St Peters Cream Stout

I have had this St Peters Cream Stout sitting in my fridge for a few weeks and decided it was time to try it. I had it with some smoked cheddar but I don't think it matched very well.
It pours a very dark, thick shade of black with a tan head, the head though does not last very long.
It smells sweat, a sort of treacle and prune mix.
It also tastes of prunes, little toffee and I think some butterscotch.
A very interesting stout this, and one worthy of having again. It reminds me of fruit cake and more a desert style stout than a main course kind of stout.
This is the only St Peter's beer I have tried so I am curious to try some others in the range.

Blonde Beggar (Blonde Ale) & What Ales Ye? (IPA) from the keg

This weekend I finished off Applewheat & Chocawheat so I replaced the kegs. First up was Blonde Beggar and after a foamy start I am quite happy with it. It came in very handy for the day of Rugby yesterday. It is a very nice Blonde Ale, very similar to Blarney Blonde but I think a little more citrusy. My Wife loves it so that is what really matters.

Today I poured my first What Ales Ye? IPA. This one I based loosely on the wonderful Galway Hooker IPA hence the glass. I think it tastes pretty similar but I can't be sure without trying them side by side. There is plenty of grapefruit and the hop aroma/flavour is very much cascade but I can just about pick out the English bittering hops as well. There is just the slightest hint of Orange marmalade off it.

Both beers could do with some more cold conditioning. They should clear a little and develop more character but that can happen alongside me drinking them. The Applewheat certainly developed its flavour over time and was much better in the keg than in the bottle.

The Forgotten Brews: Cloaked Stranger (Stout) & What Ales Ye? (APA) (brew# 14 & 17)

As you may have noticed, I post all my recipies on my blog, as well as on the ICB website's recipe section. It appears I have been lax though, I had thought I had forgotten to post the recipe of my fantastic stout Cloaked Stranger which I brewed back in June (23rd) and of which I have two or three bottles left to see how they age. Looking through my blog though it appears I put the recipe on to a post about a taste test of Beggars Belief. So I did not post a specific post about it making it harder for someone to find the recipe. Also I tend to post my brew# on my post titles and Cloaked Stranger never got one assigned so it is being called Brew#17 now, even though it is technically brew# 9 and my first All Grain recipe.

More recently on November 1st I brewed an American style IPA called What Ales Ye? You may remember that my last attempt at an IPA was Beggars Belief. For some reason I decided to dry hop with East Kent Goldings instead of Cascade. The result was astonishing. The initial beer smelled and tasted like grapefruit and had all the American style IPA notes I would expect but on transferring to secondary and dry hopping with English hops, I ended up with an English style pale ale. It was absolutely lovely but not what I had wanted.

This time around I dry hopped with cascade, though I do like English pale ales so I used some English hops to bitter and the aroma hops are American. This is about ready to be transferred in to the Kegerator for drinking.

My Chocolate Dunkel is all gone now so the other night I replaced it with Blonde Beggar. It is not as conditioned as it could be but it will get better over the next week or so in the fridge. I imagine the same will be true of What Ales Ye?. This will be put in the fridge today I reckon because there can only be another pint or two of the Applewheat left.

Meanwhile my last two beers from last week, The Haka & Dubbel Whammy are still in primary. The Dubbel being a high gravity beer still has some activity but The Haka is probably finished, though will stay in the primary for at least another week.

So below are the recipes for both beers.
For stout/coffee lovers I recommend the Cloaked Stranger, it is like an espresso.

What Ales Ye?

