Let Me Ask You a Question.

I apparently now have over 100 followers on this blog, and whilst I love that fact, I rarely get any real insight into you lot. So I'd like to ask you a simple question....

What is your favourite beer and why? It could be for any reason, any time, any place, the perfect beer moment, I'd love to hear from you...

Let me get the ball rolling and say probably my perfect beer moment was the first beer after I helped brew the Motley Brew with the Otley guys a couple of years ago. The beer was Otley O1 and it was the biggest thirst quencher I have ever had after a really hard days graft, it was in the great surroundings of the Bunch of Grapes pub in Pontypridd. No better pint have I had, ever.

Looking forward to some good stories folks!

Happy Birthday OBC

So yesterday I went to a five year old's birthday party, this wasn't the usual five year old's party, there were no happy meals and no screaming children(although the bands were VERY young).
Due to train timetables and my busy schedule I arrived about half an hour early and helped them set up(they hadn't got around to putting the beers on so I did it for them). Then their other guests started arriving and since I was stood at the bar in a black shirt, I think they assumed I worked for Otley, they started asking me questions about the beers, ok, so because I could answer them without any problem and did!
Someone recently asked me if I was gunning for a job as Oltey's sales rep in London! I am already, aren't I?
So we've established there was mucic, there was also a bbq that Nick was running himself and of course there was great beers(including mine).

 I was relieved to see that the SOS was going down well for ordinary people, it means that people might buy it when I get some in The Rake! When I had the first cask of it at The Rake, it went down well as a cask wheat beer but for me it needed more strawberry, a lot more! So the guys spent the week producing strawberry concentrate to add to the beer and for me it worked, Nicks not sure at the moment but I was a lot more happy with that. I think next time(if there is indeed a next time!) then I'll be happy to cut up more like twenty five kilos of fresh strawberries to stick in instead of just five.

After brewing with the OBC twice and staying at Nick's pub the bunch of grapes twice, I finally got to meet the lovely Alex Otley, Nicks wife. I'd not met her until now because Nick and I usually stay up until about 1.30am plotting our next move. She greeted me as if I was part of the family and that's one of the many reasons I like going down to Pontypridd so much, I get greeted and treated as if I'm part of the family, a friendlier bunch of people you probably won't find! So here's to the Otley Brewing Company, may they continue to make fantastic beers, may they continue to lead the way in Welsh brewing and may they continue to let me go and brew with them! I hope to go back there soon!

LARDASS BREWS WITH OTLEY!

