Ed's Beer Site

Carnivale Brettanomyces 2026

2026-07-02T09:00:00.000+01:00

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

2026-06-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

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

2026-06-12T09:00:00.000+01:00

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

2026-06-10T09:00:00.000+01:00

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

2026-06-08T09:00:00.000+01:00

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!

A visit to Warminster maltings

2026-06-04T09:30:00.000+01:00

Disturbingly it's over ten years ago that I last visited Warminster Maltings. This time with the CIBD it was considerably less rushed. Which is just as well, as owner Robin Appel, now in his 63rd year as a corn merchant, talked to us at great length about the place. I'm sure he could have gone on a lot longer if we'd had the time.

Robin Appel

He says there's only two floor maltings left in England, and eight in Scotland. Though he then cast aspersions that probably only one of the Scottish ones does much more than look good for tourists. I have to say it does sound quite likely though. Britain stuck to floor more than many other countries. The tax on malt meant we couldn't even consider using the then new pneumatic malting until the so called 'Free Mash Tun' act of 1880. Pneumatic malting arrived here in the early 20th century but floor maltings were still built until 1953. From 1960 large pneumatic malting took off, it's a cheaper way of making malt.

Guinness leased Warminster Maltings and it supplied Park Royal brewery. Guinness did have plans to build a much larger maltings nearby but the take over of The Distillers Company and associated scandal gave put paid to that. There was a management buyout of Warminster in 1984 but the company failed to thrive and in 2001 their largest supplier, Robin Appel, bought the company. And as luck would have it Progressive Beer Duty was brought in in 2002, which was a shot in the arm for small breweries and a certain small maltings.

The best soil for malting barley is light loam over chalk. It can be worked easily and the chalk soaks up water so retains moisture. Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset are the best places. Plumage Archer, the world's first barley variety bred by crossing, rather than a landrace, was bred at Warminster in 1905. Plumage was from Sweden and Archer was an English landrace. It was launched commercially in 1914. Guinness produced Spratt Archer soon after. Then Proctor followed by Maris Otter were bred.

Steeping tank

When tax was paid on malt it would be measured in the steep, in the couch and on the germination floor. An average of the three was then taken. Steeps had to be flat bottomed for the measuring. Barley at 14% moisture starts to germinate at 32% and will get to 45%. A typical Warminster steeping cycle is:

6 hours wet (moisture rises to 21%)

18 hours air rest

10 hours wet (moisture passes 32%, reaching 33-34%)

14 hours dry

12 hours wet, then to the germination floor. No couching nowadays.

Plumage Archer can take longer and Rye is quicker (a day and half in total). There is no aeration of the steep water.

Two layers of germination floors

The malt goes via an auger to the top floor and half of it is dropped to the lower floor. It has to be half and half so the depth of malt is even and malting progresses at the same time. They have their own well. There are four sets of double floors at Warminster. There used to be four steeps and four kilns too, but there's only one kiln now. The buildings are built in a slight V shape with a courtyard between them, which forces air in the windows. The Victorian builders and maltsters might have thought they were clever doing this, but to be honest they're not a patch on the people who planned Woking town centre.

To prevent matting, cool the malt and release CO2 the malt is turned with a Robinson turner:

And a malt plough:

There's also a big fan! Germination continues until the grain has reached a stage that you can squash it flat and smear the white contents: "maltster's chalk"! Maris Otter takes five days to reach this stage, Plumage Archer can take six.

We didn't see the kiln, but they had a new one installed in 2017-2018. With the new kiln they can make malts paler and darker than before. We did however go into one of the old kilns which has been turned into a mini-malting museum.

Traditional kiln floor tiles

From ten tonnes of barley they get eight tonnes of malt. We were told floor malted barley had better flavour and extract. It can be controlled better than in 350 tonne modern maltings and on germination floors, but not large vessels, bacterial growth creates lactic acid.

In the mini malt museum

After the museum we moved on to a distillery.

Big fish in a little sea

2026-06-03T20:36:14.228+01:00

Writer and Manxophile Katie Mather's latest piece on the Isle of Man for Pellicle is the first time I've seen her mention Okell's brewery, and it was rather dismissive. I briefly worked at Okell's a few years back. The job was one of the worst I've had, a cesspit of office politics. But the beers were the best on the island. The brew kit and laboratory were over spec'd for the brewery's output of 5 or 6,000 barrels a year. It had levels of quality and consistency that the other breweries on the island didn't.

Okell's brewery

They had three regular beers: bitter, MPA (Manx pale ale) and IPA, as well as monthly seasonals. The hop store was over filled with the latest fashionable hops, and this was certainly reflected in what went in the beers. Rather improbably the brown bitter included Nelson Sauvin in the hop grist, for example.

I don't know why Katie seemingly has little interest in Okell's, but I do know is that on the island it plays the role of the evil corporation. A small surviving regional brewery might be celebrated elsewhere, but not on the Isle of Man. The parent company Heron & Brearley own half the pubs on the island and cynically bought and shut down the island's other historic brewery in Castletown in 1986.

I got first hand experience of the distain some Manxie beer geeks hold Okell's in when I attended an event at the Hooded Ram brewery. It was a microbrewery run by a lovely guy called Rob Storey. He'd invited Okell's staff over to the event so I went with one of the lads from work. I had an inkling of the view some held about Okell's, but I thought it better to be up front about where I was working so wore a branded work t-shirt.

The Hooded Ram brewery in 2017

I was still a bit put out that someone booed when I arrived though! I've always thought the viewing of employees of breweries you don't like as evil was a bit ludicrous. Particularly as I was working at a small regional brewery, not a giant multinational's factory. But it seems everything is relative, even who the big bad guy is. I didn't get any more grief after that, and in fact had a cracking night.

I'm not quite sure what happened to Hooded Ram, but it didn't survive lockdown and Rob now runs Odin brewery. And I've not had beers from the Kerroo brewery that Katie writes about, but I met the couple behind it at the last SIBA do. I also spent loads of time at Port Erin where they're based, the best climbing on the island is at The Chasms nearby. As to Okell's, the wrong'uns there were ousted a year or so after they'd seen me off, so I hope current Head Brewer Kevin Holmes is enjoying the job more than I did!

A visit to Camba brewery

2026-05-30T08:17:15.370+01:00

I must admit I was hitting the wall by this point. Before the study tour I'd have several industry events and a couple of weeks of networking and CPD were talking their toll on my body. But your friend may ask: "Couldn't you just not pour all that free beer down your neck when it appears?" To which I can only reply: "Don't be ridiculous".

Camba brewery is the show brewery for Braukon, the brewery equipment manufacturer. They have a 10hl and a 50hl brewery on site, both fed by the same mill. I thought the 10hl brewery was equipment stored on racking, but no, it was all plumbed in.