14-B American IPA

Author: Reuben Gray

Size: 23.2 L

Efficiency: 75.0%

Attenuation: 75.0%

Calories: 104.37 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.032 (1.056 - 1.075)

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Terminal Gravity: 1.008 (1.010 - 1.018)

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Color: 9.6 (11.82 - 29.55)

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Alcohol: 3.09% (5.5% - 7.5%)

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Bitterness: 28.9 (40.0 - 70.0)

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Ingredients:

3000 g Pearl Pale Ale Malt

100 g Crystal Malt

235 g CaraPils Malt (brupaks)

30 g East Kent Goldings (4.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min

30 g Fuggle (4.1%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min

10 g Saaz (2.1%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

10 g Cascade (7.6%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min

10 g Cascade (7.6%) - added dry to secondary fermenter

1 ea Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05

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Cloaked Stranger Stout

13-A Dry Stout

Author: Reuben Gray (Saruman)

Size: 20.04 L

Efficiency: 75.0%

Attenuation: 75.0%

Calories: 193.1 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.058 (1.036 - 1.050)

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Terminal Gravity: 1.014 (1.007 - 1.011)

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Color: 81.03 (49.25 - 78.8)

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Alcohol: 5.71% (4.0% - 5.0%)

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Bitterness: 65.0 (30.0 - 45.0)

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Ingredients:

3500 g Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt

300 g Crystal Malt

500 g CaraPils Malt (brupaks)

238 g Chocolate Malt (pale)

400 g Black Malt

500.0 g Roasted Barley

50 g First Gold (6.2%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min

45 g Fuggle (4.1%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min

25 g Challenger (6.5%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

1 ea WYeast 1084 Irish Ale

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Some beers on brewday

I have two Harvest type Ales to drink for this post. First is Goose Island Harvest Ale. It pours a clear amber and smells of Cascade and alcohol. The taste is dominated by cascade derived grapefruit. It is citrusy, sweet and a little bitter but there is more grain flavour and aroma than bitterness. A very tasty beer indeed.


Next up is a Harvest style beer from England. Batemans combined harvest multi-grain beer. It contains 4 types of grain: Malted Oats, Rye, Wheat & Barley. This poured a clear amber and smelled of Muesli . It tasted a bit like Muesli with water (not milk). I found it quite sweet and there was a lot going on here. In fact there was so much going on with the contrasting grain flavour that I could not pick anything out. It was a very interesting beer and I enjoyed it immensely but I could not pick any one characteristic out.


My love of Brooklyn beers increases with this Brown Ale. It smells like Chocolate fudge and the chocolate continues in the taste along with burnt caramel. It was quite creamy with a sour liquorice finish. A little coffee in there for good measure. It is quite bitter with very little sweetness. It borders on a porter to me.


Timothy Taylor Landlord is an iconic cask ale. I had heard that it is not as good in the bottle so I could not resist. I have had this on cask at the Hilden beer festival but I need a lot more of it, or better a side by side to tell if one version is better than the other. In the bottle I found it tasted like burnt caramel, burnt coffee, Lots of fruit of which Prune stood out. Also a citrus finish and it was pretty oaky. An absolute classic of a beer in bottle, whether it is better in cask is a debate for another time.


I do not have to much to say about this Augustiner Weissbier except that is has the usual German Weiss characteristics but with the addition of being a little sour and not as sweet as many others. It was however perfectly lovely weissbier that I liked and gave to my wife to drink after a few mouthfuls and she really liked it. I will have to get some more of this as to my mind, this is one of the better weissbiers I have had. I would rather a Schneider original but this has earned a place in my heart as well.



All of the previous beers I had yesterday during brewday and today, which is also brewday I had this Great Divide Hercules Double IPA. This is my first outing with Great Divide and has left me wanting more. What a fabulous drink this was, an absolute pleasure from start to finish.
It pours a dark brown with lots of sediment.
Smells of sweet malt & Caramel, alcohol, fruit in the shape of prunes.
The taste starts off sweet then the bitterness comes through with cascade being very evident. Next comes the alcohol which at over 9% is pretty evident and then some fruit. The sweetness is always there. It feels very thick and chewy in the mouth.
While it is a very strong beer in terms of alcohol, it is also pretty drinkable. I treated it as a sipper and nurtured it for an hour or so but I could have had it a lot faster and had a bunch more if I had actually had any more bottles. I decided to follow this with another strong beer and sipped a Fullers 1845 which is just about finished now an hour later. My own beer, The Belgian Dubbel below started the 60 minute boil 10 minutes ago. Time for more beer, I think some Applewheat from the kegerator is in order as it is nice and light.

