Y-Brew 0x04 – Dark Elder Saison

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This post is an account of my fourth fumbling attempt to get into homebrew – yielding a drinkable, dark, rich beer; albeit a slightly odd one. Otherwise this is a not-very-exciting log of the creation of Y-Brew 0x04 – Dark Elder Saison. It’s actually a bit messed up and when I next try a similar thing I’ll be doing it completely differently!

Cooper's Stout Tin

OK, only the 4th brew in – but went a bit “silly” for this one back in July. The nucleus for this is a can of Cooper’s “Stout” (yes, from the local Tesco-megahypermart I’m afraid) – but I mixed it up big time. Steeped grains, weird yeast, and an odd ingredient. I bought a vial of liquid White Labs Saison II yeast with this crazy thing in mind. The poor beasties were cultured up once in sugar for an elderflower fizz, then some of them split off this culture were then cultured up in dark DME and put in the fridge for a couple of weeks until 16:00 Saturday July 20th, when I started it culturing again in another 1.5l ~1040 batch of dark DME. By 16:00 the next day I had a thick layer of yeasty beasties ready to play…

The weekend before doing the brew Kat had harvested some elderflowers and made a tea, which has been sitting in the fridge for a week steeping. (I was away on my sudden, unexpected, EBBC trip.) The tea had a particularly “herbal tea”-ish flavour with a distinct but not really punchy elderflower note. There was about 800ml of this tea. A “secret ingredient”?

This was my first attempt to brew using some real malts and grains using a “steeped grain” method to get colour and flavour, with the fermentables coming from the kit-tin and some added dark DME to boost the ABV of the final beer. This is also the first time I’ve tried using a brew-calculator, specifically the Brewer’s Friend website – so the full “recipe” can be found here: Dark Elder Saison. With the recipe devised I used, for the first time, the services of The Malt Miller to buy my grains, next day delivery – no fussing about.

Brew Ingredients

Brew Ingredients

For steeping the grains I brought 4 litres of water to 71°C and dumped in 200g chocolate malt (rich toasty flavours and dark colour), 200g roast barley (dry toasty flavours and dark colour), 200g flaked wheat (theoretically for head retention), and 150g caravienne malt (a little caramel richness). After 20 minutes this was at 61°C so I blasted it with a little heat to get to 67°C – not sure if there was any point to this really. TBH I’m not really sure about the wisdom of combining this set of added grains with the “kit” tin, I was just bored with kits but still had the tin lying around! It got another 25 minutes steeping and was then put through a chinois (fancy strainer) into my 10 litre stock pot. The grains were then rinsed with 2 litres of 70°C water, then an extra litre of cold tap water. This process – steeping – is just to obtain flavour and colour from the grain, it isn’t a proper brewing “mash” that yields fermentable sugars.

"Hopback"

“Hopback”

The stock pot was topped up with water to 10 litres and 1.7KG of DME added along with 700g of dark muscovado sugar. As the wort heated a 1.7kg can of Cooper’s Stout was added – yes, too early and shouldn’t have boiled as it is a pre-hopped extract? Oh well. As soon as a rolling boil was reached 20g of whole-hop Simcoe (14.1%AA) was added. Then 25 minutes later 20g of Sorachi Ace (13.2%AA) was added. I like Sorachi Ace, the idea was that I think it would compliment the elderflower flavour. Five more minutes and “flame out”. The hot wort was poured through a “hopback” (chinois again) containing 37.5g of Sorachi Ace (to use up what I had left from the bag), the hops were additionally rinsed into the fermenter with 2 litres of cold tap water. All of this went into a 25l fermenter along with the 800ml of elderflower “tea” (hm, probably should have gone in at end of boil to “sterilise”).

