acids need a good boil to isomerise. Many brewers add 'late hops' at the end of the boil in addition to 'copper hops' added at the start of the boil to try and get the best of both worlds but this is the only brewery I know that adds hops continuously. 

I got brought back four bottles which is a result as I only asked for one. On the down side
my mum said she bought a six pack so I know there's two bottles sitting at my uncles in Delaware that were nearly mine. Seeing as I've got three more bottles than expected is it wrong to pine for the two that got away?

Sampling some strong ones

My recent trip to the lake district may have seen me mainly drinking beers below 4% ABV but in my shopping trip to Booths I stocked up on some beers considerably stronger. 

First up is Innis and Gunn triple matured. In Britain at least it was Innis and Gunn that got the whole oak aged beer thing going. It took me a while to make my mind up on it and some bottles seemed to taste good and some I could well do without before I decided that OK, I like it. The flavour is certainly different for a beer which is probably why it took me a while to get used to it. It's pretty mild tasting for a strong beer with a slight sweetness and not much in the way of hops but a definite vanilla character from the oak. Innis and Gunn have build on their brand by bringing out a variety of different versions. The triple matured version I was drinking is stronger and has longer maturation than the bog standard version but to me anyway tasted pretty much the same as all the other versions I've tried. Except for the IPA they did that is, where they cranked up the hops, normally something I approve of but in this case the added bitterness just didn't work.

Next was another oak aged beer Ola Dubh from Harviestoun.  Ola Dubh is gaelic for 'Black Oil' so presumably the beer is based on their Old Engine Oil.  To the credit of Harviestoun this is the only beer I've tasted aged in whisky barrels that actually has a whisky flavour. Unfortunately I don't like whisky so I won't be drinking this one again. 

Last up of the strong ones was the daddy of them all:  Lee's Harvest Ale. At 11.5% it's right up at the top end of beers in Britain, though if I remember rightly a smidgeon lower in strength than last years vintage. Still I have to say I prefer this years: it's still strong and sweet but last years seemed so sweet I really thought they must have had a problem with their fermentation. 

Latest homebrew

Stand by main boiler!

I got another brew on yesterday and everything went fairly smoothly. I tried a little experiment this time and split off some of the sweet wort into a jam pan to turn into another brew. The grist was:

Pale malt 5.7kg
Cara malt 300g
Choclate malt 90g

The main batch was hopped with my current favourite Styrian goldings. The recipe is inspired by an old favourite of mine I hardly ever see nowadays: Ind Coope Burton Ale.  When I was a lad the pubs round my way were either Friary Meux (Allied Breweries) or Courage. Of the beers on offer Burton Ale was by far the best and it even won Champion Beer of Britain in 1990.  It is still produced, in Leeds for now, but I hardly ever see it and when I do it doesn't seem to be what it used to be. I had a previous go at making Burton a few brews back based on a recipe in an old edition of Graham Wheelers Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home. It was pretty close, right down to inducing the Burton bowel the following day, but the Lovely Lisa thought it a bit lacking in body so I've added some cara malt this time to beef it up a bit. 

The inspiration for the sub-brew came from the excellent Radical Brewing by the equally excellently named Randy Mosher. I really enjoyed this book cover to cover and I've got loads of ideas for things to try now. One idea that particularly caught my fancy was making a beer flavoured with Chai tea. The lovely Lisa's sisters got us into drinking Chai recently so the idea of combining beer and chai was very appealing. I couldn't bring myself to spend all day making five gallons of it in case it tastes rubbish so I upped the grains in the grist a bit and diverted five litres of wort to a jam pan. I added to this 80 grams of crystal malt and 30 grams of old goldings I had lying around with five chai tea bags being added at the end of boil. My efforts for the day ended up with 23l of the main brew at and O.g. of 1.045 and 5l of chai beer at 1.050. 

A packed of dried Safale 04 was used for the yeast, which as a former microbiologist i feel slightly ashamed about. Never mind, I'll culture my own next time, honest.

Beers in the lake district

Me and the lovely Lisa recently spent a week in the lake district, and needless to say sampled a beer or two whilst we were there.

First stop was at the Adventure centre in Newlands valley. Our friends Steve and Di were getting married at Newlands Church and had booked their reception on Saturday at the Adventure centre. As a lot of our friends were also staying there it was also the place to be for drinking on Friday night. Beers had been special bought in from the Keswick brewery. "Thirst Ascent" was the one we drank most of but none of their offering were particularly inspiring. Even with the evil Northern device the sparkler removed the beer was still totally flat. Recent discussions on another blog have got me thinking about how much CO2 cask beer actually does contain. A good pint should definitely have a slight fizz to it, presumably this is at the 1.7 volumes of CO2 end of things. As the beers a the Adventure centre were totally flat I think we can safely say they only contained 1 volume of CO2, if that. I'm even quite suspicious that the beer wasn't really cask conditioned but was in fact bright beer that had been racked into casks but contained no yeast or residual sugar for secondary fermentation.