A Dubbel brew weekend (brew#15 & 16)

Yesterday I decided to brew. I had some Rakau hops I wanted to try out so I did up a recipe in the American IPA style but with these hops as the only hops in the beer. Rakau hops are from New Zealand and are quite new. From what I have read they are delicate but good all rounders and useful for both bittering and aroma. They are delicate however and can be overpowered by other hops so it would have been pointless adding in some cascade as all I would get is cascade. They are supposed to impart a very fruity taste to the beer, tropical fruit in fact. There is talk of passion fruit, stonefruit and apricot or peaches in some cases. I know from the smell and taste of the raw hops that this must be the case. I decided to use S33 yeast to add a little kick to it, instead of a plainer US04 or US05. It started bubbling away withing a couple of hours and is still bubbling quite nicely this afternoon. The recipe is below.

This morning I decided to brew again and if you have not guessed it from the title of the post yet, it is a Belgian style Dubbel I am going for this time. I have never done one of these and it required a lot of different grains that I have never had to use before. The grain bill is the highest I have used in a single 25L batch. I had a lot of fun tasting the new grains as I was weighing them and I love the Belgian Biscuit malt. I tried some acid malt yesterday and that fizzed in my mouth and was lots of fun. I bought Belgian Candy sugar as well and I am using it, although I was told by a far more experienced brewer (sbillings from ICB) that it is unnecessary but is something American homebrewers seem to think is. Candy sugar in Belgium for instance is a liquid and not solid lumps of sugar and seemingly not many Belgian brewers even use it. I do not know the truth of that but either way, I bought it so I will use it.

So here I am sitting at my bar in the kitchen, eating some lovely soup my wife made me and brewing beer for the second time this weekend. Life is good, especially so since I am off to Belgium on December 3rd. We will see how my Dubbel compares to what I drink in Belgium.

The Haka

10-A American Pale Ale
Author: Reuben

Size: 24.16 L
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 142.34 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.043 (1.045 - 1.060)
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Terminal Gravity: 1.011 (1.010 - 1.015)
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Color: 14.17 (9.85 - 27.58)
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Alcohol: 4.21% (4.5% - 6.2%)
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Bitterness: 36.1 (30.0 - 45.0)
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Ingredients:

3000 g Pearl Pale Ale Malt
1000 g Pilsner Malt
230 g Acid Malt
200 g Rye Malt
150 g Crystal Malt
200 g Munich Malt
20 g Rakau (12.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
7 g Rakau (12.0%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min
20 g Rakau (12.0%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
1 ea Fermentis S-33 SafBrew S-33

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Dubbel Whammy

18-B Belgian Dubbel
Author: Reuben

Size: 25.12 L
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 241.95 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.072 (1.062 - 1.075)
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Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (1.008 - 1.018)
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Color: 27.46 (19.7 - 33.49)
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Alcohol: 7.15% (6.0% - 7.6%)
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Bitterness: 17.7 (15.0 - 25.0)
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Ingredients:

3500 g Pearl Pale Ale Malt
1500 g Pilsner Malt
360 g Belgian Biscuit
900 g Belgian Aromatic
500 g Diastatic Amber Malt
200 g Rye Malt
150 g Munich Malt
150 g Acid Malt
650 g Candi Sugar Clear
15 g Northern Brewer-Hallertau Hersbruck (10.9%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
10 g Saaz (2.1%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
10 g Saaz (2.1%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
1 ea White Labs WLP530 Abbey Ale

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You have to love American beer