Icy Bath

Icy Bath

The fermenter was plunged into an icy cold bath and took about an hour to come down to 20°C, the OG was, amazingly, as-desired at 1074. The yeast culture (with excess liquid poured off) was pitched… cap and airlock fitted… and the beer was left to sit “blubbing” away…

… three months later, “blubbing” was still happening but at an incredibly infrequent rate. I’d never intended to leave the beer this long of course, but work and life just got in the way so there it sat for all this time. Finally I’d had time to gather and clean enough bottles to finish this bugger off. I siphoned the beer out of fermenter into another vessel that has a convenient tap and filling wand for bottling. I had 19 litres of beer at FG of 1014 – just over 7% – tasting pretty good too. Rich, quite banana-y alas, though I don’t mind that. The brew was primed with enough brown sugar to give about 2 vols of CO2, bottled, and then popped into the airing cupboard (about 22°C) for 4 weeks. Now… what do we have…

Dark Elder Saison

Dark Elder Saison

…verdict: not an easy-drinker. A 500ml bottle is a little hard going for me, but Kat and I can share and enjoy one. This is good, it is a sipping beer not a quaffing beer. The summer ferment peaked above 25°C and I guess this is where some strong banana-y esters have come from, these have cleared a little since bottling but are still distinctly present. A simple description for the beer would be: dark-bitter-chocolate-coated-overripe-banana. Not really what I was aiming for! And those elderflowers? No sign of them really, so the beer hasn’t come out true to name or intention. Next year I hope to revisit the recipe but trying for a cooler temperature fermentation. Definitely without the Cooper’s kit tin, and maybe by then I’ll be all-grain. As for the temperature, it is about time I tried making myself one of these “brew fridge” setups… if only I had space for it. As it stands I have a beer that we’ll be happy with over the winter. In fact it seems to be getting better with time. Or maybe it’s just “growing on me”. Next up… the saison yeast lives on! I rescued and “washed” it and knocked up another brew using something “different” from the back yard. Y-Brew 0x05 is on its way.

Colin joins the Dark Side

Colin joins the Dark Side

PintShop – a preview

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PintShop


View PintShop in a larger map

I have long bemoaned the lack of a good “craft beer” venue in Cambridge. The terminology is contentious – but what the hell, “craft” is a movement and a vibe and essentially undefinable. Maybe I should pointlessly write about what “craft” means to me some time, or maybe not. Anyway – what it isn’t is something we have in Cambridge. Perhaps until now…

Do not read me wrong – we have some excellent pubs serving excellent beer, some have even made a foray into having a bit of a “craft” note to their beer lineup. But none of them are “craft” at their core – and they don’t need to be, I love them as they are. I don’t want the places we have to change – I want something new brought into the mix. It is an ineffable feel combining time and place that embodies my experience of craft. Cambridge’s collective diverse-beer loving hearts were raised as the news of a “Cambridge Tap” some time ago, but those plans were never to come to fruition resulting in a collective *sigh*. We have had some small hopes for other venues that turned out to be … not quite right, though respectable in their own ways.  I’m not besmirching our local breweries either – I feel some of them would be right at home in the context of a craft venue, which in my mind should be accepting of good beer regardless of style or form.


View PintShop in a larger map

Now, however – an introduction to PintShop. It appears to me that we may finally have our first modern/new-wave/craft beer venue in Cambridge. On the 31st of October Kat, Colin, and myself attended the PintShop pre-opening gig. Free beer and nibbles – who’d turn that down? The site is central, in a foodie area that lacks a decent pub. Neighbours include your typical McHighstreet chain joints: Zizi, Carluccio’s, Jamie’s plus some local gems like the Cambridge Chop House and of course the retail Mecca of the McGrandArcade. Nearly all places I have no interest in, this is a part of town I walk through to get to places, rarely do I linger. Also nearby are excellent arts venues – the Corn Exchange and Arts Theatre – places I sadly don’t know well, but feel I should make the time to know better. In essence: location is spot-on, a much needed indy addition to the food & drink options in the immediate vicinity.

There are decent pubs, by my reckoning, within a 10 minute walk: The Mill, The Maypole, and The Cambridge Brew House. All good places that were on my North Herts CAMRA Cambridge Pub Ramble. Check that map, note the void that is the town centre. PintShop would have fit into this neatly between the Mill and the Maypole.