The 10hl brewery

They make around 100 different beers a year, many as their own brand but a lot of contract brewing too.

The main 50Lbrewhouse is only two vessels, which was a bit of a surprise. Though that does have to be qualified that Germans don't count whirlpools, and I suppose they're not always in the brewhouse. At the time we were told it's because whirlpools replaced coolships, which made sense then but doesn't now. Whirlpools are for separating wort from trub and hop pellet debris, not for wort cooling. The other vessel in the pictures that doesn't count is a Hot Liquor Tank.

The 50hl brewery

The two vessels that do count are a mash/wort kettle and a Mash Conversion Vessel.

They use liquid calcium chloride for liquor treatment, so have a bit of plastic pipe at the addition point to avoid the metal being corroded!

The beers at the bar were a mixture of traditional and modern styles. Braukon sell kit all over the place so it makes sense to demonstrate that you can make a wide range of beers on it.

That was the last brewery of the study tour. We did visit the factory of our besties Profipack in the evening to keep our beer and pork levels topped up. And we were all given litre steins which was really nice. I doubt I'll be getting much use out of it, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it at some point.

A visit to Trumer brewery

2026-05-25T16:20:46.953+01:00

The Trumer brewery was the next stop on the study tour. I'd prepared for this visit by having a few pints (half litres probably) of Trumer Pils the day before the tour started in, of all things, an Irish pub in Vienna. It wasn't a place I would have picked myself, but my colleague who's more clued up on Austrian beer had it on his list and it was dead good. The beer was good too, very clean and easy drinking. The brewery dates from 1601 and has been owned by the Sigl family for 250 years. They're now on to their eighth Josef Sigl as boss!

Annual production at Trumer is 80,000hl, spread over seven brands though the focus is pilsner. The European (Austrian and German?) Beer Sommeliers started at Trumer, with the aim of getting more of that wine language into beer. It seems to be doing better than the British version, which I think recently had its second re-launch.

The old 100hl brewhouse was built in 1910 and used until the 80s. The kettle was directly heated with coal. Apparenty it could still be used, but they're not going to because why would they?

The new two vessel 240hl brewhouse was built by Huppmann in 1985. Raw materials come from Austria and Bavaria, including hops from Hallertau and north Austria. Four tonnes of malt are used and hops are added in four stages. The have their own wells in the village and blend 70% well water (3 presumably German degrees of hardness) with reverse osmosis treated water.

They have a six roller mill from 1965 and use the Kubessa method when brewing. Named after the brewer from Cologne that patented it in 1903, in the Kubessa method the husk is separated from the endosperm during milling. It is not added to the Mash Conversion Vessel during the early stages of mashing, only being added prior to lautering so it can help with wort separation. It means less husk polyphenols get in the beer. It's said to make a beer taste more elegant, and certainly the Trumer Pils in Vienna was very smooth. We had John Brauer, EBC grand fromage, explain to us on the coach that in fact little difference can be detected in fresh beer, but the Kubessa method give greater flavour stability so its advantages become more apparent over time.

They have one shift brewing Monday to Wednesday, with typically two and half brews required to fill an FV. The minimum brewlength is 100hl. The fermentation block dates from 2006.

Top view

Sales are slowly rising and they've left room for expansion.

Bottom view

They have branched out into other products though, and also make oat milk. For the Pils they have open fermenters.

This allows them to skim off the dirty head (brandhefe) at the end of fermentation which helps with the clean taste of the Pils. Fermentation is for a week with at least four weeks of maturation. They don't measure diacetyl but do have a two day warm rest at 14°C. They are Slow Brewing certified, which is guess is related to the Slow Food movement.

Total beer storage capacity is 10,000hl. They propagate and harvest the yeast. An ale yeast is used for a seasonal beer. 65% of the beer is packaged into keg by a 460 keg per hour filler according to my notes. It sounds a lot, but the breweries we'd been round did have flashy packaging equipment. The other 35% of the beer is bottled. They use perlite and cellulose for filtration and the beer is not pasteurised.

Storks on top of an brewery old chimney

Nice brewery , but I must confess though that the bottled beer we were given to drink weren't as good as the draught I'd had in Vienna. The carbonation on the Pils was much higher which gave it a harsher taste. It probably didn't help that we were drinking straight from the bottle. So, a rare example of me recommending a keg beer. But fear not, I was in Austria and they have different brewing traditions there so my immortal soul is not at risk.

A visit to Augustiner brewery

2026-05-23T16:20:56.972+01:00

Having been on a few brewery study tours I've noticed it's always an unexpected brewery that turns out to be my favourite. And so it was this time. Augustiner brewery, which I know beer geeks rave about, was the only one I'd heard of. Or so I thought. But in fact we were going to the Augistiner brewery in Salzburg, not the Augustiner brewery in Munich. So I really had no idea, but I'm pleased to say it was glorious!

The Augustinian bit is due to the monks (or I think more accurately friars). The Head Brewer said a monk is the boss. I don't know how much non-Trappist orders are involved in brewing. Living in a proddy country probably doesn't help, though we do have a Trappist brewery in Britain now. I once visited Buckfast Abbey, home of the tonic wine beloved by Glaswegian alcoholics, and was surprised to see several beers for sale that certainly appeared to be brewed by different religious orders. And I don't know how strict Augustinians are about beer made in their name, but I suspect less so than Trappists, who split away from a strict order for not being strict enough. But enough religious twaddle, it's not like their differences will be as interesting and important as say, those between Chalcedonianism and Nestorianism.

The brewery was like catnip to me, being gleaming copper and old techniques. The brewery dates from 1621. It makes 27,000hl a year, so small regional brewery in size and their bräustüberl (brewery tap) is immense.

The brewhouse

They have a gleaming copper two vessel 90hl brewhouse. Amazingly it's from 2012, so this brewery is not a working museum, they're actively keeping it like how it has been. They do double decoction, with a temperature profile 60-64-74-78°C, not the most traditional one so I guess the malt's fairly well modified. Brewing is from 5am to 4pm, with eight hour shifts.

The still use a coolship. This isn't new, dates from 1907. No gleaming copper though, it's made of mild steel. Temperature here drops from 100°C to 40-50°C in, my notes say, 30 minutes. A lot of evaporation happens here. The beer gets stronger and darker and trub drops out. The coolship is cleaned by hand every day.

The mild steel coolship

But the coolship's not enough so they've got Baudelot coolers, vertical copper coolers that look like radiators and sound like they belong in a knocking shop. Cold water flows inside and hot wort runs down the outside. The Head Brewer got a bit cagey about answering questions about temperatures at this point. I'm not sure why, it's not like anyone is going to copy what they do. There's two sections. The top has river water flowing through it and the bottom section chilled water. I think the water's at 10°C in the upper section, 1°C in the lower. The are cleaned four times a day, before and after each use.

