A brewer’s log

New beers are currently in the fermenters. We’re brewing a Christmas special 4% and a new 5%. I’m hoping that the 5% will become a regular, it’s got shed loads of first gold and cascade hops and it tastes divine It hasn’t got a name yet, suggestions on a postcard please…

We’re brewing our first organic beer this week. The recipe will be loosely based on “Autumn” which was a huge success. I’m going to increase the late hop a little to give a little more citrus aroma. We’ve managed to get hold of organic malt and hops, enough for one brew at first. This new organic beer will probably only be available in bottle but I may release a few to the pub trade in cask to test the market.

The bits are supposed to be in there!

Bottle conditioned beer is real ale in a bottle. The beer has not been filtered, pasteurised or artificially gassed up. A little yeast is left in the bottle and that gets to work on the remaining sugar and ferments one last time to create natural CO2 which in turn keeps the beer fresh. At the end of the conditioning the yeast settles out into a sediment at the bottom of the bottle so care should be taken when pouring the beer so as not to disturb that sediment. The end result is a bottled beer that tastes just the same as the cask version sold in pubs.

All of our beers are now available in bottles and we’ll soon be able to deliver free to Telford postcodes.

The recipe has been completely overhauled and we’ve changed the hopping regime for this beer altogether. Coracle now benefits from copious (ie loads and loads) of late additions of Goldings whole leaf hops. Adding the hops later in the boil means we have to use a lot more to get the amount of bittering we want but the added benefit is that the bittering is a lot more refined and less harsh. The result is a very very drinkable 3.8% session beer with malt and hop nicely balanced. Goldings give this beer a very traditional aroma and taste. Coracle is available in cask and bottle.

Our (very) limited edition beer mats -> as supplied to a few pubs in Telford and stolen collected by a voracious band of enthusiasts.

We bottled a fair bit of Autumn Special for the Heritage Festival and it all sold out quite quickly. We’re therefore going to be bottling some more of our beers over the next week or so…..

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed Coracle in the labels above. We’ve revamped the recipe and will be relaunching Coracle pending a successful fermentation and tasting trials. More on that later!

We had some visitors today who were asking where our ingredients came from and where we sourced our brewing kit. I was proud to let them know that our malt is from Yorkshire and our hops are from Worcestershire. Our superb kit is purpose built by our good friends at Johnson Brewing and Engineering in Rochdale. Vincent, Carl and Mat have done an excellent job supplying and installing our brew house and, most recently, our new fermenters which are now full with the latest batches of Gold and 1779. I’m from an engineering and manufacturing background and I think it most important to support English manufacturing. The Industrial Revolution started right here in Ironbridge so it’s logical that we support our home grown industries whenever we can.
We’re proud to say that our beer is Made In England, from English ingredients using English equipment.

Postie brought a welcome surprise yesterday. A certificate from the Peterborough Beer Festival. Nicely framed and everything and a nice letter to boot. Thanks go to the Peterborough CAMRA branch for taking the time to send us the sticky foot and the letter explaining how the shortlist is compiled from the votes of the festival visitors and the results are determined by a panel of tasters. Glad you enjoyed the beer guys and gals and our Silver will take pride of place.

Brewed for the Ironbridge Heritage Festival on 27th and 28th September, the latest in the lineup of Ironbridge ales is this 4.6% beauty with a reddish tint and the slightest hint of orange citrus from the First Gold hops. We tapped the first cask this weekend and it’s gorgeous

We’re taking bookings for office Christmas parties. Here’s your chance to prove that you can actually organise a p* up in a brewery! Stuck for ideas for something different this year? We can accommodate parties of up to 75 people in our brewery and you get a certificate to prove that, contrary to popular belief, you can actually organise the proverbial. From Mid October we’ll be able to host your corporate do. For a set fee per head you’ll get a tour of the brewery given by yours truly with a detailed explanation of the brewing process, ingredients etc. This will be swiftly followed by your selection of catering which can be as simple as pork pies and chip butties or we can do more exotic offerings such as tapas or curry. Added to that there’s the all important tastings of our excellent traditionally brewed beers. Best not bring the car though as there’s no limit to the number of samples you can try. For more info please call me on 01952 433910.

cheers

Dave