Back in BRAPA

After six (6) years I was back chauffeuring #PubMan Si as he ticks his way through the Good Book. And a great #PubMan he is - whilst I spent Saturday morning rolling round with sweaty men in skintight lycra he was already getting in two (2) pre-emptive ticks! I caught up with him at the second pre-emptive, the Surrey Hills Brewery. They've got an outside area where you can get a beer, but it didn't look like it even reached the lowly standards of most tap rooms. 

Our first stop for the main business of the day was the Dolphin in Betchworth. What with me recovering from my exertions and, you know, driving, it was coke for me. Cracking looking pub though. It's run by Dorking brewery, a brewery that I must confess I've never been to. 

The Cock Inn in Headley was next. It looked huge, and very foody. But they had Landlord on so I did have a half here. The weather was nice so we sat outside and took in the view. Being at a large country pub in Surrey got us on to the mysterious missing llamas. Si's folks had even stayed in the area but seen no llamas. As CAMRA has now branched out into campaigning on misleading information about evil keg lagers, perhaps misleading information about llamas could be next?

Then it was on to The Plough in Leigh, my favourite of the trip. We had to park some distance away, as there were loads of cars parked in the road outside due to a wedding. They had Harvey's Best on so once again I was forced to have a half. The grumpy barman was not impressed by Si walking the wrong way when trying to find the loo, which after some suspiciously foody places made this feel like a proper pub. Lots of people from the wedding soon arrived, and much to Si's horror started queuing at the bar and someone else tacked on to the end. As an experienced #PubMan Si was telling he'd just walk straight past. And how right he was, as when more people from the wedding arrived they went past Mr Tacked On and joined their friends. He'd have been served before they arrived if he'd used proper pub etiquette. Let that be a lesson to you!

I was excited by the next stop, The Royal Oak in Holmbury St Mary, as it was on the route of an old commute, but I'd never called in. I must confess I don't like to stop when I've escaped work and am heading home. Another big foody looking pub, we discussed the practicalities of pub ticking. With many years of experience under his belt Si pays a lot of attention to pre-emptives, particulaly in hard to get areas. But conversely, a new tick out in the sticks will be ignored on first appearance, in case it's a one year wonder. The first rules of pub ticking I heard from a friend were very strict. If a pub dropped out of the GBG it was lost and had to be re-ticked if it returned. The thought of this caused a look of horror to cross Simon's face, but we both agreed that using those rules ticking the whole Good Beer Guide would be simply impossible. 

After that we found ourselves at a big pub that looked like it was set up for food: The Bricklayers Arms in Shamley Green. The conversation turned to music here, as I'd seen a few punk bands recently. I may be lagging behind on pubs, but I'm definitely up on gigs.

Our last port of call was a pub I'd actually been to before: The Good Intent in Puttenham. As he'd had six pints got up at five Si had a power nap on the way over. As someone committed to responsible drinking I did suggest I could take him straight to the station, but he had no time for such poltroonery! You don't get to tick the whole Good Beer Guide if you give in that easily! So with a new burst of energy he sprang to life and shot into the pub. Great pub it is too. And they had Landlord on. Puttenham is the home of the last historic hop farm in the Farnham area, but sadly this is to be their last year. The (coir) thread is still not quite broken though, as the nearby Hogs Back brewery grow their own hops. 

Then it was on to Woking station. I headed home, as I had The Crown to get to that evening, and Si was on his way back up north. I hope his journey went well, I did see there was no ESB at the Parcel Yard, which was not a good omen. 

Going Medieval

This week I made a last minute decision to attend an event at Brewers' Hall. I hadn't been planning to go but I had an urgent need to gossip it's good to network, so I decided to go. It's a long while since I'd been the Brewers' Hall, the building of the medieval part of British brewing. 

The event was put on by Heriot-Watt university, so not exculsively an event for brewers, but brewing was definitely the focus. ICBD big cheese Dawn Maskell give on report on the plans for the Centre for Advanced Brewing and Distilling before being joined by a student to talk about the latest Natural Selection beer, Alba Wild.

Jacob and Dawn

It's flavoured with camomile, corriander and heather. Which did get my usual reaction to botanical beers, it could do with some hops! Pleasant enough though, I did get a second glass! The vice chancellor was also there to say some words, but he speaks with a forked tongue so I'll move on to the surprise scene stealer: the rug! Just look at it!

Beats any 'Spoons carpet, an it would look great in my living room. Except it's probably bigger than my living room. Then it was on to The Globe, a Nicholson's pub. 

