In the Brew Room this Week

     This week has seen everything we have brewing either racked off or bottled. So quite a lot of washing up and sterilising, the less glamorous side of brewing but probably the most important. As we are encouraging the yeast to grow, giving them the ideal conditions to do so ie warmth, food and a medium we need to ensure that only those we want are there. Now ideally any work with the yeast or an open fermenter should be carried out in a clean dust / hair free environment to avoid contamination but that's just not possible outside a lab so we make sure that what we can control we do. All our tools are cleaned and sanitised before use, as are the fermenters and bottles to give our brews the best chance of being contamination free.

     First up this week the second batch of medium Mead has been acid balanced and bottled, a nice and easy job as it's only a 4.5L batch. This freed up the fermenter for the next step of the Blueberry Melomel, which involved 500gm of blueberries being soaked in 500ml of boiling water to sanitise them and adding a 1/4 teaspoon of pectinese. The Sweet Mead base was then racked off onto this.

     This then freed up the fermenter for the other Sweet Mead to be racked off, this will help it to clear more and probably be ready for bottling with in the next few weeks.

     The Hoptastic we had brewing in the fridge has been bottled, not without it's own dramas, with the end of the bottling wand deciding to come off in a bottle with the end result of sticky beer being squirted over half the brew room. ( the clean up for this took longer than the actual bottling ) This beer is back in the fridge for some more lagering.

     The Bilge Pump Saison has been tested and we are very happy with the results, very different to the last Saison this one has a reserved taste and even though the brewing temp got up to about 26 - 27*c it has a very reserved ester taste and packs an almighty punch, coming in at a sneaky 7% alcohol you don't notice it straight away, there's no nasty alcohol taste just a gentle warming of the mouth when your about half way through the bottle. This beer should just get better and better.

     We will also be brewing and APA ( American Pale Ale ) this week but it will get a post of it's own so watch out for it soon.

Cheers and Beers