So – location is all very well, what about the venue. Compared to any other drinking venue I frequent it is a right rabbit warren, and I love it. Walk in the front door and you’re greeted by a passage – signposted forward for dining and left for the bar. At the far end of the passage: stairs. Turn left into the bar, of course. Decoration is minimalist and chunky, exposed black electrics on pale shades of cream and green, varnished parquetry flooring. A crackled enamel bar top with industrial looking bronze keg fonts and a prominent beer-list blackboard with all the details you need to decide on a drink. The fonts themselves have no place for badges – I don’t know if this’ll be a permanent arrangement, but if it is I think I like it. (Breweries with snazzy branding might be less enamoured – and customers may be initially befuddled.) Cask hand-pumps are not immediately in evidence as they are tucked around the other side of a pillar in a snug little back-bar area that I can see myself taking up residence in. Anyway, cask junkies need not fret – both styles of beer dispense are well catered for.

Cask Bar

Cask Bar

Keg Fonts

Keg Fonts

Has Bean sighting!

Has Bean sighting!

Moving through the cask bar and out of the bar area, turning left down the passage takes you to a dining area on the right, a retro-chic layout of tables and seating, opposite all this a service room. Look and feel is consistent throughout – stark black lines of electrical fittings standing out. The service area houses shiny stainless dumb-waiter hatches, appliances and coffee paraphernalia, bags of HasBean in evidence – hurrah! The passage continues past these and hooks a right to lead to the rear patio. A newly paved space surrounded by high building walls with sky overhead. I hope there are some summer barbecue plans in mind.

Heading back inside to those stairs – these lead up to toilets, another dining room at the front, and a well equipped kitchen at the rear (entirely too relaxed to feel right, but I’m sure that won’t be the case come opening). The central stair area highlights the wonderful feature of the core curved wall that separates the bar from the passage. You have to see it really – I like building features like this, I love this wall. They’ve been really lucky with the site, there’s loads of detail and history on the The Real Cambridge and Pints & Pubs blogs. Some of the atmosphere of the place is captured in Matthew Harris’s flicker photo set from the night.

In reality food and beer have yet to really prove themselves at PintShop – this is a pre-view not a re-view. That said, the sample we have had is promising. They have stolen some prime kitchen talent from Cambridge establishments (the talent came to them I hear, such is the excitement and expectation for what PintShop is bringing to town). We had a quick talk from the butchers supplying PintShop, Barker Brothers of Shelford, who are very much “proper” in my estimation. It was great to have both the old and the new generations of family butchers talking to us – refreshing to see the young generation picking up the trade as well in an era where butchers we know all too often close with nobody to take up the reins. We tried samples of porterhouse steak, excellent flavour, and a cut (the name of which escapes my mind) which was perfectly and surprisingly juicy and tender. These I tried as well as rabbit pasty in a melt-in-the-mouth crust, all good indicators. The fennel seeded pork scratchings are made on-site – dry and crisp, but in need of more fennel and salt for me! A dusting of salt and ground fennel seeds perhaps? But fennel is a love/hate flavour so perhaps subtle is for the better. Maybe have a salt-shaker of fennel-salt so you can go wild if desired?