Baudelot coolers

They have open fermenters, with the pitching temperature less than 10°C and lagering at less than 4°C. Fermentaion lasts for a week. Yeast is used ten times and is acid washed to kill bacteria, which given all the open equipment in this brewery is probably for the best. Lagering is carried out in 16 x 320hl tanks.

They have a plate and frame filter that dates from 1890:

Antique plate and frame filter

And slightly incongruously a centrifuge for the beer going to cask.

Centrifuge

Yes, you did read that right. Cask beer! The draught beer here comes in pitch lined wooden casks, served as god intended without extraneous CO2. The pitch is something tree resin based that lines the casks so the beer doesn't come into contact with the wood. I did try taking a picture inside a cask but didn't manage it. I guess the yellow crap around the shive hole is pitch though. They have a cask population of 2,200 casks (25, 50 and 100L) and re-pitch them 4-5 times a year. Apparently it affects the taste but I can't say I noticed anything.

Shive hole with pitch?

They have a 7,000 bpa bottling line they run once or twice a week, and of course a Profipack robot for loading and unloading crates. The bottled beer has a two month best before date!

We had the traditional find a victim to tap the cask, but all went well.

The beer was served in earthenware mugs so don't know what it looked like. Nice view from the window though.

The view from Augustiner Salzburg

They only close four days a year (two days as xmas and two at new year), which is handy as I was so impressed with this place I'd love to come back and drink more of the beer.

A visit to Uttendorf Vitzthum brewery

2026-05-19T20:27:53.953+01:00

Next stop was Uttendorf Vitzthum brewery. It's in a part of Austria that used to be Bavaria so I was a little bit wary of the obligatory Profipack robot, I've heard what robots do in Germany. This one is on the bottling line and stacks crates on pallets at up to 15,000 bottles per hour.

Before starting the tour though, we watched a video about the brewery first. There were a few errors in the stuff it had about brewing, but hey you can't expect marketing people to get such things right, and they'd provided us a beer to drink while the video played.

The brewery has been owned by the same family since 1906. In 1980 they were producing 2,000hl but it's now 25,000hl and 5,000hl in soft drinks. The brewhouse dates from 1981, bottling line from 1987, filtration from 2014 and tanks from 2019.

70% of their production goes into bottles, with 30% in keg, and 80% of sales are in a 30km radius. There had been an enticing picture of a wooden cask in the video but it was all a con:

The devil's work in Austria

10, 20 and 50L kegs are filled, but no beer served as god intended. For the small pack they have four different types of reusable bottles. The beers are filtered by a kieselguhr filter and cartridge filters down to one micron, but not pasteurised. They brew to the German beer purity law. Water comes from a 90m deep well and pellet hops are used.

The 130hl kettle is directly fired using oil so it has a rummager, a copper chain dragged around the bottom, to prevent char burning on. The copper isn't pure so it also adds a bit of reinheitsgebot friendly zinc, which will keep the yeast happy!

Rummagers are something I'd only heard of previously in whisky pot stills. In the two vessel brewhouse the boil is for an hour. They do decoction mashes, starting at 60°C, with a triple decoction for the bock.

They also have a Kaspar Schulz Schoko volatile stripper:

This was what I'd been missing at Ried brewery when the guy talked about their vessel for stripping DMS, as I couldn't quite work out what was going on. I turns out, like at Uttendorf, they have Schoko in a different room. But when I saw the distinctive mushroom shaped vessel I knew what was going on here. Mind you, they're not currently using it in Uttendorf.

The temperature for bottom fermented beers is 6°C, for the top fermented beers it's 16°C. Fermentation takes a week followed by lagering for 9-16 weeks, which sounds like the traditional one week per degree Plato.

After the brewery it was into the yard where they had crates of beer waiting for us. I sampled a couple. Of bottles that is!

A visit to Ried brewery

2026-05-17T13:34:36.386+01:00

The second day of our studying began at Ried brewery in Ried im Innkreis. The brewery was founded in 1906 and is owned by local pubs! Annual output is 45,000hl. The have a 300l pilot brewery where they make things like IPA and honey beer. They also use it when doing beer sommelier courses.

The pilot brewery

The main brewhouse has a 150hl capacity.

Three vessel CIP set

They brew to the German beer purity law using mostly Bavarian malt and Austrian hops, with some hops coming from Hallertau.

The brewhouse

For those of your concerned about danger of overheating due to the large window, as a brewer on the tour was, I checked with my compass and it's north facing.

They have a brewhouse from Kaspar Schulz dating from 1986, which has a stripping vessel after the whirlpool with -7 mbar air pressure to remove DMS. They get 7% evaporation after 55 minutes in the kettle. Whirlpooling and stripping is 25 minutes, though maybe an hour by the time it's emptied. The wheat beers don't go through the stripper.

The lauter tun

There was a Brewer's Star on the wall, which refers to alchemical or superstitious nonsense not religious nonsense.

Another group of three vessels, another CIP set? Not this time, these are hop dosing vessels.

The old brewhouse was built in 1934.

Checking my notes and pictures we seem to have missed out fermentation and maturation entirely at this brewery, but did spend a lot of time in their flash bottling hall.

It will do 18,000 bottles an hour.

It of course includes a robot from Profipack.

They have reusable bottles so there's a bottle washer:

A crate washer:

Label debris from the bottle washer:

Bottles:

Crates:

We stopped for refreshments after the tour in the bräustüberl (brewery tap). I can't say I was disappointed the grey sausages ran out before I got to them, the brown sausages I had were fine. They looked like frankfurters to me, but having once caused outrage in Italy by incorrectly calling something salami I'm not taking any chances.

There was a good range of beers. I was trying to pace myself but still managed to sample a few. The black beer (schwarzmann) was the winner for me.

A visit to Ottakringer brewery

2026-05-16T18:04:20.248+01:00

There was bad timing with the latest CIBD study tour. It came the week after a distilled spirits conference in Edinburgh so my liver was a bit tender before we even started. But it takes more than that to stop me, so I girded my loins and set off to Austria.

First stop on the study tour was Ottakringer brewery in Vienna. It was founded in 1837. Annoyingly the annual volume is missing from my notes but I think it was 400,000hl.

Cylindro-conical fermenters

This study tour had sponsorship from Profipack, which saved on the pennies but mean having one of their robots seemed to be a feature all breweries we visited had in common. The one at Ottakringer shifted kegs.

Packaging at Ottakringer

A gas boiler provides the steam for the brewhouse, which had the look of an old family brewery about it. Which is exactly what it is. It's not fully automated having one brewer working per shift.

The deionise their water and lower the mash pH using sauergut (wort acidified by lactic acid bacteria). Brews take 7-8 hours and use 7-8 tonnes of malt grist, which gets split between two lauter tuns. Wheat is used in the unfiltered beers, to get a bit of chill haze in them so they look the part. Most brews are around 14°P, slightly above sales gravity.