I was delighted to see they had Harvey's Best on. This meant I could raise a glass filled with appropriate beer to the brewing team at Harvey's, who all levelled up this week. In fact I had two pints. There were several people from supply companies there, who usually have no trouble putting beer on expenses. Two was more than enought though, so then it was time to head home.  

Carnivale Brettanomyces 2026

I made it back to the Carnivale Brettanomyces after too long a gap. Apart from a memorable year camping in Belgium it's been based at various venues in Amsterdam when I've been before. It's now in Utrecht at De Kromme Haring brewpub or a nearby room. It's also broader in outlook, not necessarily focussed on just Brettanomyces, but covering all deviant fermentations. Some are more deviant than others!

I wasn't sure about having it all based at the same site, but on reflection it works well. Easy to get to the lectures and meet fellow beer nerds old and new. 

I did a couple of lectures myself, one my take on beer and revolution, the other on the British brewing tradition. 

Only one of these included mention of Brettanomyces!

The first lecture I attended was by Richard Preiss of Escarpment Labs on phenolic yeast. 

He confirmed something I've long suspected but never articulated: 

Talking of POF+ (Phenolic Off Flavour positive) and POF- yeast gives the wrong impresssion. POF is a trait, not a binary. 

Next one I attended was a talk on lager yeast by Steven van den Berg. Not hugely deviant, or particularly new to me apart from this rule of thumb for fermentation temperature:

Ferment at 1° per °Plato!

But your friend may ask: "Isn't fermenting at 25°P and 25°C a bit bleedin' strong and hot for lager?". To which I can only reply: "It certainly sound like that to me". Just because the wort attenuates doesn't mean the beer has a good flavour profile. But having said that, it's not something I've tried myself, so as ever, more research is needed. 

Then things definitely moved in a deviant direction with a talk on mycorrhizal fungi from Hugh Glashier.

Pretty tenuous link to beer, no matter how broad your definition. But absolute fascinating. 

And my life is certainly enriched knowing that there is such a thing as Woronin bodies. 

As a long term devotee of deviant drinks I was surprised to find myself out nerded at Kester Ratcliff's talk on Wild Yeast Beyond Brett. Weird yeasts from fermented teas and bees came up. Interesting stuff, but don't think I'll be trying it myself. 

After the excesses of the recent Austrian study tour I'd been pacing myself on the beer intake so for me the last night was the best night. One thing I'd missed about not being in Amsterdam was not getting to the Wildeman. So I was delighted when people from the Wildeman came to De Kromme Haring . Particularly as they brought anstich lager with them.

It's like the heathen version of cask beer, served without extraneous CO2, so less displeasing to god. Amazingly I also bumped into some wonderful Brazilians who had samples of cachaça matured in tropical woods to taste. Fascinating stuff, I'd been really curious about after some work I did recently.  

Don't call it rum

The night before I'd ended up tasting fermented chilli sauce and someone's homemade marmite. It is a community event. 

I also got to try canned lambic. I'm not sure of god's take on that one as we're getting into the obscure realms of theology. I was pleased though!

Pierre Tilquin with Tilquin in the can

It being my first time at the festival in Utrecht it was the first time for me to see the gravity pour. I would guess simply because they can, an anstich keg is taken up the spiral stair case outside the brewpub and just poured to people waiting below. I thought this was pretty ludicrous until the wonderful woman from the Wildeman handed me an empty glass. I was soon in the thick of it, or rain of it, and I immensely enjoyed my half of flat beer poured from a great height. I couldn't stop giggling like a loon. 

The big speaker at the event was Garrett Oliver, who gave his talk on Sunday. He's a great speaker, though I think it's fair to day our views differ on the craft beer revolution. He tied it to the Slow Food movement, which kind of worked. But I don't see how in a capitalist society you can escape the drive towards the industrial production which Slow Food is against as volumes grow. 

"I've been to hundreds of beer festivals but never one remotely like this"

I still had time for a pint before heading back home. But just the one as I wanted to keep my wits about me before I was safely in the departure lounge. 

Things to Tom Platt for posting my camera back to me after I foolishly left it at one of the talks. See, I told you it's a community event!

The Session #150 Martyn Cornell's Porter and Stout: A Complete History

This book is a difficult read. No because the content is difficult or badly written, but because it's physically difficult to read. It weighs over a kilo!

1.224kg

There is no easy way to read it. I'm not reading it in the bath, it's hard work in bed, and did I take it to read on my long journey to Utrecht? Did I bollocks! No way am I lugging it around either. So reading it something that can only be done by setting aside time in the evening and reading with it in resting on one of my legs. I'm currently about a third of the way through the book and reaching the end is not expected any time soon. 