Porterhouse

Porterhouse

Pork Scratchings

Pork Scratchings

Beer Board

Beer Board

BEER! Pre-opening line-up was: Keg: Adnams Dry Hop Lager, Kernel Table Beer, Rogue Dead Guy (a timely Halloween pick); Cask: Oakham Asylum, Adnams Old Ale, Marble Pint. We had pints of Pint in PintShop – haha! What this list needs is a few more hops… this will come, I know PintShop have received entire pallets of Magic Rock and Buxton – for starters. Personally, I was mostly very happy with pints of Table Beer – light, clean, zesty and not too intoxicating. I had a bit of every beer on offer, all good – though some not to my taste. As with the food – time is required before a real judgement can be determined, but based on this sample: looking good. I simply cannot wait to see that beer-board fully populated. My mouth waters at the thought. Gin is also a highlight, with a list of 40 gins at launch I think I heard. We also attended a session upstairs where Cambridge Distillery (the UK’s only “nano-distillery”?) told us of their modus operandi and successes. A shot, or maybe a double, of science – the challenge of using peas as a botanical for PintShop’s “P” gin didn’t faze them, having already had to use ants (yes, ants) for Noma. We tasted a pure pea distillate – and now I really want one of their 2 litre vacuum distillation units in my kitchen.

Cambridge Gin - nano-distillery

Cambridge Gin – nano-distillery

I haven’t had much of a chance to chat with Rich and Benny, the guys behind PintShop – but they certainly seem to have the experience and motivation to get this right (by my own definition of “right”). I spoke to some of the staff who all seem overjoyed to be working there. One, newly moved to Cambridge, exhibited the same pride and joy at this opportunity that I see in most of the BrewDog bar staff I meet. They’re really getting into it. The pre-opening gig had a hugely positive vibe.

Colin enjoying PintShop pints.

Colin enjoying PintShop pints.

So – that’s where I stand. Positive. Having watched the build-up of PintShop – a truely massive task that has taken the guys 3 years to reach doors-open – I’m pleased to see things taking shape in “the right” direction. I think PintShop is going to tick the “craft beer” box for me and be a much-needed addition to the Cambridge beer scene, adding a missing piece to the beer diversity puzzle. It isn’t all about the beer however – and it is going to be interesting to see how the food element, which will be very important to the business, mixes in with the beer side. I hope it all gets along famously. I see a good bit of potential for my favourite subjects here too: beer with food, and beer in food.

PintShop opens on the 4th of November… see you at the bar?

One small attack on: “why anyone bothers to make their own bread” … etc

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A “comment” on this rather fine review of a book by @BoakAndBailey… my comment, as is my wont, got out of hand and off-topic – reading far too much into just a handful of decontextualised words. Not wanting to spam Boak & Bailey’s poor blog with 500 700 words of my drivel I have put it in my own purgatory instead. The topic of this post is a book called “Cooked” by a chap called Michael Pollan – I haven’t read the book, but might, it sounds interesting but also mildly irritating.

One small attack random walk on: “why anyone bothers to make their own bread” given that “versions of products that can be bought at the shops for next to nothing”.

Does this show that this book is quite relevant to the author’s location, culture, and time? Which is fine – it is his book! :) I just presume he is living in one of the great American Alt-Culture Enclaves where buying the alternatives from the shops isn’t like saying a Ford Ka is an alternative to a John Deere tractor.

In many places we make our own bread because it is the only reasonable way to get good bread. Much the same can be said of beer, cheese, and even pickles. The details can differ greatly from place to place – here and now in the UK good beer & good cheese are not hard to find. Good bread is still the preserve of hipster/yuppie areas where people have the interest to, and cash to, support an “artisan baker” (not very common). And pickles… does the UK even know what pickling is!? (That stuff pubs sell that taste of nothing but cheap malt-flavoured vinegar ain’t it.) I’ve not started doing any pickling yet – but it is on our “todo” list, Kat’s especially interested in Japanese style pickles that you really can’t just buy in a shop.

Back in Australia much the same can be said – but cheese can be added as something that people started making themselves just because there wasn’t anything good on the market. (This hasn’t improved much – and alas for the most part unpasteurised cheese is still illegal!) The Aus/NZ homebrew scene, too, is strong because you can’t just wander into the pub and get a good variety of beer at a reasonable price – especially outside of city centres. My sister’s other half, a beer drinker but not a beer nerd (I think), homebrews and even has a keg setup in his house. Sure, it’s got “cool factor” – but it also makes for a handy supply of good fresh beer which will be tastier than most of mass market stuff in the bottle-shop. OK, I can’t speak for his beer – but making a decent little pale ale that tastes better than EB can’t be hard, extract and some hops would be fine. (This is changing rapidly back home of course, craft-beer a-go-go.)