A buffer tank after the lauters.

The mash profile is like an infusion mash at 65°C, rising to 75°C for when it goes to the lautering. The lauters have a capacity of 300hl each, the kettle 600hl. The kettle has a Stromboli boiler.

The Mash Conversion Vessel is inside one of the old copper vessels on the higher level. I think it's stainless inside an old vessel though.

There's a mash kettle at the back, but they won't be needing that with infusion mashes.

There are three shifts of one person in the fermentation block, which dates from 1980. Only lager yeast is used, which they propogate, only using it for 3-5 generations.

There are 14 large tanks and 10 smaller. Unitanks aren't used, beer goes from fermentation to lagering tanks where it spents three weeks to two months. Fermentation is mainly at 12°C. There is a warm rest in lagering, before going to -1°C. I would guess that's before getting to the cross flow filter. I heard the diacetyl specification is <0.1 but if that's ppm it would make it the high level of 100ppb so maybe it's <0.01 or 10ppb. I certainly didn't taste any diacetyl when we got to the all important sampling part.

A visit to Lost and Grounded brewery

2026-04-24T18:08:12.341+01:00

I dithered a bit over this CIBD event. Bristol's a bit of a trek and the schedule was Lost and Grounded 1-5pm, then Unwin's brewery 5-10pm, which looked like an excessive amount of time to spend in breweries if you're driving. I looked into getting trains, which would have allowed me to make better use of my drinking time, but they're slow and expensive. I wanted to catch up with people though, and it's always good to visit breweries, so I decided I'd just have to drive.

Founded in 2016 Lost and Grounded are approaching their tenth anniversary. Output is currently 20,000hl per year, with brewing taking place five days a week.

Taking the German brewing tradition as their main inspiration, they still have the original 25hl Steinecker brewhouse from Krones. The base malt is pilsner malt from Dingeman's in Belgium. We were told Belgian and German maltsters have a different philosophy to British. Which I think means they under modify malt instead of doing their job properly.

Steinecker brewhouse

It certainly looks that way with the stepped mash temperatures of 52, 62, 67, 72 and 78°C (these steps are for: protein breakdown, beta amylase, alpha amylase, ensuring all starch degraded, denaturing enzymes and speeding up wort separation). The can do decoction mashing as well, but this has to be controlled manually so they only do it for specials. The malt is delivered to an external 30t silo and crushed by a two roller mill.

With the addition of a holding tank after the lauter tun three years ago they've expanded from a three vessel system (mash conversion vessel, lauter tun, whirlpool/kettle with an external wort boiler) to four. The extra vessel means the start the next brew after less than three hours, compared to waiting four hours and 15 minutes before they had it. The first brew starting automatically at 2am (the brewer gets in at 6am!) they can do six brews a day.

Heat recovery from kettle

The boil is intense for the first 20 minutes, eased off for 20 minutes, and then intense again for 20 minutes, which reduces the thermal load on the wort so less aldehydes are produced. I'm not really up on wort thermal load so I'll have to look into this. The have vapour heat recovery from the kettle stack via a plate heat exchanger, which provides 500L of hot water for the hot liquor tank. The use three hop additions. For the lagers Magnum as a bittering hop at the start of the boil, Perle in the middle and late 5kg of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh for the Keller Pils and 2.5kg Tettnang for the Helles. The kellelr pils has a a bitterness of 30 IBU. Classic American hops like Citra are used for the US style beers. It did make me feel old hearing Citra described as a classic hop! For the IPAs there is a hop addition at whirlpooling.

Lactobacillus tank

In keeping with their Germanic ways they adjust mash pH for the lagers with 50L of a culture of Lactobacillus grown in wort. This adds more character than just using commercial acid, which is what brewers not bound by the German beer purity law normally do. And indeed it's what Lost and Grounded do for their ales, as the IBC of Murphy's AMS (a mixture of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid) opposite the culture tank testified.

The Lactobacillus is grown in a tank held at 48°C and 5hl of wort goes from pH 5.5 to 3 in 36 hours. It's a very hop sensitive strain, and is used on the hot side of the brewery, so they've not had any problems with it infecting beer. Surprisingly though they have had problems with wild yeast infecting the Lactobacillus culture. I'd never heard of yeast growing at that high a temperature before. They have been able to solve yeast infections by heating the tank to 54°C and recirculating for 20 minutes.

Two head keg filler

About 85% of beer goes into keg. The keg filler is only two head to is run pretty constantly during working hours, with beers going into 30 and 50L kegs.

Snazzy keg lifter

They have a snazzy keg lifter that can also invert kegs.

For small pack they have a 10 head linear can filler, though only five of the heads were being used in the packaging run when we were there.

Canning line

The fermenting vessels go up to 150hl. Lagers are pitched at 8°C, midway through fermentation temperature is raised to 10°C and they have a warm rest at 13°C to help get rid of diacetyl. Total fermentation time is 10 days.

Lots of tanks

The beers are then cooled to 4°C for five days before the temperature is dropped to 0°C. The helles is largered for three weeks and the keller pils for four. We tasted the keller pils at two weeks and four weeks maturation and the older beer had lost the harsh, sulphur note of the younger version. Yeast is dumped every other day during lagering. For dry hopped ales 50% of the dry hopping comes from Spectrum hop extract, which doesn't cause hop creep (when enzymes in hops cause further fermentation by breaking down dextrins to sugars). Their beers are not filtered.

The house lager yeast strain is W34/70. They propagate in house, but skip the lab stage so start with a 500ml culture from White Labs in Copenhagen going into 5hl of wort. The lag phase is 12-16 hours then cell numbers double every three hours, starting at 2-3 million cells per ml and reaching 100 million cells per ml after 36 hours. For lagers the 5hl is pitched into 25hl before stepping up to 100hl, for ales 5hl goes into 50hl. Propagation brewer are blended into 125hl of normal brews.

Yeast propagation vessel

The have CO2 recovery equipment from Dalum they got second hand from Brixton brewery after Heineken closed it. As it was only a few years ago the first small brewery in Britain got CO2 recovery I was surprised there are four breweries just in Bristol with Dalum equipment. Lost and Grounded still have to buy in some of their CO2 but deliveries are now every six to eight weeks instead of every two. The hope to get more CO2 recovery in the future, but having CO2 delivered also provides a useful backup.

Dalum CO2 recovery

They aim to make lagers with character, not too refined but not rustic either. As someone who seldom suckles at the devil's drainpipe out of choice I have to say their lagers are decent. Drinkers of the heathen persuasion could do far worse.

After Lost and Grounded I went on to Unwin's, which looked like it was part of Bristol's take on the Bermondsey beer mile. The whole driving thing didn't really go with spending more time in a bar though so I didn't stay long.