On my latest trip to Drinkstore I got some American beer which I normally do not buy because it is expensive for a little 330ml bottle. I do however love American beer, which is what got me in to Craft beer in the first place so I decided to give in and buy some of the ones I have not had before. I started off with Goose Island 312 urban wheat. I am not sure what I was expecting here, perhaps to just find myself with a bog standard wheat beer but what I got blew the low expectations out of the water. On the nose there are the usual wheat, yeast and banana tones but perhaps a little floral too. So far I have no reason to believe this will be anything other than a weisse in a little bottle. Then however I took a mouthful and this huge grin just spread across my face. I may have said "wow" to my wife but if not, I was thinking it. Yes there was the usual weisse characteristics I would expect but also there was so much more. It was citrusy and hoppy! This was a combination of an APA and a weisse beer. It was pure heaven and I will certainly be getting some more.


After this I tried some oakwood smoked mature cheddar cheese and decided a good stout would go with it so I luckily had a few to decide from and I decided upon Belfast Black. This is a fantastic stout full of everything you could want from a stout. Roasted coffee, some dark chocolate. It was a little sour and a little thin but very delicious. I would have O'Hara's over this any day but it went very well with the smoked cheese.



Back to the US and to a new brewery for me. Flying dog seems to me to be one of the, if not the brewery that Brewdog modelled themselves on. The advertising is very in your face and funky with fun names for their beer, such as this Flying Dog in heat wheat. I did not think this would hold up to the Goose Island from earlier and it did not, however it was a fantastic wheat beer. It was peppery, packed full of a nice spiciness and an obvious candy undertone. This is a bit of a quaffer.

I finished off the night with a Brooklyn beer. I love their Brooklyn lager and the hopfen weisse collaboration with Schneider not to mention the black chocolate stout so I had high hopes. I was not let down in an way here, well except the little 330ml bottle. The East India Pale Ale was was like a party in my mouth with a lovely bitter hoppy bite but also quite sweet so is a very balanced beer with a long bitter aftertaste. It is not overly complex but as something to just have a case of on hand for downing, this is the perfect beer.

Cask ale is dangerous stuff indeed

I don't mean that it is dangerous to sit there and drink it all day, though that is also true.
On Saturday night I met up with The Beer Nut and some other ICB members for some drinks at the Bull and Castle. I was informed by the manager Geoff that prior to my arrival, a load of English CAMRA members had been in and drunk the whole cask of O'Haras stout. Ah well I thought, there is plenty of other beer to chose from including the wonderful O'Haras red on tap. I had never had this on tap and I think it is actually better than the bottle, though I need to do a side by side to tell for sure.

Anyway after a great night and a nice rest, though still up at 9am feeling a little dehydrated but otherwise perfectly fine myself and my wife went back in to Dublin. I had planned on continuing my pub crawl and reviewing Dublin pubs for a future book I am doing with the help of VelkyAl who has done one on Prague but I simply could not be bothered this afternoon once I got to Pravda to find it now closes Sunday through Tuesday. So I went to the Porterhouse to get some more pictures as I had lost the ones I had taken before. After a pint of TSB on cask I went back to The Bull & Castle for lunch and then to watch the Ireland V Australia Rugby match. Geoff said there is still no cask on, to which I booed. While waiting for my food Geoff came back over and got me to come up to take a look at the cask. The bad quality Iphone picture you see above is what I saw. He had tapped a Goods Store IPA cask at 6pm last night and it was still gushing out of the top due to the fact it is dry hopped so the pressure inside is immense. He had it covered with a towel but when he lifted the towel there was a gush of beer out of the top which would probably hit the ceiling if not for the towel. There have been previous incidents with gushing casks.

So for those who are impatient when you get to the Bull and Castle and find there is no cask, just remember poor Geoff who takes his life in his hands every time he taps a cask. He could lose an eye with the pressure the beer can shoot out at.