But, fortunately for the sake of this post I've already spotted something that really got me thinking. In fact dare I say it a Cornellesque deep dive. Page 18 tells how John Richardson's promotion of the saccharometer showed brewers what poor value brown malt was compared to pale malt. He was able to put figures on how much extract was lost making brown malt: good pale malt gave an extract of 82 pounds a quarter, but blown brown malt just 56. 

Yet it struck me on reading that that you don't need a saccharometer to see how much extract you're getting from your malt. Pounds per barrel was used for a long time in British breweries, and still is in some. This is based on how much heavier the wort of a fixed volume (in this case a 36 gallon barrel) is compared to a barrel of water. If the actual unit used is determined by measuring weight, then using a saccharometer to measure density gives a simpler and quicker measurement, but isn't actually doing anything new. 

So I'm suspicious that the usual history saying that the saccharometer changed everything is an exaggeration and likely only tells part of the story. Now I need someone with an eye for detail to investigate further...

A visit to Bathams brewery

There was more excitement the day after the BHS AGM. I was going to Bathams! I'd been to a couple of their pubs yesterday bringing my total to 3/12. They're all within a nine mile radius of the brewery so ticking them all now seems a real possibility in a weekend. 

Dave behind the mill, Alice Batham in front

They have a four roller mill, which rather surprisingly is on the ground floor. The bagged malt comes from Crisp and is milled into 50kg bags which are hoisted to the top of the brewery. 

The mash tun

The cast iron mash tun takes 600kg of malt (four quarters!). 

The beer recipes date from the 1960s and were made by current Head Brewer Alice Batham's granddad.

They use mains water. Liquor treatment is Bathams salt mix, which is really optimised for mild, though 95% of production is bitter.

Blocks of invert sugar

They use six blocks of sugar per brew, No. 1 and No. 2 invert. The same wort is used for mild and bitter, but they have different sugars.

Cage for sugar blocks

The copper 30bbl copper is heated by a steam coil and direct fire. 

The copper

Alice was kind enough to briefly turn on the gas heater under the copper for us.

Gas burner

Both types of hop are used, Fuggles AND Goldings. 

Whole hops of course

The hop back was designed by Alice's dad. It needs to be deep enough that the hops can act as a good filter bed. There was a problem this year as some Goldings were rather poor with low alpha acid, and some were better but they had a high alpha acid, which could cause problems with filtering out the trub.

Hop back at the back, paraflow on the right

The paraflow dates from the 80s. 

Hop back CIP set

Having spent a year working with CIP sets that are bigger than the brewing vessels at Bathams I was delighted to see the home made CIP set for the hop back. 

The open wooden fermenters are plastic lined. The smallest one is used for mild. Parachutes are used to crop the yeast. Yeast is filtered through cheesecloth. Top heat is 72°F (22°C) and they chill to 55°F (13°C). Fermentation is rapid: a brew from Tuesday can be on chill by Thursday afternoon. 

The dual strain yeast originally came from Hansons brewery. They still use 36 gallon barrels for most of the bitter, and have some 54 gallon hogsheads too! 18 gallon kilderkins are used for the free trade and the mild goes into 9 gallon firkins. 

Look at the size of 'em!

Beer goes into the racking tank with auxiliary finings and priming sugar the day before racking. 

Unsealed cask

They don't seal the cask on filling, adding isinglass and sealing with a wooden shive before delivery. And looking at that picture they dry hop in the cask too. The casks may be conditioned for a week in the pub, but will drop bright within six hours. 

They have an external cask washer:

And the inside of the casks is cleaned with steam:

It a fantastic visit, it was amazing to go round two Victorian tower breweries in two days! The midlands are rally growing on me. £3.05 for a pint of mild in the first pub I visited too!

Alice Batham receiving the coveted Brewery History Society certificate

A visit to Sarah Hughes brewery

Having been a fan of Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild since I was a teenager I was determined to visit the brewery when I heard that the Brewery History Society AGM was being hosted by Bathams. Sarah Hughes and Bathams are only six miles apart so it seemed like an ideal opportunity. It took a bit of organising, and I was so looking forward to it I was nervous something would go wrong. But the people at the brewery were very helpful and it all went fine on the day. 

As it's a small brewery we were taken down in several groups and I wasn't in the first group. This did make me a bit twitchy as I waited for my turn. But it wasn't for long. 

I had looked longingly at the brewery door last time I was there, so it was great to go through it this time. 