Unwin's brewery

No, it's not a Yorkshire square

2026-02-16T09:00:00.003+00:00

It's a tradition, or an old charter, or something that wheneven someone who knows a bit about beer sees an open square fermenter they ask "is that a Yorkshire square?". The answer is nearly always, no.

Open fermenters are the exception not the rule nowadays so it's usually only in old breweries that you see them. The fact that a fermenter is open and not round does not make it a Yorkshire square though. Actual Yorkshire squares are considerably stranger. If you can see a fish tail it might be a Yorkshire square, but only if the vessel is divided by a deck too.

Diagram of a Yorkshire square fermenter

Cross sectional diagram of a Yorkshire square

They were originally made of stone, and the ones I saw at Sam Smith's were made of slate. They have been made of stainless steel though, which I think they had at Tetley's, and there are stainless round ones (Yorkshire rounds!) at Black Sheep.

They have a lower level separated from the upper level by a deck. The deck has pipes known as organ pipes running down to the lower level, and a large opening with a flange around it. They were mainly, but not exclusively, used in the north of England. I guess the clue's in the name with that one!

An empty Yorkshire square showing the upper deck

They were developed to work with highly flocculent ale yeasts, i.e. yeasts that rapidly clump together and rise to the top of the fermenter.

Yorkshire squares being roused at Sam Smith's

The lower compartment of Yorkshire squares is filled with wort and yeast, and so is an inch deep layer on the upper deck. During fermentation yeast rises through the large opening and beer drains back into the lower compartment through the organ pipes.

Yorkshire square in use

Rousing is used to keep the highly flocculent yeast in contact with the beer - the beer is recirculated by pumping it through the fish tail on to the upper deck. At the end of fermentation the yeast can be skimmed from the deck.

As well as being a way of fermenting with, and collecting, highly flocculent yeast Yorkshire squares are also said to make beers with a fuller palate than beers fermented more conventionally.

I'll end on a video one being roused:

Guinness CAN organise a piss up in a brewery

2026-02-08T13:28:00.001+00:00

Shortly before I went round Guinness' Open Gate brewery in London The Guardian did a hatchet job on it. For some reason restaurant critics put the boot in more than any other type of reviewer. Though as the only restaurant reviews I ever read are when a scathing one goes viral on social media I guess the reason why is pretty clear.

I was going to the brewery as part of the CIBD Southern section's AGM, but first we had to do the business part to do at Diageo's HQ.

It's as posh as a posh thing, but at the bar Guinness is only £2.80 a pint. Don't get ideas though, you have to get past security to get in. And anyway, at CIBD events I normally pay nought pounds and nought pence per pint so it seemed a bit steep to me.

Before business, Steve Wilkinson, who's worked with and for Guinness, went through a fascinating history of Guinness and his own part in it.

There was a bit of juicy gossip that the Guinness family had wanted to sell the company before Ernest Saunders became the chief executive. But they hadn't controlled enough shares to make it happen. I had read previously that after the takeover of The Distillers Company their shares were diluted to the point they no longer had a seat on the board. They're still immensely wealthy though, the current head of the family lives on an estate over 35 square miles in size. That's 2.6% of Suffolk. I don't think my house is even 2.6% of the bleedin' road!

After business and little light networking (two pints worth for me) we hoofed it over to the Open Gate Brewery. There's quite a lot to it. The parts we saw were the porter's loft, and of course the brewery.

The brewery is enter AND exit via the gift shop. The brewery is a marketing exercise more than anything else. But hey, marketing budgets are massive!

The 15hl/9bbl brewery from BrauKon had all the bells and whistles. It's four vessel brewing system, but we didn't get near it, so no pictures of the inside of the lauter. They mostly use pellets but have a hop back too if they want to use whole hops. They can also move mash backward and forwards so can do decoction if they want to spend eight hours mashing instead of one. They're currently brewing twice a day, but could double that.

Brewing vessels at the back there, yeast tanks behind the brewer

There's a four vessel CIP (Clean In Place) set, and an effluent plant for controlling temperature and balancing pH.

CIP vessels behind the brewers

They have 4 x 15hl, 6 x 30hl and 4x60hl fermenting vessels. Though there is a core range of beers the focus is on innovation and the brewers have a lot of freedom in deciding what is brewed.

There's a flash pasteuriser (11-15 pasteurisation units), a lenticular filter, a centrifuge and buffer tanks. So unsurprisingly there's no beer served as god intended, it's currently all kegged and will be canned once the canning line is commissioned.

The centrifuge

There's reverse osmosis treatment for the brewing liquor, with mains water blended back in and salts added as required.

They're currently using the Guinness ale and lager yeasts, but they can propagate yeast from slants if they want to.

Despite the brewery being large for its modest brewlength it was more a stand and point than a tour, and we didn't stay there long.

Then it was up the escalator and back to the gift shop. The building used to be an H&M and they've kept the escalators. First time I've seen them in a brewery!

After the brewery tour it was time to see if Guinness could organise a piss up in a brewery. And the answer was of course, yes.

I don't know what deal the CIBD had done with Diageo or if we were subsidised, but we paid a tenner. This gave us pie and mash, which was nice, and a pint of Guinness (brewed in Dublin). I was keen to have somethng brewed on site though, so I had a hazy IPA next, which was nice enough. I think the ABV was a bit hefty, as on top of the three pints of Guinness I'd had I was defintely feeling pissed by the time I'd fininished it. So there you have it.

The Guardian journo's main complaint seemed to be that you had to take a lift to the toilets. Which did make me wonder what she'd think if she ever went to a Wetherspoons. The building we were in had the fourth floor button in the lift labelled toilets. But the first floor bar we were in had a toilet, so I had no trouble getting rid of the beer I'd rented without using the lift.

I don't know how my experience and tour at the Open Gate Brewery compared to the ones for you pay for, but I enjoyed myself. Which I guess blows my chance of becoming a restaurant critic.

A visit to White Peak distillery

2026-01-30T09:00:00.001+00:00

My first visit of the year with the CIBD was to White Peak distillery. It was a bit of a trek for me, but it made sense as it fitted in with a trip to the Lake District, and in a strange twist of fate I work more with spirits than beer nowadays.

The distillery was founded in 2016 and is currently making 50,000 litres of pure alchol (LPA) per year. That sounded quite a lot to me at first, until I remembered it was litres not hectolitres. They're not actually making pure alcohol, but LPA is the commonly used measurement for distillers. They make whisky, rum and gin but it's defintintely whisky they're really interested in. The neutral spirit (which is almost pure alcohol) for the gin is bougth in.

If they're filling their whisky casks at 63.5% ABV (the standard in Scotland) it works out around 394 American Standard Barrels (approx 200L) a year.