The Irish craft beer scene is marching along nicely

Currently today on the Island of Ireland, there are 13 active microbreweries, well 11 actually and I better explain that.
In the Republic we have:
Active
1. Galway Hooker Brewing company
2. The Porterhouse Brewing company
3. Franciscan Well (brewpub but sells their beer to other pubs)
4. Carlow Brewing company
5. Messrs Maguire

Inactive
6. Biddy Early - closed
7. Celtic Brewing company - Currently focusing on the beer import and wholesale market and not brewing

Misc. Árainn Mhór Brewing Company Irish beer in name but its produced in Belgium and so does not count. The website is down at the time of writing this so I can not confirm if they are still in business.
Strangford Lough Brewing Company - I am not sure this counts as I believe their beer is brewed under license in the US and not in Ireland at all.

In Northern Ireland we have:
8. Hilden brewery
9. Whitewater brewery
10. Clanconnel brewery (run by an ICB member)


However the craft beer movement has gained momentum in recent months and three more micro breweries are now on the horizon.

11 White Gypsy recently opened its doors, but beer is not yet in full circulation although I believe it might be available in local pubs in Tipperary (where it is based). The brewer is Cuilan Loughnane from Messrs Maguire.

Also in the pipeline are two microbreweries set up by Irish craft brewer members.

12. Trouble Brewing has got their brewery set up now and will be starting to brew very soon.
13. Dungarvan Brewing company is also setting up and hope to produce bottle conditioned beer.

There is another brewpub in Dublin called Tramco but I have not included them in the list of microbreweries as their beers are only available at their pub and they do not brew it themselves, it is brewed by Messrs for the most part.

14. Beoir Chorca Duibhne - Kerry has two brew pubs run by the one person, again beer is only available in his own pubs. On the up side, it is Cask ale he produces and I found it rather tasty at Septemberfest.
15. In Galway there is the recent Oslo brewpub. Beer is only available in their pub at present.

So 11 active microbreweries and two that do not count as all they actually do is import beer made for them in Belgium or the US. Along with Two that are opening up some time next year.

So the news is very good on the craft brew scene, I know a lot of people in other countries might look at this list in horror because it is so small, well the fact is that Ireland like many European countries used to have local breweries in every town but certain massive breweries cornered the market and forced them all to close. The same has happened worldwide but Ireland is so small that the death of the local Irish breweries was complete and it was not until the mid 90's when Carlow brew co set up that we had the re-emergence of the Irish craft beer scene.

There is a lot working against micro breweries. Cost is a major one along with paperwork, it is just not as easy to set up shop in Ireland as it is in many other countries.
Population preference is another thing as Irish are very brand loyal. A Guinness drinker would rarely venture in to Murphy's or Beamish let alone a micro brewed stout such as O' Haras (Carlow). Don't get me started on Lager drinkers and Light beer drinkers just should just not drink beer and stick to water instead.

Working in our favour though is the increasing number of people who are getting sick of bad quality mass produced beer and want something with a little more flavour and come across Irish craft beer.

There is an increasing number of publicans who are introducing Irish craft beer to the line up as well. Most recently The County bar in Lucan has Galway hooker and the Carlow beers on tap, they are at a very good price too so seem to be selling well.

Long may the craft beer revolution continue.

**If I am missing anything or have given the wrong info, I'm sure someone will let me know so I can amend it**

OK just an update to this, thanks to BeerNut for letting me know who I missed. I have added in that there are 11 active breweries.
There are also some Cider producers such as:

Llewellyn's
Carson's
Mac's

The fox finally found the hen

I have been seeing the TV ads for Old Speckled Hen recently and to be honest, I did not even know it was a beer ad for a long time as I thought it was a Scotch. I recently found a bottle of the stuff in my old mans off license (The old stand) in Mullingar. One bottle left so I bought it along with some other beer. It pours a crystal clear amber and the nose is very malty and fruity.
In the mouth I got some vanilla, perhaps toffee, a little peppery and quite creamy feeling. It also had an obvious copper aftertaste. I have to say I enjoyed this beer. Whether or not I got a bottle of beer in prime condition is hard to say as there was no best before date on the bottle, the bottle was quite dusty, it was the last one and of course the old stand has a habit of having out of date beer and of course there is the clear bottle. Still, its a good beer and I would like to try it again from a fresher source perhaps.