20/07/2010
Dragging my lardy arse out of bed isn't my idea of fun but I was looking forward to the day, I leave the house at 6am to get across London for the 7.15 train from Paddington to Cardiff Central where I would get a connecting train to Pontypridd, the home of Otley Brewing Co.
I took the opportunity on the train to get some more sleep, it was badly needed today and I woke myself up a couple of times with my own snoring. Only those people on the train know what I must've looked like, I imagine it was like one of the seals on pier 39 in San Francisco though!
I arrive at the brewery and instantly it's different, the mash tun isn't a 5-barrel any more, it's a 10-barrel, there's two extra fermenters and some building has taken place to increase storage space. Otley Brewing Company has gone up in the world since I was last here, good thing too, Britain needs more forward thinking breweries to expand a bit and become more accessible to more pubs & bars.
Anyway because I was coming from London we were starting later than normal, the mash started at 11am, we got the water up to temperature and holding the thermometer under the tap made me start sweating even before lugging the 25 kilo bags of malt into the mash tun.
Mashing in is a two person job for an amateur like me, I climbed up and down with the 25kg bags of Malt pouring them in, the last but one was REALLY hard work on my unfit body, the Malt mix was 60% Pale Malt(85kg) and 40% Torrified Wheat(62kg). So I poured whilst Matt started 'mashing in' getting the lumps out, once I'd finished dumping the malt I helped out with mashing in, it's an awkward job and an extremely physical job for any of you that haven't seen or don't know the process, it makes your arms ache like they have probably never ached before, you know you're doing a hard days work.
Once we had finished mashing in it was time to go and get the Strawberries and the Szechuan Pepper from Nick's pub The Bunch of Grapes. Yes you read correctly, Strawberries and Szechuan Pepper, for ages now I've been wanting to put Strawberries into a brew, Nick came up with the idea of adding Szechuan which I thought was a bit bonkers but that's Nick all over really, bonkers with hints of genius.
Now the Strawberries we got were Dutch, we would have liked to have used British but they were such poor quality that Nick's supplier refused to pay for them, que sera sera. It helped us come up with the name.
Once back at the brewery we started playing around with ways of extracting the most aroma from the Strawberries. We got 3 pint glasses and stuck some boiling water in them.
In glass no.1 was an uncut Strawberry. Glass number two had a quartered Strawberry and the third glass had an uncut strawberry and one szechuan peppercorn.
We didn't much aroma from the first glass, it was there it just didn't quite want to come out and play. The strawberry in the second glass was far more happy to give us the aroma we were looking for. The 3rd glass I didn't need to stick my nose in, I could smell it 3 feet away, the peppercorn was giving off an amazing spicy, peppery aroma that was blowing the strawberry almost out of the glass!
So we had two glasses that we were getting big aromas from and we decided that the logical thing to do was to mix the two and see what happened. It worked, Nick's crazy idea was indeed a stroke of genius!
Next step was cutting up the 5 kilos of strawberries which I happily did. Then it was choosing the bittering hops, for bittering we chose Amarillo and Pioneer, 500g of each.
12.15pm. Now it's time was time to sparge, now I know what you're thinking, that sounds like something a fat bastard like me would do after a meal, it's not, it's getting the wort from the mash tun to the copper. Again for the laymen out there Wort is the liquid/liquor that is produced by the malt being boiled which extracts the sugars out of the malted barley. It has an almost sickly sweet aroma that also smells something like weetabix when you pour hot milk on it.
Run off finished at 13.10pm and gravity during run off was 1070.
After sparging I had the unenviable task of digging out the mash tun. Since the mush tun size had increased from 5 barrel to 10 barrel it actually made it easier to clean out. Instead of hanging over the edge you just shovelled it out from the hatch at shoulder height so instead of my stomach muscles taking a beating it was my shoulder that would be hurting the next day. Of course you still have to climb in to finish it off and whilst inside it was shaking around a bit which scarred the shit out of me but I got it done and it was that much easier on the body!
First hops(bittering hops) were in next and this happened at 15.15pm 500g of Pioneer hops and 500g of Amarillo hops went into the boil, Szechuan Pepper went into the kettle half an hour later, 15.45pm.
It should be pointed out that whilst there was waiting around time, I was cleaning up after myself, sweeping hops, mopping the floor etc...This prompted the assertion from Charlie and Matt that I was a cleaner brewer than Melissa Cole! Heehee!
During one of the earlier hiatuses we had decided to aromatize the brew with Pacific Gem hops, I love Pacific Gem, it's sweet, citrusy and when we stuck a few in the glass with the strawberry and szechuan pepper from earlier, oh. my. God what an aroma, if my beer smells anything like this and tastes as clean as I hope then I'm going to be well happy! The Strawberry and the Pacific Gem worked so well, I was lost for any words other than 'awesome' or 'oooooh yeah' I couldn't help sticking my nose in the glass and being blown away by that aroma, being a tubby git, if I could have eaten it....
At 16.15 it was time for the second(aroma hops) hops (1 kilo) and the strawberries(5 kilos) to go in. In they went, this was right at the end of the boil so as not to lose all the flavours & aromas.
Five minutes later we started the transfer of the now deep red, almost mulled-wine coloured liquid into FV1, when Matt told me that the colour wouldn't transfer to the fermenter I remember being quite gutted, but it smelled delicious.
We activated 100g of Belgian yeast 35 minutes later and 15 minutes later I pitched the yeast and started making beer!
And then it was time to clean the kettle. Good brew day, I really enjoyed it and I'm really looking forward to trying the beer.
Just for the record, original gravity was 1046.5 and final gravity was 1010.5.
The name of the beer is S.O.S.
If you get to try it I'd appreciate some feedback.
See you at GBBF.