Dave Symes, the distillery manager, gin still back left

They use a mixture of distilling malt and peat malt to make lightly peated whiskies. Mostly they get malt from Crips but they have got some local barley malted at Warminster, and they have also used Chevallier malt.

They mash in a semi-lauter tun at 63.5°C for only 20 minutes. As they're making a whisky wash there's no boil and starch conversion carries on after mashing as enzymes, including limit dextrinase, are still active.

Semi-lauter tun because the rakes don't go up and down

They usually recirculate the wort for 20 minutes to give a clear wort, as less cereal notes in the spirit means more fruity notes can come through. When using the locally grown barley they got malted they ran the rakes continuously instead as they wanted as much from the cereal as possible!

They make 3000L of wort at 1.060 which ferments down to 0.997 giving an ABV of 8%. Dried MG+ distillers yeast and brewer's yeast from Thornbridge is used. Fermentation lasts a week, which is long for whisky, but it allows more lactic acid to grow which leads to more esters and fruity flavours in the sprit. Fermentation starts at 19°C but it can rise to as high as 42°C! The small amount of rum they make from cane sugar and molasses takes ten weeks to ferment. They have also done some unpitched "spontaneous" fermentations (started at 25°C) which also takes weeks.

Washback (fermenting vessel)\

The 3000L wash (fermented wort) still is heated by steam coils, and the condenser is cooled with river water. Distllation continiues until the spirit collected is 2% ABV, giving 1000L of low wines at 24% ABV. The wash still lyne arm slopes slightly downwards towards the condenser, in the spirt still it slopes 3° upwards, increasing reflux back to the still for re-distillation.

Wash still

In the spirt still heads (foreshots) are collected for the first 15 minutes of good flow and the body (middle cut) is collected until the ABV drops to 67%. After that the tails (feints) are collected, and the heads and tails go in to the next distillation. The spirit still starts boiling at 77°C and ends at 85°C.

Spirit safe

350Litres of new make spirit are collected at 72% abv, which is used to make light, fruity whiskies. Long maturation increases ester levels and gives more fruitiness. Maturation takes place in a range of casks, including: bourbon, red wine, port, maderia, some sherry and some virgin oak. Wine casks are shaved, toasted and recharred. They also use some finishing casks, such as Amarone wine casks, for the last nine to 12 months. The sizes include 125L quarter casks, 200L American Standard Barrels, 235L wine barriques and 500L butts.

Initally they used to fill at 63.5% ABV but have moved to filing bourbon casks at 60% and wine casks at 70%. To give you an idea of what they want to get from the casks, more wood components are soluble in water than alcohol so lower ABV is considered better for getting flavour from casks.

Most casks are stacked on their side, three high, like in a traditional Scottish dunnage warehouse (though without the dirt floor). Some are stacked upright on pallets though.

Then it was on to the tasting. As I was driving it's for the best it was small measures, something I don't normally approve of at CIBD events.

We had Caduro (1/3 bourbon casks, 2/3 STR wine barriques) at 46.8% ABV, Bourbon Barrel at 53.4% ABV and Necessary Evil at 51.3% ABV, aged in Thornbridge beer casks. Then it was on to Langdale for me.

The next day: OP at the ODG

Jubel: my part in their victory

2026-01-23T10:00:00.003+00:00

It's always interesting to see beers you've been involved with out in the wild. So the rise of Jubel is something I've been keeping an eye on. I had a very minor role in the beer right at its start, back when I was working at the now sadly closed Campden BRI brewing site in Nutfield.

Draft Jubel: it's bigger than Punk IPA you know

We occasionally got people wanting to launch a drink brand getting in touch, I suspect after finding us through google. We had a pilot brewery there, along with extensive laboratory facilities and a sensory department, so were well set up for New Product Development. Some of the enquiries were non-starters, but I always invited people down to discuss them, as talking to people about brewing is easy and enjoyable work, and you'd get a buffet lunch laid on if you had visitors.

The people behind Jubel were a couple of posh boys who'd liked a peach flavoured beer they'd drunk on a skiing holiday, and wanted to launch something similar over here. We discussed how this might be done, and how we could help, and off they went.

Slightly unusually, they later asked if they could come back to discuss some more things. I didn't see what else could be added with another chat, but free sandwiches are free sandwiches, so I arranged another meeting. I think only one of them came this time, and as I'd suspected I was blatantly being used as a unpaid consultant. I was a busy man, so much as I like burbling on about beer I didn't feel I could justify any more of this. I proposed doing a trial brew for them, and mentioned that you can get innovation vouchers that mean the government pays for your research. I even filled the forms in for them. Sure enough, we got accepted, but then we hit the catch. You have to pay the money up front and then claim it back.

There's only a month to pay too, so it was a bit irritating when it all went quiet from Jubel at that point. I tried chasing them up but got no response and the voucher expired. This made it more than a bit irritating when I got an email from them a few months later asking if they could visit again as they had more questions. "You can sod off" I thought as I hit delete. That was the last contact I had with Jubel, and so forever gone was my chance to claim I was the first person to brew Britain's fourth biggest selling draught craft beer.

I believe they got brewing trials done at Nottingham, and it was produced for a while at Hepworths, the brewery I'd recommended. I did end up working at Hepworths myself later, but Jubel had moved on by then.

Golden Pints 2025

2025-12-31T09:00:00.014+00:00

Golden Pint, texture like sun...

Think I may have used that song to start a previous Golden Pints post, but I saw The Stranglers for the first time in ages this year so what the hell.

I'm also ditching some of the categories I can't be bothered with, as the Golden Pints are a bit more free form nowadays compared to when it started.

Best UK Cask Beer:

This year the stand out pint was Theakston's Old Peculier at the Old Dungeon Ghyll.

OP at the ODG

The pub is very handily placed for a pint after a hard day's heroism high on the hills and sometimes cask beer can reach highs that other lesser forms of beer dispense cannot. Speaking of which:

Best Overseas Cask Beer:

Landlord in Germany! Yes! YES!

Was it better than any of the keg beers I had at Drinktec or elsewhere in Munich? Too right it was!

Best UK Keg Beer:

Can't be doing with this. Yes, I drink it when I have to but I just prefer cask.

Best UK Bottled Beer:

Let's go with Tynt Meadow English Trappist Ale.

Best UK Canned Beer:

My favourite sister got me Siren's breakfast stout, which I had for breakfast on xmas day. Bit sweet for my taste but a breakfast beer was fun, even if I'm not going to be making a habit of it.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:

St Bernadus Abt 12.

Best Overall Beer:

It'll have to be the OP

Best UK Brewery:

Thurstons Horsell Gold is by far the beer I've drunk the most of, but that Theaksons OP was great so them.

Best Overseas Brewery:

Timothy Taylors ;-)

Pub/Bar of the Year:

Still The Crown of course.

