It makes you proud to be Irish....

I promise I will get back to blogging about brewing soon, work and family just keep getting in the way at the moment :-)

In the meantime here is a good news story:

Irish Bartender wins

International Master Bartender Competition 2011

Dubliner, Fearghus McCormack, a third generation barman in the family run Merrion Inn, Dublin, has beaten stiff competition from across the globe to carry off the title of Pilsner Urquell International Master Bartender 2011. During a highly-competitive week-long final in the Czech Republic this month, he claimed the victory against an impressive group of finalists representing 15 countries.

Fearghus claimed the title in Prague earlier this month in a gala final he likened to ‘the Oscars of beer’. Commenting on his win Fearhgus said: “I can’t begin to express how excited and proud I am to win this title. The Merrion Inn always prides itself on quality, from the staff in the bar, to the food we serve, to the beers we stock. To have been internationally recognised & awarded by a brand of the pedigree of Pilsner Urquell is amazing. Pilsner Urquell is a real beer lovers’ favourite in The Merrion Inn..."

Boston Beer...ahhhhhh

Just back from a trip to Boston and you got to love American bars. The choice of beer is truly staggering, you can choose your craft beer type bar and have a selection of 10-20 draft beers, some specials and then an endless bottle beer selection. Even if you are unfortunate to be dragged to a bar with no beer selection, they will probably still have Harpoon IPA on draft and a few Sam Adams selections.

Here is just some of the beers I got to try, all on draft unless it says otherwise:

Beer menu from The Other Side,
sorry for the poor quality pic.

Harpoon IPA : Whales Tale Pale Ale (bottle) : Clown Shoes Black IPA : Goose Island Honkers Ale : Boulder Mojo IPA : Stone Ruination IPA (Bottle) : Sierra Nevada Tumbler : Sam Adams Boston Lager : Pretty Things Jack D'Or Saison : Green Flash West Coast IPA : Gritty's Blackfly Stout

I also managed to stumble across a Sam Adams tasting session in my hotel bar and got to try bottles of their Oktoberfest, IPA and Irish Red.

The highlight of the trip from a bar point of view was finding Bukowski Tavern, it is on Dalton Street near the Boylston Street junction. From the outside it looks like a tiny dive bar, inside doesn't alter this perception much, however the staff are great, the music is good, and they have a selection of about 100 beers. Included in this are about 20 on draft and a cask offering specials. If you are in Boston make sure you check it out. Honorable mention also goes to The Other Side, it can be found just over the bridge at the junction between Newbury and Mass Avenue.

Pelle, comes to town

Humulus Lupus and some
members of Beoir.

Last week, Pelle Stridh from All About Beer was in Dublin with his beer club (Humulus Lupus) and we managed to meet up for a few beers and general beer discussion, joining us was Reuben and Richard from Beoir. I had suggested meeting up in the Bull & Castle and I do not think the guys were disappointed.

Over the course of four hours we managed to update them all on the current state of Irish Craft beer and quite a few Irish beers were sampled, including Metalman Pale Ale, Galway Hooker, O'Hara's IPA, Trouble Or, Howling Gale and also Black Rock Stout which was on Cask. Metalman Pale Ale seemed to be the stand out beer.


Pelle also managed to bring me over a few bottles of beer that I am looking forward to sampling. They both come from his local brewer, Eskilstuna Olkultur AB, and the brewer Lars Ekstron was there in person so that I could pick his brains. The beers are great as they are something that I would never be able to get in Ireland, one is a Double IPA and the other an Imperial Stout.

Well in a few days time I am off to Boston for a wedding and I hope to be sampling some great beers, I might also fit in a brewery tour or two if time allows.

I also also determined to get back brewing once I return from my trip. The brew day for Furious IPA seems only a distant memory (early June) and so I am keen to get back into it.

Lager Yeast, from Argentina!

Interesting article on the BBC News website today.

Scientists have identified a yeast that led to the discovery of lager. The researchers isolated the new species in the frozen forests of Patagonia in South America.

Read the full article.

Delays, delays.....but something to look forward to

It has been nearly a month since I posted my recipe for Standard Stout II, my lack of an update is not down to posting lethargy, but rather the fact that I have not brewed it. Why I hear you cry, well because in the last month we have decided to move house to a new town, said house has been found and we are moving next week.