Motley'd..again

Yup, it's gonna be painful. I have just placed an order with Otley Brewing for 6 Otley casks and 1 Purple Moose cask, including the 5.5% abv Motley Brew which I thought had been sold out!
As it turns out it wasn't so it should be on the bar by the weekend, maybe in time for 5pm Friday when my weekend starts and I can have a few jars after work!

Right time to order a new liver and hope the queue ain't too long!

Other news on the Motley/Otley front is that Nick and I have arranged for me to go back to Ponty and brew the second batch of the 7.5% Motley Brew for later on in the year AND a new exciting strawberry beer too, roll on July!

100th Post

My one hundreth post, so I thought I'd do a piece on IPA's.
I bottled some Motley Brew and brought it home yesterday, possibly the last time (this year) that i'll drink it. I say this year because I am delighted to say that Nick and his team at Otley Brewing decided to make it a permanent on their seasonal range, albeit with the slightly lower abv of 5.5%.
I bought a couple of bottles of Punk IPA from Sainsbury's on Sunday because Lucille and I had a couple of friends round for lunch and it was possibly the most inspiring choice in their beer range.
So why not compare the two? They are two of my favourite breweries after all and they are very similar beers too.
First of all Motley : it's now 5.5% abv but you wouldn't guess it, it does taste more like 6-6.5%. It was bottled by hand from the tap yesterday into a flip-top bottle to try and keep it as fresh as possible but it was still lacking in condition. The tasting notes are pretty much the same as they were in December when we launched it at The Rake, I wrote about the beer here, the only difference being the abv which I now believe makes it an IPA not a double IPA. There's less of the instant floral hit of the pacific gem hops but it's still there, there's slightly less of the Chinook hops that bittered it up but they're still there, it's the same beer made from the same recipe and it's still a fantastic beer in my lowly opinion.
The Punk IPA : It's 6% abv, it's a bottle and the carbonation really helps bring out the flavour, there's a bitterness that's unmistakeably Brewdog. Now I don't want to talk about this beer without first telling you about the Keg we had at The Rake recently, it's actually convinced me that Brewdog have changed the hops that they used in the brew, is this true? well only Brewdog can say I guess, but my taste buds were given a tropical treat that took me far away to an island where I could have laid in the sun sipping it all day long. There was pineapple and lychees coming through and it was immensely drinkable.
Back to the bottle, it's slightly harder work to drink because there's that Brewdog bitterness back again that ruthlessly attacks the taste buds, it's an agressive beer, it says so on the label, it must be true then!
Which is better? well, you know that's completely subjective and you good folks can make up your own minds.

Welsh Beer Festival 2010

It's nearly here, one week to go before the big kick-off to a week of Welsh Beers at The Rake.
Doors open at 12pm on Sunday don't try getting in any earlier because you'll get told 'mynd allan a lluosi'. Well not really but I just wanted to put something Welsh there!
There will be two Lovebeer Meet the Brewer sessions with Buster from Breaconshire Brewery and he'll be going through the following beers :

Cribyn
Golden Valley
Ramblers Ruin
Winter Beacon
Night Beacon
Ysbrid y Draig

The tastings will be at 1pm and 3.30pm and you can get tickets at The Rake or by calling 020 7378 9461 there are only 15 tickets per tasting so get in there quick, knowing Buster this'll be a lot of fun!