Continuing on that beer line at another tangent… the chaps at Yeastie Boys attribute NZs amazing craft beer scene to their vibrant homebrew scene. Australia probably has a bit of this too – but lags. I wonder if the lack of such a scene here has held back UK brewing just as much as people sometimes claim CAMRA has. (Yes, people homebrew here – but it doesn’t seem to have the intensity & penetration that it does in the US or antipodean region. Maybe beer price is part of this – beer is expensive back home.)

Anyway… my point is people I know mainly make-their-own because they believe they can have it better that way. Often they can. I fully agree that there can an element of “adult play” sometimes. But… if I have a good source of sourdough, I stop making it. Making bread takes a good chunk of time and I can use that time to try making homebrew instead. ;) One day I hope my homebrew might be as good as my bread!

We seem to be living in a time when the base level of food and drink is on the up in the UK – it’s catching up to home now (ooo… trolling? When I moved here UK beer was better than Australian – I’ll give you that. Oh, and the cheese. And charcuterie. Anyway… moving on.) I think a part of the improvement here (and back home) is driven by these people who’re looking at what they can get in their local supermarket/pub/etc and thinking to themselves “surely there can be better”. They’re doing it themselves, spreading the word, and some are moving on to doing it professionally too. We’re all better off for it.

#IMBC2013

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IMBC LogoSecond year, second killer @IndyManBeerCon.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about actual beers. But… but… it’s a *beer* festival?! Well, yeah, I drank quite a few and a majority of them have some vague notes on Untappd. Mostly not-at-all-run-of-the-mill stuff, not a single drainpour – although one came close! (Not “bad” just “cloyingly sweet”.) The biggest problem with IMBC is the sheer number of beers I *want* to try, an impossible number. With your typical beer festival I am lucky to get a shortlist of 10 beers that just slightly excite me. So… a change of pace is required – which really adds to the charm of the festival for me. I’m not trying to work through a list, or bag beers, I’m hangin’.  Plus what use are my notes on one-off beers and a list of barely accessible “top picks”? The beer was, in general, bloody outstanding. Moving on…

Kat with Table

Even more fun was to be had simply basking in the glow of the still-developing UK beer scene – hanging out with folk passionate about what they drink and what they brew… hanging out until around 4AM on two nights! 8-O It took me 4 days to get back to a normal sleeping pattern. Our IMBC started before IMBC did – getting up at 4AM on Wednesday October 9th to drive up to Manchester and help out with the event set-up from 10AM that day. Hotel check-in done, and then a night in Port Street Beer House. A bit of a killer pre-IMBC day for us – but believe it or not we consider all this a “holiday” from our sitting-on-our-arse-all-day worklives. The 8 tokens each we got for the effort are a happy bonus.

Colin doubling up!From then on it was all drinkin’! Yeah! Back in March buying “full fat” tickets seemed a grand idea… we’d not really properly pondered the crazy Thu/Fri/Sat/Sun full-on festival experience of this though. Thursday was a steady session in the baths with an “early” night to bed in the hotel at about half past the witching hour. Friday was when the party really started, an afternoon BrewDog Mancs lunch then a grand and social IMBC evening – finishing up the night in Port Street with brewing scene stars then back in the Travelodge foyer with many of them at about 4AM. Adoring beer groupies, us. After this we slowed up… paced ourselves, enjoyed the beer, people, food, and information flow. The hangover on Saturday “lite” session helped with the slow-down ;) and a mid-session “nanna nap” helped with the evening winding back up to speed…. despite a pledge not to, on Saturday night we “accidentally” ended up in BrewDog Mancs with beerstars again… c’est la vie!