So what is a Grand Cru? I ask myself and I have no Idea as this is the first time I had ever had one. This is Rodenbach Grand Cru and if this was any example, it appears a Grand cru is similar to a lambic, at least in taste as it is not a lambic at all. It smells of brown sugar and sherbet, tastes like vinegar and sherbet so is basically as sour as a lambic but not as harsh. I found myself enjoying this and I think that like a lambic, this is an acquired taste. I will look out for some more of this. Sour though is the one word I can use to describe it but there is a lot more going on I could not pick out. After a few more I am sure will appreciate it more.


I am pretty sure I had Primator Dark while in Prague last time. Al over on fuggled can confirm that though. Anyway to the beer. It smells like it is malty and sweet and it also tastes malty and sweet. There is a little chocolate and some sort of fruit, like prunes to me but could easily be some other dried fruit. It is quite tasty and far sweeter than you would expect from a dark beer.

A bit of a rogue

Originally I was given 1 this Rogue Chocolate stout to use for my talk/tasting at the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival but I ran out of time so in the end I drank it at home. The smell is of a very sweet toffee with dark chocolate however none of this is evident when you taste it. It is very bitter dark chocolate and a strong roast coffee. It was pretty intense and I enjoyed it immensely. It was 69 IBU so bitterness was high on the agenda.
This beer is probably not for everyone, even stout drinkers might think it too bitter but it is worth a try.
I would be very interested to try other Rogue beers now.

By the way, the talk went very well after the initial problem with the volume on the PA system being too low. There were some issues pouring beer for 75+ people and getting it out to them but but at the end of the night I think people were very happy with it and hopefully gained some insight about brewing beer and also alternatives to macro brewed beer from the micro brewery represented on the night (Hilden with Mollys choc stout) and a beer importer (who used to run a microbrewery) who brought along Young's Double chocolate stout.
I had arranged a competition for the night in the form of a free raffle and the prizes were a home brew starter kit and a Hilden ale sack (4 beers).

I got to talk to a number of Americans at the end of the night and they loved my Cloaked stranger stout so I gave each (four) of them a bottle each to take home.


1 Thanks Richard (from New York) for the beer.

Brunehaut Organic Belgian beers

I picked up three bottles of this Brunehaut beer in Drinkstore (among other beer) recently. The Amber was quite tasty with notes of brown sugar, sherbet and floral hops. It tasted very malty and I got some caramel and figs. It was 6.5% so not a quaffer but you could drink quite a few without realising how much alcohol they contain.

Next up was the Blonde and it was not so impressive. It tasted pretty much like a light lager without the crystal clear yellow you get with lagers, so it was like a cloudy light lager with a hint of lemon. Perfectly fine beer but not much in it that I find appealing in a beer so I would not drink it again myself.


The last in the range is the wit and it was another disappointment for me. I got lemon in this as opposed to orange one might expect. I got some spicy notes, probably from the coriander. It was more like a pilsner to me than a normal wit and also quite hoppy. I found it a little bland and watery but as a thirst quencher I believe this is quite good as it has a nice dry finish.


Another beer I picked up was this HSB from George Gale, however these days it is brewed by Fullers so I would expect a good beer and I was not disappointed. I got raisins on the nose and it tasted like a malty prune juice bitter. It was quite lovely actually.

Lastly I tried this Sierra Nevada Kellerweis. It had notes of vanilla and banana. It was spicy and a little more bitter than the average wheat beer I thought. I liked it quite a lot as did my wife. Another top beer from the powerhouse of US craft beer that is Sierra Nevada.