The beer list for the week is as follows :
Otley : O1, O-Garden, O-Rosie & Motley Brew
Purple Moose : Dark Side of the Moose, Snowdonia & Calon Lan
Breaconshire : Cribyn & Ramblers Ruin
Monty's : Mojo & Midnight
Warcop : Caspa Lager & Raiders
Tudor : Blorenge
Tomos Watkin : 1879(kegged fizzy for Cooking Lager) & Cwrw Ceridwen
Vale of Glamorgan : Grog Y Vog & Wheats Occuring
Great Orme : Celtica
Ryhmney : Dark
Bryncelyn : Buddy Marvellous
Conwy : Telford Porter
Plassey : Offa's Dyke Ale
Swansea : Deep Slade Dark

There will also be a hot food offer provided by Andy Wright owner of Loaf Supplies and Tom Harding of Mootown will also be doing a cheese selection for your enjoyment.

Remember if you can't get down on the Sunday then don't panic there will be Welsh beers on all week!
I personally am really excited about trying some of these beers and it should be a great week in general. Iechyd da!

A Drunk Diary, Episode Twenty-One

Day 21, after yesterdays 15-odd units, I decided to try and avoid that much again today, here goes and wish me luck.

Drink : Otley O6 half pint
abv : 6.6%
Units : 1.87

Drink : Beaumonts Ginger Beer (125mls)
abv : 3.7%
Units : 0.46

Drink : Goose Island Ipa
abv : 5.9%
Units : 2.09

Drink : Black Sheep Ale
abv : 4.4%
Units : 2.2

Total Units today : 6.62

A Drunk Diary, Episode Twenty

Starting at 4pm today, technically I've finished work but I'm having a meeting with Tom Harding from Mootown and Glenn Payne of 'all-round-beer-fame'.

Drink : Otley Columb-O Half pint
abv : 4%
Units : 1.13

Drink : Tusker 500ml Bottle
abv : 4.2%
Units : 2.1

Drink : Proper Job 500ml bottle
abv : 5.5%
Units : 2.75

Drink : Victory Hop Devil
Abv : 6.7%
Units : 2.37

Drink : Otley 06 Half pint
abv : 6.6%
Units : 1.87

Drink : Flying Dog Old Scratch half pint
abv : 5.3%
Unit : 1.50

Drink : St Bernardus Abt 12
abv : 10%
Units : 3.3

That was it, many units today because I was hanging around for a meeting at 7.30pm.

Total units today : 15.02

WELSH BEER FESTIVAL 2010

It's that time of year again! No, not sodding Christmas! It's time to start banging on about The Rake's 2nd annual Welsh Beer Festival. Yes it went so well last year that I've decided to make it an annual event!
Last year, to my amazement we managed to sell 21 casks of beer! This year we're going for even more!
The event will kick off on Sunday 28th February with 18 firkins on the decking and 3 inside on the handpulls.
There will also be a couple of Meet the Brewer sessions with Nick Otley from Otley Brewing and 'Buster' Grant from Breaconshire Brewing Co.
Again food will be supplied by Andy Wright of Loaf supplies and Tom Harding will be supplying cheeses from Mootown.

Breweries will include : Otley, Breaconshire, Purple Moose, Brains, Celt Experience, Great Orme, Ffos y Ffin and a few new breweries that have never come to London before!
There will of course be a reappearance of the now infamous Motley Brew as well as last year's Beer of the Festival, Otley's 06 Porter.
If you're rugby union fans then there will probably be a couple of players from the London Welsh making an appearance.
You will of course have the opportunity to vote for your favourite beer again, last years winner won a mixed case of Welsh Beers to take home with him and in fine Camelot tradition...IT COULD BE YOU...
It'll be big, it'll be informative and, most importantly, it'll be FUN!
Join the Facebook group to let us know if you're coming, don't forget to re-tweet it if that's your bag, thanks for reading and I'll hopefully see you there.

Motley...the Revenge...