Beer Festival of the Year:

Got to be the last stand of the GBBF. The trek to Birmingham was more expense and effort for me, but I got home fine so it was no big deal. Sadly the turn out was no big deal either so the festival made a big financial loss, to the extent CAMRA have even sent out begging letters and laid off staff. The festival was much as ever for me though, met up with loads of people and drank far too much beer.

Supermarket of the Year:

Hmmm...mostly been Waitrose for me when I've needed supermarket beer. The ceiling on premium bottled ale prices may have been finally broken but they do at times have Fuller's Golden Pride going at a bargain price, and ESB is often in a multi-buy discount.

Independent Retailer of the Year:

Cobbetts is still the place I got to if I need something special.

Best Beer Book or Magazine:

I haven't yet read, and don't even have a copy of this year's winner. Anther break from tradition there. Sadly there's no fooling Santa and he knew I'd been too naughty to put Martyn Cornell's Porter and Stout: A Complete History in my stocking. But I know when I do get the book it will be great.

Martyn had a positive influence on my life, as it was his questioning details of hop history I'd put on my blog that made me write my magnum opus on the the Farnham Whitebine hop as a properly referenced article, which the Brewery History Society (BHS) then published in their journal. I then joined the committee of the BHS, and became a member of the British Guild of Beer Writers (BGBW), though which I've met many wonderful people. And I'm glad to say I as able to give at least something back as he came on a trip to the Czech republic I organised for the BHS, and got to tick off the Pilsner Urquell brewery amongst others.

Picture from the BHS Czech trip

His meticulous research has done much to dispel myths about beer history and replace it with actual facts. Much as I enjoyed some of the myths I still prefer facts. At times he did seem to get into pointless arguments, and perhaps unsurprisingly when I pointed out he'd got something wrong he wasn't having it. Though he did of course have a (fallacious) reference to support his claim. I last saw him at last year's BGBW dinner where he didn't look well, and he was not best pleased he didn't win anything. But I'm glad I was able to tell him how much I valued his writing compared to one of the writers that had! I'll miss him.

Best Beer Blog or Website:

Boak and Bailey's are the winner, their weekly roundup of beer writing is still a welcome fixture every Saturday morning and I enjoy their other posts too.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer ~~Twitterer~~ Blueskyer

Most of beer twitter seems to have migrated to bluesky so fuck that fascist prick's site. I've been impressed by Beer Today, so them.

The end of a heresy

2025-11-23T19:40:00.001+00:00

I find christian heresies fascinating and can happily spend time clicking through wikipedia reading about them. Those early christians really knew how to have major spats over obscure points. More modern times have brought such delights as sedevacantism, the gloriously bonkers belief of some traditionalists that the pope is in fact not a catholic. I am unaware of their views on whether bears shit in woods.

But when a heresiarch founded a protestant beer sect called the Campaign for Really Good Beer (CAMRGB) in opposition to our mother church I was not filled with pleasure that I get from say, reading about nestorianism. I must confess that in my arrogance I had come dangerously close to advocating for something similar to the CAMRGB in the early days of beer blogging. Back then whinging about CAMRA was something we all enjoyed...until I realised some of the people were not whinging about the home team but were in fact the opposition. I repented my sins then, and despite my occasional confusion over theological matters and distaste for modernism, my faith has not been shaken.

The CAMRGB was explicitly named with the aim of annoying CAMRA, which seemed a bit of a dick move. It never looked like an actual organisation to me, though Boak and Bailey included it in one of their books as they thought it was. The CAMRGB blog was just one bloke reviewing beers as far as I could tell, though it also offered free membership. I never took up the offer, so can't say what you got out of it but it can't have been much. There were some CAMRGB t-shirts, and I suspect I even saw the antipope wearing one once...at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival. I recall then craft crusader Matthew Curtis wore a CAMRGB t-shirt there:

"I had hoped that by wearing that t-shirt I might have found myself having some interesting conversations with CAMRA members but none of them seemed to either notice or care."

And I see there were some CAMRGB "twissups", pub crawls arranged over twitter.

But crafties have never really got grassroots organisation going. Craft beer has always looked like a petty bourgeois movement to me, i.e. a movement of small business owners. Craft beer fans did at times provide unpaid labour for craft breweries' beer festivals, and I think there are one or two non-CAMRA beer festivals organised by craft beer fans. But I not really sure what crafties could campaign for. When craft beer was new and exciting sales and availability rose rapidly so it didn't really need campaigners. In fact, crafties would at times get upset when craft beers appeared in supermarkets. Some of the upset may have come from the same source as that of indie music fans when a band signs to a major label, but part of it was definitely concern that cheaper supermarket craft beer would mean margins would fall for their brewery owner mates. See, told you it was a petty bourgeois movement!

Having something to be against can be just as important as being for something, which was certainly part of the CAMRGB's reason for existence. But the appeal of campaigning against the Campaign for Real Ale must be limited.

CAMRA went thought a slow and tedious process to placate the ~~heathens~~ craft keg fans, and craft beer now seems spent as a revolutionary force. Craft beer is widely available in supermarkets, but a lot of it is made by multinationals that bought out some of the darlings of the craft beer world. Not so much to get excited about, or campaign for, there.

Doing a bit of heresy snooping I saw the CAMRGB has vanished from the internet. I don't know when it went but but it looks like it fizzled out years ago. Matthew Curtis now writes regularly for CAMRA.

Mind your Ps and Qs

2025-11-14T17:30:00.000+00:00

I have been delighted to see the return of beer served in quart measures, albeit in plastic skiffs at concert venues.

Quart of beer sighted in the wild

But sadly the word quart has become archaic in British English, and there was some confusion when I asked for two pints at the bar. Did I want two separate pints or two pints in one container? If we bring back the work quart this wouldn't be a problem.

The quarts were advertised by a sign behind the bar encouraging people to "Upgrade to a two pint cup".

The sign behind the bar

My humble suggestion is that they could start the re-education by simply adding "(quart)" to the sign after "two pint". I'm sure people would soon catch on, after all we've managed to get by a random mix of metric and imperial measurements for decades.

Time to put the dog down?

2025-10-31T09:00:00.001+00:00

The rise and fall of craft beer in Britain has been an interesting, and at times irritating, thing to watch. The same could be said about Brewdog, the company that made the most noise, and money, out of it.

They seem to be circling the drain now though. A recently spate of bad news started with the (rather belated) report that they'd lost 2000 on trade accounts. Losing out to Heineken's Beavertown I suspect, as Heineken also own thousands of pubs. And speaking of pubs Brewdog have also closed a lot of theirs recently.

The still shift a lot of beer in supermarkets, but they're not getting premium prices for their beers there. In fact, they're cheaper than the other multinational corporations offerings. I recently saw Guinness' premium product at £8.75 for a four pack...