The Brewing implications of the new house are significant!

Three things brewers look for in a house:

1. An outside building 
2. Outside access to electricity 
3. Outside access to water 

Check, check and check. The new house has a decent size shed at the back of the garden and also has an outside tap and electrical socket. More than this my new town (Bray, County Wicklow, about 12 miles south of Dublin) has one of the original brew pubs in Ireland, The Porterhouse. It also has one of the best off-licenses for craft beer in Ireland, Holland's. The next couple of weeks are going to be a bit hectic, however I will report back soon on how the shed/brewery set up is going :-)

AG #9 - Furious IPA - First Pour

I have been very patient with my Furious IPA beer that I brewed at the beginning of June. Based on Surly Brewing's Furious (pic below). Two weeks fermenting and a further 4 weeks conditioning in the keg and the results of that patience have been very pleasing.

Pours a murky redish-brown colour with a creamy thick head. 

Hints of yeast off the nose initially and an ever so slight metallic taste can be gotten with the first taste, however as the beer warms up its true character emerges, a sweet malty base is nicely counterpointed by a strong hop aroma and flavour. The malty characteristics are a real success, Belgian Aromatic, Crystal and Roasted Barley blend together really well. The body is perfectly medium bodied, carbonation nice and low, very smooth mouthfeel.

The hop characteristics are strong but wonderfully smooth, no doubt this is down to the first wort hopping, a technique I will certainly be using again in my IPA's and APA's.

Defining characteristic is just how well all of the traits of this beer come together, sweet malty base, smooth hop bittering, nice high level of late hop flavour and aroma all brought together in a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel. Really happy with the way this turned out and will definitely be brewing this again.

Furious IPA:

Recipe
Brew Day
Fermentation & Conditioning

AG #10 - Standard Stout II - Recipe

I have been contemplating my next brew for a few weeks now and I have decided to brew a beer that I made last year, but this year I am adding a little twist. Standard Stout was brewed last June and I was really happy with the results, beaming at the time that it was my best beer to date. For this years version I have decided to keep the grain bill the same, the bittering hop addition the same, the yeast has been changed based on my current inventory, however the significant change is that I have decided to introduce some American hop characteristics into the flavour and aroma. This will be achieved with a single late boil addition of Ahtanum, Simcoe, Columbus and Amarillo (5g each). This should give a light and subtle American hop  flavour and aroma.


Standard Stout II
Author: Mark

Size: 25.2 L
Efficiency: 74.34%
Attenuation: 72.1%
Calories: 142.33 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.043 (1.044 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.012 - 1.024)
Color: 62.15 (59.1 - 78.8)
Alcohol: 4.03% (4.0% - 6.0%)
Bitterness: 20.9 (20.0 - 40.0)

Ingredients:
3000 g Maris Otter
500 g Barley Flaked
500 g Carapils®/Carafoam®
432 g Roasted Barley
260.0 g Chocolate 1060 EBC
38.0 g Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
5.0 g Ahtanum (6.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
1.0 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 15 min
250 g DME
1.0 ea Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05

Mash @ 67c

AG #9 - Furious IPA - Fermentation & Conditioning

The brew day for Furious IPA went very well and in this post I just wanted to give you an outline of my fermentation and conditioning schedule. Here is the timeline:

Brew day: 4th June
Primary Fermentation: 4th - 18th June

On the 18th I kegged one corny (19 litres) and 9 x 500 ml bottles.

Keg
Keg Conditioning (room temperature): 18th - 25th June
Keg Conditioning (fridge temperature): 25th - 30th June
Force Carbonation: 1st July - 8th July

Bottle 
Bottles will condition for 2-3 months at room temperature and then get a week of cold conditioning before being ready. With a session beer, bottle conditioning can be done in 2-3 weeks, however with this beer being 6% ABV it will benefit from the extra time in the bottle*.

* to be honest so would the keg, but who is going to be able to leave a keg condition for a couple of months, especially when my keggerator is empty!