OK, just a quickie here.
If you missed it the first time around it's back! The Motley Brew is available on cellar runs should you feel the urge, just come in and ask me for a half or a 3rd.
If you don't know what it's about, it's a beer I helped brew with the top blokes from the Otley Brewing Company in Pontypridd, South Wales. It's a 7.5% IPA and it's marvelous!
Hope to see you later!
RBF

2009 a decent enough vintage

There seems to be a few pieces being written about the beer world in 2009, well I'm going to give my version of 2009. My reason for doing this is to try and spot things that I'm quite proud of and things that I hope to do better on in 2010, as I write I'm not entirely sure that I'm going to publish this post.
This isn't going to just be about beer & brewing, it's going to be a bit more personal so take from it what you will.
I guess the first real high point of 2009 came just after the first proper low point. The low point was having to get rid of one of the staff, for those of you that don't know about it, all you have to know is that despite my bravado, I don't enjoy sacking people, it's not nice and it only happens when a place has been reached that you can't come back from.
The high note came very soon after, almost exactly a month in fact, it was my first beer festival, one that I was given the idea for but was charged with the responsibility of organising and making sure it occurred smoothly. The Welsh Beer Festival at The Rake went off pretty much without a hitch, there were of course things that we learned but the beers we had on offer, the staff enthusiasm for something we'd never attempted before and the friends I've made since then have really stayed with me all year round. It was the first big event at The Rake, really the first time I'd got to gauge just how I was doing as a bar manager, just what sort of job was I doing? well...we had the busiest week since I joined on September 1st 2008 and the feedback was fantastic, I think it helped define me as a manager, proved to myself that I could do the job. Honourable mention for this has to go to the staff involved as well, they worked their arses off to help set it up and of course I couldn't have done it without them.
The next great thing to happen in my 2009 was my best mate getting married, totally personal thing but I was so proud to watch him get hitched.
Another personal highlight was the new Star Trek film - take it as you find it but I'm a Trek fan and I loved it.
Top 5 Beer highlights in no particular order...
1) Brewdog Tokyo* - Great launch at The Rake
2) Coney Island Albino Python
3) Motley Brew (beer tastes so much better when you brew it yourself).
4) Welsh beer Festival at The Rake
5) Rogue Imperial IPA
honourable mention goes to Tom's Lambic Festival at The Rake and surprisingly(for me anyway) St Peters Grapefruit beer (on cask) this beer is great I was truly shocked.

Top 5 beer lows, again, in no particular order...
1) Brewdog getting their own beer banned
2) Nanny State (Guys if you're going to make gimmick beers even McDonalds throw in a free toy!)
3) Almost constant blame on the beer trade for all health and social problems.
4) Once a year drinkers (again), I always look back and want to ask them why they feel it necessary to act like idiots.
5) Holsten Pils - read my last blog to find out why.
dishonourable discharge would have to go to (drum roll.....) do you know what? fuck it! it's Christmas, I didn't start blogging to bitch about people.

Business-wise, The Rake, like many pubs & bars has seen a huge increase in 'cask beer' sales, for most of the year the cask sales have outstripped my Veltins sales by about 2 pints to 1. I see this as a great sign for the industry, craft brewing in Britain is exploding and Brewers like Brewdog, Otley and Harviestoun are really leading the way with their innovation and I see my customers(and myself) relishing each new brew that these guys come up with and it makes me smile.
I introduced the 3rd of a pint as standard at The Rake, it's working well and I would encourage all pubs to at least have the option available.
The second festival we had at The Rake was Toms Lambic Festival in November, as far as we know it was the first time anywhere in the UK had done something like this, for a very challenging style the festival was successful and it's something he's going to do again.
One thing I really love about my job is the opportunities we get to showcase new beers we've had a few in the 16 months I've been at The Rake here are a few that have made their London debuts at The Rake...
Brewdog Rake Raspberry Imperial Stout
Brewdog Zephyr
Brewdog Tokyo*
Otley 06
Motley Brew
Otley 11/138
Yes there's only 2 breweries there and there are other beers on the list but frankly these are two of my favourite breweries and I've worked closely with both of them to make sure that their beers are presented to the public in the correct manner.
Another highlight has been working with my friend Melissa Cole on the Lovebeer side of the business, I've known Melissa since my days at the Jolly Gardners in Putney and she's someone I have a lot of time and respect for. The Lovebeer tastings have been, for me at least, eye opening, informative and a great way of gaining new friends and meeting various brewers from around the Britain and indeed the world!
There also has to be a mention for the Brewers wall, whenever we get a professional brewer come in, even for a quick beer, if they haven't signed the wall I give them a pen and tell them to write something.