The door to the brewery from inside the  pub

It's a Victorian tower brewery in the Beacon Hotel, dating from 1848. The brewery closed in 1957, but was reopened in 1987. 

Grist case

810kg of malt go in the Ruby Mild.

Mash tun

The Hot Liquor Tank is heated with a gas burner and the strike heat is 72°C. They mash for 65°C for 90 minutes.

The malt is mixed in by hand

The mash takes two hours to run off. The copper is eight barrels and also heated with a gas burner. 

Bet the safety rail isn't original

The copper is filled to the polished rivet. Filling to a rivet is a traditional brewing technique that I have also used!

Looking in the copper

Bittering hops go in at the start of the one hour boil, and aroma hops 15 minutes from the end. Fuggles, Bramling Cross and Goldings hops are used in the core beers. Number three invert sugar is used in  Ruby Mild, which has a gravity of 1.058. Snowflake is 1.078. The dome bottom of the copper traps a lot of hops, the rest are removed in the hopback below. 

The hop back

Wort in the hopback is 85°C. It's cooled further through a paraflow, with the hot liquor going back into the HLT. It takes one hour to empty the hop back. 

The old customs and excise box

Fermentation is in grundy tanks, two per brew. The yeast comes from Hook Norton and is re-used for four months or so. It ferments down in three to four days but spends a week in FV. 

Grundy tanks used as FVs

After fermentation the beer goes into a racking tank, where more yeast can settle out, for 24 hours. 

The racking tank

They still use some 36 gallon barrels, as well as 18 gallon kilderkins. 

The cask washer

They usually do three brews a week, but if making Snowflake will do four. 

They've still got the old Baudelot cooler, but unlike at the Augustiner brewery they don't use it. 

Baudelot cooler

After having finally seen the brewery what to do next? Well, as the door leads back into the pub it was an easy decision!

A visit to Witchmark distillery

After the excitement of Warminster Maltings it was on to Witchmark distillery. They're very whisky focussed, but being under three years old they don't have any to sell yet!

They have a mash tun from Northern Monk brewery and use locally grown Laureate malt in half tonne bags. It's malted at Warminster and milled at the distillery using a four roller mill. They do two brews a day, using a tonne of malt each. This gives them 100hl at 1.059-1.060. The local chalky water is treated by reverse osmosis to soften it. They mash Scotch whisky style, with three waters, the last of which is used for mashing the next brew.

Mash tun on left

As they have to wait three until they can sell their whisky they're very cautious. The use peracetic acid on the mash tun after use and do a weekly CIP. The plate heat exchanged is cleaned every day. 

Washbacks (fermenting vessels)

They have temperature control on their washbacks, with a maximum temperature of 30°C. Fermentation with WHC Hercules yeast takes 96 hours, which is long for whisky. The vessels are agitated at the beginning of fermentation to mix in the yeast, and at the end so the sediment is removed. Everything then goes to the wash still.  

Wash still

The wash still has a capacity of 5,000L, so two distillations are needed per washback. The wash is preheated from 30 to 70°C by a heat exchanger cooling the pot ale from 95°C. The wash at 8-8.5% ABV makes low wines at 30%. The low wines, as well as heads and tails from the spirit still go into the low wines tank. In terms of efficiency they get 800 litres of pure alcohol from two tonnes of malt. The 3,200L spirit still is pre-heated with water from the hot liquor tank, which is itself heated with water from the condensers. Gas from the green diesel industry is used to heat the distillations. 

The pot stills are out of balance, as five wash distillations need six spirit distillations. Spirit at 71-73% ABV is cut to 65% ABV for casking. Casks are ex-bourbon and Shaved, Toasted and Recharred wine casks. They have filled 1,000 barrels and have another 120 in tank. Production is currently 1,000 casks a year and they're aiming for 2,000 next year. The first few casks were stored dunnage style, on their side and three high, but most are palletised. 

Dunnage style cask storage

Bottling is done by hand, with one person able to do 3-400 a day, though if they have four people working on it they can get up to 1000 done. 

Heads from the spirit still at 40% ABV can also be used in the column still to make Grain Neutral Spirit, six distillations make 1000L for the still. Typically they get 330L of GNS at 96.3% ABV. The two columns in the still each have 21 plates. Distillation takes at least 11 hours and can take up to 14.  The still has a vapour basket for when  making gin. Hardy botanicals go in the pot still, fluffy botanicals go in the vapour basket! 

For vodka a carbon filter, with three sections of carbon and silica sand is used. 

Long and narrow carbon filter

Then it was time for a tasting, though as I was driving only small sips!