So a pretty straightforward fermentation and conditioning process. Keg is typically one week conditioning, one week cold conditioning and one week force carbonating. For bottles a minimum of two weeks conditioning and then the longer you can hold off the better the beer will taste, most bottled beers will probably be at their peak between two and four months old. The above can be used as a rule of thumb but obviously adjust based on your set-up and the beer you are brewing.

Really looking forward to trying this beer next weekend. I'll report back on how it turned out.

AG #9 - Furious IPA - Brew Day

Over the June bank holiday weekend here in Ireland I got the opportunity to brew, the recipe is based on a clone recipe for Furious IPA (by Surly Brewing) that appeared in BYO. The thing I like about brew days is trying something new and on this particular brew day, an additional piece of equipment allowed me to try out two new techniques.

Three Tier Gravity Fed
Set Up

The new piece of equipment was a HLT (hot liquor tank), having a dedicated vessel for heating my strike and sparge water allowed me to brew using a three tier gravity fed system. Basically your three main brewing vessels (HLT, Mash Tun and Kettle) are set up so that you can move the liquid from one vessel to the next during the brewing process using only gravity. In the picture to the right you can see this in action. HLT can be seen with the foil insulation, blue cooler box mash tun in the middle and then my kettle at the bottom.

The great advantage of this set up is that it allows me to try out a new technique which was continuos sparging. This in essence means that once your mash has completed (in my case after 60 minutes), instead of draining off all of the wort and then filling the mash tun again with water (known as batch sparging), you can simply open the tap from the HLT to your mash tun and then the tap from your mash tun to your kettle. As the wort drains into the kettle, new water is replacing it in the mash tun. This technique is great as a time saver and also gives you a really good grain bed in the mash tun to filter your wort through. The one slight downside some people find with this technique is that mash efficiency can drop, mash efficiency calculates how efficient your process is at getting fermentable sugars from the grain into your wort. However I have to say that I did not find this to be the case, I achieved an efficiency of 73%, which is pretty similar to what I get when I batch sparge.

First Wort Hopping

Due to the fact that I now could use my kettle purely for boiling wort (before I had a dedicated HLT it also doubled up to heat my strike and sparge water) I can also try out another new technique, first wort hopping. First wort hopping entails placing hops in the kettle and then starting the flow of wort from the mash tun into the kettle. It is another technique for getting hop flavour into your beers and it is said to give a nice balanced bitter flavour and not the harsh bitterness you sometimes get when too much bittering hops are used.

This beer is a bit of a hop monster, with over 100g of hops used for the 7 gallon batch it has IBU's in the region of about 70 and an ABV a touch over 6%. I transferred this to the keg today and had enough left over to fill about 10 bottles. The clarity of the beer was perfect, which was something I struggled with in my last beer, but I am glad to see that the few tweaks I made to my brewing process seem to have solved this issue. The taste was fantastic, very hoppy with a nice malt base. I am really looking forward to trying this beer, however I am going to be patient. A week conditioning at room temp in the keg will be followed by a week of cold conditioning, I will then force carbonate for a week. Will report back next month with some tasting notes.

Eight Degrees Brewing

I spoke today with Scott from Eight Degrees Brewing, the latest entrant into the Irish craft beer market. Based in North Cork, Eight Degrees is taking a slightly different trajectory than other Irish craft brewers. Their vision is to produce their beers in 330 ml bottles and look to sell them by the six-pack. This is something that would be very common in the American market but something that Irish brewers have not yet tried. Currently most Irish brewers sell their beer in 500ml bottles. Scott hopes that this packaging will differentiate them in the Irish market.

The beer they will be releasing initially will be Howling Gale Ale, and this looks set to be followed by a red ale and a porter. I tried the Howling Gale this afternoon and it was very good. Bittered strongly with Chinook at the start of the boil, it is then finished off with Amarillo and I think Centennial, all of this hoppiness is backed up by a nice sweet malt base. The beer will be bottle conditioned and Scott says that their bottling set up will allow up to 48 bottles a minute and so we should hopefully be seeing six packs of Howling Gale available in your local off-licence very soon. Better still is the price point, the six-packs will be sold for approximately €12, will special pricing reducing it to closer to €10 on occasion!

Howling Gale will also be available on draught and should be reaching pubs in the next week (Bull & Castle, Against the Grain and L Mulligan Grocer, all in Dublin, will be getting kegs shortly).