So, looking forward to 2010 what can I see ahead and hope for? Well in the first week of March we once again have a Welsh Beer Festival, expect some really special brews. I'm hoping to get to the Extreme Beer Festival in Boston in February but not sure I'm going to make it now. On a personal note my other best mate is getting married on April 17th and May 22nd is the big date for Lucille and I.
I'm hoping to do more brewing in 2010 too, it was probably the hardest days work I've ever done but it was immensely enjoyable and I really want to 'keep my eye in'.
There is of course going to be the GBBF in august and the GABF in September, I know I'll be at the British one but I really want to go to the American version in Denver too. Couple more awards might be nice too! hehe!
I can't go into too much more detail about work but suffice to say it's going to be another great year for Utobeer, The Rake & Lovebeer, watch this space!

What the F*?k do I know? - the final act

Yesterday at The Rake, The Otley Brewing Company and myself unveiled two brand new beers, if you read this blog on a regular basis you'll know that I helped brew one of them, the Motley Brew.
A pub full of people attended the bash and the Motley Brew went down very well. For a first attempt I was thrilled, I had a sneaky taste on Sunday and had to go and be by myself for a while, I was on some sort of beer high, it was as close to total serenity that I think I will ever come. Now, I've never been the most verbose person in the world at the best of times but I was totally speechless on Sunday.
I was banging on about it for weeks before the event and People must have been getting absolutely sick to death of hearing about O-Nite and Motley Brew, after all, I'm not the first person to brew beer (or help brew beer!) and I certainly won't be the last but the sheer amount of people that turned up at The Rake yesterday to try the two new brews was a humbling experience.
The beer itself? A double IPA, bright amber and a bit hazy. Massive amounts of tropical fruit on the nose, that'll be the 3.5kg of pacific gem hop we put in, in the mouth the body was totally right, the taste, wee bit of apple yeastiness from the American yeast we used, the bittering hops(Chinook and Centennial) perhaps should have been a bit more prevalent but it wasn't too sweet either. The finish was fantastically dry due to the dry-hopping (again Chinook hops were used) and it left me wanting more.
I hope that when people said they liked it they weren't just being polite but I was more than a bit happy with the final result and for those of you who missed it? Well I'm looking forward to the new year when I get the next cask in and I hope to see you there next time.

What the F*?k do I know? - Part two

So it's been 6 days since I brewed with Otley Brewing and I have to say that as back-breakingly hard work as it is being a brewer it was also a lot of fun. This is probably because I already got on well with the Otley guys as I've dealt with them a lot.

Day started at 5.45am when I woke up at home. got ready to leave the house in hackney. I got the train from paddington at 8.15, about half an hour earlier than i aimed for, off to a good start then!

I traveled all the way to Pontypridd by train and got picked up by Nick at around 11.25ish. Welsh trains...better than english ones!(for punctuality).

It was a short drive from the station and when I got to the brewery I was surprised at how small it was, not unpleasantly surprised but still, i just expected it to be bigger. it's hidden in the middle of an industrial estate and from the outside it's just another warehouse. Inside, however, is where the magic happens.

I had never been to a brewery before and never attempted any sort of home brewing so Nick placed me in the more-than-capable hands of Matt Otley who took me throught the process and showed me what occured where.

The first thing we did was decide which malts and hops to use, I had been sent a list of what they had and had already emailed back saying which ones I wanted to use so after a bit of discussion we changed one of the hops and one of the malts on the advice of Matt.