... compared to Brewdog's stout at £4.50.

Price per litre was £3.92 for the Guinness and £2.56 for Brewdog. There was a less premium version of Guinness there too, which like the Brewdog stout was going for a sale price, but even that was £3.41.

There's a similar big gap when Brewdog undercut Molson Coors' Doom Bar, the original at £5.30 a litre...

... whereas Brewdog's coastal 4.3% ABV amber ale is £3.55 a litre. The craft beer revolution was all about making a knock off version of Doom Bar, right?

And even when Brewdog aren't undercutting the companies they claim to despise they're still the budget option in the craft section, their beers being the discounted ones:

Now it is possible I've just looked when it's Brewdog's turn in the discount cycle, but I still can't see any way this is good for them. They're still making losses and have stagnant sales. Brewdog are by far the most successful of the British craft breweries but they're still small compared to the really big breweries. Competing with them for the tiny margins of supermarket discounting is not going to solve their problems any time soon.

How San Miguel closed Banks's brewery

2025-09-08T17:48:00.000+01:00

Not all multinational corporations are created equal. The world's largest brewing corporation, ABInBev, towers above the others, having bought the second largest, SABMiller, in 2016. It's over twice the size of its closest competitor, Heineken, and nearly five times the size of Carlsberg. The latter is relevant to the sad closure of Banks's brewery.

A mash tun a Banks's

Eleven years ago the two companies with rights to San Miguel beer, San Miguel Brewery (Philippines) and Mahou San Miguel (Spain) signed a cooperation agreement to promote their international businesses and position San Miguel as a global brand. To further its growth they had already partnered with Carlsberg to contract brew it in Britain, and it was a large part of the output of the Northampton brewery.

But for a brand with global ambitions partnering with the world's biggest brewery seems like an obvious match. I have heard San Miguel eyes Brazil as a great opportunity and certainly ABInBev is very strong there from its AmBev division, whereas Carlsberg doesn't have much presence at all in the Americas. So, as what I believe is part of a global realignment, last year San Miguel moved its contract brewing in the UK from Carlsberg to ABInBev.

Round open fermenters at Banks's

Losing the San Miguel contract left Carlsberg in the UK, which owned one giant factory and two large regional breweries, with a lot of surplus capacity. The giant factory wasn't going to go and Marston's has the small pack facilities, which left Banks's. So a contract change for a Spain and Philippines based international lager brand closed a 150 year old brewery in Wolverhampton that didn't even brew it.

Casks at Banks's

I am dubious about supporting independent breweries over multinationals as a matter of principle. I've come across far too many scumbags in small breweries for that. But had Banks's not been part of a multinational it would still be with us.

The closure of every historic brewery pains me. I love going round them and modern breweries just don't compare. That ABInBev in the UK has stretched its capacity to deal with the production of San Miguel has probably saved Camden Town brewery from closure, but I find that small consolation.

I'm forever blowing bubbles

2025-08-29T22:02:00.000+01:00

A recent study on beer foam introduced a lot of people to a strange type of science: brewing research by non-brewers. I first came across this genre in a previous job when a study into brewing with bread crumbs was published. The draft had some right bollocks in it about how increasing fermentation temperature increases alcohol yield, which I was uncharitably blunt about. Looking at the paper I see it still made it into the published version so I guess they didn't take it to heart, or indeed listen to a bleedin' word I said.

With a limited understanding of the brewing process it is likely that confusion will creep in, or indeed stomp in and trample all over your work. This has certainly happened with the foam paper, as the chorus of derision from brewers about how many times beers are fermented testified. The authors' misunderstanding about single, double and triple fermentation seems to have obscured the very obvious difference in the beers they studied: some are bottle conditioned, so undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle, and some are not.

In the world of brewing those that have been seduced by Satan commonly defend the diabolical practice of using extraneous CO2 to carbonate beer by saying that CO2 is CO2 wherever it comes from. Now I'm sure that a CO2 molecule coming from a gas bottle is the same as a CO2 molecule produced as god intended by fermentation in the container from which the beer is served. But this is not to say the bubbles are the same and surely even Satan's minions will have noticed that foam you get from bottle conditioned beers is different from the foam you get from artificially carbonated beers.

Surprisingly, seeing as generally winemakers are a primitive bunch, I did once read a very interesting book on bubbles in champagne. For those not aware, champagne is bottle conditioned, with the yeast subsequently removed by riddling and disgorgement. If I remember rightly, the author put the fine bubbles of champagne down to nucleation sites from yeast fragments. It would be good to have more research into bubbles in beer, as it would provide a rare instance when science backs up the faithful.

The authors of the beer foam paper appear to be competent scientists, even if they are ignorant when it comes to brewing. They certainly seem to know a lot about the science of bubbles (Marangoni stresses is a new one to me!). And they correctly discuss Lipid Transfer Protein 1 as playing a key role in stabilising foam, though this nothing new to brewers. In fact last year I went to a talk by "The pope of foam" Charlie Bamforth where he discussed the role of Lipid Transfer Protein and Protein Z (40 kDa) in foam stability. He said research had shown this was not due to any particular property of the proteins, but rather that the partial denaturing of them during the boil (not during secondary fermentation!) exposed their hydrophobic interior which helps stabilise bubbles.

My humble suggestion for people not from a brewing background planning to publish research into beer is to talk to a technical brewer first. It would be beneficial to all.

Bar and music matching

2025-08-11T09:00:00.002+01:00

Pete Brown has been banging the drum of beer and music matching for some time, and has even written a book about it. I must admit it's not something I've given much thought to, though at a push I suppose I could have a go. Obviously anything by Madonna goes with Landlord, The Selecter pairs with cask beer and I certainly hope that when I'm next drinking at Farnham Beerex I'll be listening to Wet Leg:

The person who drums for Wet Leg

I was however about a two minute walk away from bar and music matching recently. So near but yet so far!

Going to a gig in South London I checked out how close the venue is to The Shirker's Rest, and was delighted so see it's a a stone's throw away. Set up by the people behind the Deserter blog, the clue's in the name with The Shirker's Rest and it wears it's commitment to avoiding work on its sleeve.

Hardy perennial anarchist anti-work poster

I was going to see MDC, an old hardcore punk band, who I think it's fair to say also wear their heart on their sleeve. They gained a brief flicker of fame when Green Day used their "No Trump, No KKK, No fascist USA!" slogan at an awards show. MDC did of course play the song it came from as well as other old classics, but stayed contemporary by wishing ill on the ICE police and IDF. It was when they got to I hate work I realised they should really have been playing in The Shirker's Rest. And they practiced what they preached too, only playing a 45 minute set! To be fair there had been three support bands, but I'd skipped them for the joys of a bar with a healthy attitude to work.