Mind you, they could have just been crap at looking after beer at the Adventure centre, I suppose cellarmanship is not really a skill they look for in their employees. We did get to have some more Thirst Ascent later on in the week at a Good Beer Guide listed pub and sure enough there was a slight fizz to it and it was a much better pint.

After the excesses of the wedding drinking we had a slightly quieter time Sunday evening back in our holiday home with some beer bought from the excellent range in Booths supermarket. Whenever I'm in the Lake District I always make a point of stocking up at the local Booths and as usual I wasn't disappointed. The beer that stood out for me was Fyne Ales Pipers Gold. A lovely golden beer with a light, refreshing hoppy taste. It's a modest 3.8% in strength, which is weaker than I normally drink when down the pub, let alone at home. I'd happily drink this wherever I saw it though. 

On Monday we managed to get down to a pub with its own brewery, the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater. I've been lucky enough to go to this pub once before, but not yet lucky enough to have someone else drive me there! Slowly sipping halves of their excellent Loweswater Pale Ale (3.6%?) made for an enjoyable evening but I'm sure guzzling pints of the stuff would have been even more enjoyable. 

For the rest of the week our drinking was mainly at the Royal Oak in Braithwaite, a pub which sells Jennings beers. As, unusually for this pub, not all the beer were on top form I ended up mostly drinking the bitter (3.5%).  This is quite a dark brew, but with a good flavour, and once again I found myself enjoying weak beer. Does this mean I'm going soft and will now be drinking only beers under 4%? Probably not as I've just bottled my homebrewed Double IPA which is 9% and I got from Booths a couple of bottles of Lees Harvest Ale at 11.5%!

The effects of moderate beer consumption

With this months Brewer and Distiller International came a booklet called 'The effects of moderate beer consumption - a digest of the current scientific literature'. Looking on the back I can see it's produced by The Brewers of Europe, a body I must admit I'd never heard of before. 

Seeing who had produced the booklet I was hoping for some blatant propaganda on how drinking beer will make you live forever but in fact it's all rather restrained. A number of key messages are made but they could have done with livening up a bit:

• Beer is a refreshing enjoyable beverage ... which brings pleasure and social interaction to many people.
  Hurrah! It gets you pissed and gets you laid!
• It can be part of a health lifestyle
  Hurrah!
• Beer contains vitamins, minerals and antioxidants
  Hurrah!
• Beer is the only dietary source of hops
  And Hurrah! Apparently they're good for you
• Beer reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoperosis, etc.
  Hurrah! I particularly like the vague 'etc.' on the end
• Moderate beer consumption plays a vital part in most consumers quality of life
  I think they're back to 'it gets you pissed' here
• The health benefits are the result of moderate consumption and are quite the opposite when consumption levels rise
  Boo!
• Adverse effects vary with some individuals
  So watch out lightweights
• More studies are underway
  Good, good

The booklet then goes on to stress that health benefits only apply with moderate drinking, in this case defined as a half to a pint and a half a day for men and a half to a pint a day for women, with  no saving up your allowance for the weekend. Seeing limits like these I can't help but think The Daily Mash had a point with their article Daily Alcohol Limits Not Really Working For Us, Say Drinkers.

Perhaps if you have a glass or two of wine with your evening meal each day these limits might have some relevance but they just don't fit in with pub culture. Like most pub goers I'm more likely to be there at the weekend for a session and I'm not going to nurse three halves over the course of an evening. Perhaps it's time they came up with some sensible advice for pub goers. 

Still there is some interesting stuff in the booklet and it continues with graphs of the 'J' or 'U' shaped curve of alcohol intake and mortality. Teetotalers actually have a higher mortality than people with moderate alcohol intake so the graphs dip at first before continuing a steady rise with increasing alcohol consumption. There are marked differences between men and women here.  European women drinkers mortality becomes equal to non drinkers at the drinking rate of only 3/4 of a pint a day whereas men can glug down 3 1/4 pints daily to get the same death rate as teetotalers. Looks like the lovely Lisa's going to be the designated driver from now on!

The full report is here.

Beer in beer

The other weekend myself and the lovely Lisa went to Devon to stay with her sister. She live down in Colyton which is conveniently close to the excellently named village of Beer, a pretty fishing village. According to the village's website there are various theories as to how it got the name beer. Sadly the drink isn't mentioned though the old Anglo-Saxon word for barley Bere is. 

But tenuous link or not I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to drink beer in Beer. We popped in to the Anchor Inn where despite the fact it's a Greene King pub we managed to have pint of the locally brewed Otter Ale. Perhaps it was how the beer was kept, or perhaps it was because I was still recovering from the previous day's drinking but the beer didn't seem up to much. Sitting in a beer garden in Beer (does that make it a Beer beer garden?) having a beer still managed to make me grin inanely though. It's good to be easily amused. 

Brewdog to sue the Portman group

The Brewdog Vs Portman group saga took an entertaining twist today as the Brewdog blog revealed they're suing the Portman group for defamation. More here.