Having started before I got there, the next thing we had to do was load the malt into the mash tun, 150kg Pale, 9kg wheat and 5.5kg crystal. then I had to make sure that there was no lumps in the mash, hard work right at the start of the day! meh!

Then it was a case of leaving it for about an hour and a half whilst it produced the wort.

So, we had some time on our hands and went and got the hops ready, 520g of Chinook and 630g of Centennial to 'bitter it up' and 3.442kg of Pacific Gem to add aroma...oh yes!

This was a quick process so we still had time to kill before transferring the wort to the copper. Instead of sitting around for the time drinking tea or coffee, we started sorting out the Warehouse part of the company, putting bottles and cases on shelves, this was fine though, I prefer to be busy when I'm in a strange place(something to do with not wanting to look like a lazy bugger).

When it was time to transfer the wort to the copper Matt showed me the proccess and just left me to it, when it was finished we had to boil the wort with the hops. The next thing that had to be done was the cleaning out of the mash tun! Now, I brought this on myself by wanting to go and brew with these guys as most brewers see this as some sort of rite of passage that everyone should have to do if they're brewing, having now done this, I completely agree! Hard physical work like this makes me sweat, a lot, so whilst I was cleaning out the mash tun Matt asked me what I wanted to call the brew and I shouted back 'f*!king sweat-O at the moment!' and we had what's known in TV as a working title.

Then it was time to add the hops. First the bittering hops and after a while(sorry but I forget exactly how long) the aroma hops.

I was hoping for a beer that was about 8% abv, when we checked the gravity it turned out that it was going to be more like 7-7.2%, I was a bit disappointed but then it was the first brew i'd ever done so I put this down to being a rank amateur. We tried boiling a bit longer to get as much out of the hops as possible but it really didn't want to go any higher. We had more time to kill after putting the hops in so it was more lugging stuff about whilst we waited. I now know that when Nick Otley had said over the phone it would be more convenient for me to come down on the tuesday it was because they needed an extra pair of hands to lug shit about! cheers Nick.

I did get to see one of their one-off brews getting racked by Charlie though which was good, seeing the finings going in at that point, smelling them etc.. I wanted the whole experience and whilst I won't be around when my brew is racked I at least know what is done and help Charlie do this with the American-O.

Eventually we transferred the beer into the fermenter and I pitched the american yeast which we'd run off a bit earlier and had a lovely apple-y aroma to it. That was it basically it, Charlie or Matt will probably start conditioning this week at some point and perhaps dry hop it although i'm not convinced this will be needed.

So, one day, lots of hard work and a lot of fun, then it was time to drink, eat and be merry in that order at The Bunch of Grapes(Nick Otleys pub) with Nick and Matt. I think I lasted until about 10.30 and retired drunk, exhausted but happy that i'd learnt something new.

4 weeks to go and it'll be on at The Rake and the Otley pubs only!

Next installment of this tale will be straight after tasting the beer for the first time, the name is decided, cheesily enough we settled on Motley Brew, will let you know when it's on and we'll make a night of it.

Good Times, I'll drink to that!

Here I am basking at home on my one day off this week, Jensen Button is F1 World Champion, I've just done the rota for The Rake so that it's one less job to do this week.

Exciting? Nah not for me, the excitement is from the general state of the brewing industry at the moment. Yes there are doom and gloom stories about 40 or so pubs closing a week but I do tend to look at the bright side. I work for a progressive company that's on the verge of expansion in the middle of a recession.

Lets look at what's coming up for me then. Brewdog are apparently changing the world on Tuesday, on Sunday 1st of November The Rake is having it's Lambic Festival, something that we don't think has been done in the UK before now. Next week on the 27th & 28th October I will be going to Pontypridd in South Wales to brew with Nick Otley and the guys at Otley Brewing.

I've started to look at the next Welsh Beer Festival for 2010 and we're looking at opening the Utobeer Brewery in January where we're going to let the unrelentingly witty Eddie Baines do the brewing, good times. I'll drink to that!