Lovibonds JeffDuring the event we attended a few talks – mainly for the sake of the beer. Not really, well – not entirely ;) In no particular order: It was excellent hearing @Lovibonds “I HATE PowerPoint” Jeff tell us of how “Sour Grapes” came about. From fortuitous twist of fate that, literally, seeded regular commercial production of sour beer. During the session we tasted the Henley Gold, the Sour Grapes, and the Barrel Aged Sour Grapes – three distinctly different beers with the same origin, it is the Henley Gold that becomes the sour by some sort of dark brewer magic.

RedWillow Toby "dry chipotles" a beer.

Whilst RedWillow @TobyMcKenzie‘s “IBU” talk was a non-starter for technical reasons, we ended up with a very entertaining talk on beer diversity instead – from live “dry chipotle-ing” a stout, through one of the best oyster stouts I’ve ever had, to a truly weird and wrong homebrew – Toby exposing his roots. Ballsy place to finish given that his 2012 IMBC “yeast” talk was pretty much a “here’s some not very nice beer, drink it in the name of science”. But believe me the real RedWillow product is damn fine. Oh my, I really need more of that oyster stout – it was amazing.

Simply HopsThe @SimplyHops Jack talk on use of hops in brewing was on the drier side (hah hah), but I like the technical as much as the entertaining – his exaggerated “where hops can be added” slide was great. I can hear the shout of the hop-head-hipsters: ALL OF THE HOP SPOTS! Scott from @thebeermoth introduced the probably-already-converted to some excellent “wild” beers, taste exploration – it’s what I’m all about.

Darkstar brewer AndyFinally @Darkstartbrewco head brewer Andy gave us an excellent, detailed and down-to-earth run-down of what’s up at the brewery – it looks to me like brewing in DarkStar has been passed on to good hands. (Factoid: Andy used to work for BrewDog! Seems to be quite a few former-BrewDog folk heading on to big things elsewhere.) That was our lot… sadly clashes and late-arrivals to sessions meant we didn’t catch several talks we wanted to.

I have video footage of most of these talks and some is definitely worth putting online, especially Lovibonds Jeff and Darkstar Andy. But first I’ll want to check it’s OK with the brewers and then I need to find the time to clean it up for publishing. For the moment there are some brief appearances from the speakers in my wacky video below!

Count the brewers? :) I gave up at 15. :-p I also have film of more Harlequin Dynamite Marching Band pieces which they’ve permitted me to publish, so I’ll see about cleaning them up too. The videoing is a bit crap, but the beatz are wikkid!

Food… haven’t covered that yet have I. A greater variety and better set-up and availability than 2012. We went to every IMBC session and ate at all but one of them and could have something different every time. Ideal. Not only that but the food was, as last year, far better quality than the typical beer festival fare. Quality and flavour – not “stodge” – craft eats? It was the Guerrilla Eats collective behind this, providing a culture- and taste-spanning diversity. Hand formed beef burgers made with rough minced beef that looked and tasted amazing, paella, dosa, rich stews (boar and black pudding – yum!), pulled pork, gourmet hotdogs with Punk IPA sauerkraut, nachos… IMBC is a solid as well as liquid festival for the tastebuds. And on top of all this the wonderful @NorthTeaPower folk brought an espresso machine along this year… perfect way to start a session after a big previous night of beery celebration.

Is IMBC a “Woodstock” for my generation of beer lovers?

I’m looking forward to 2014 already.

The Magic

P.S. After last year’s IMBC Kat put together some phone-taken video and photos to create this much darker “scary MagicRockStu clown” video:

#RIPScoop – makeup artiste!

Kat’s IndyManBeerCon Android App

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IMBC-Logo-300x272 Last week Kat decided to ask if she could knock up a beer list Android app for the Independent Manchester Beer Convention. The IMBC folk were very busy of course – but were happy to send us a full beer list earlier this week, and so Kat has got the app working just in time… it is a little rough around the edges – but should form a reasonable digital alternative to the paper lists at IMBC. Of course you can’t scribble on the digital version! (Note taking is possible though.) But it does support neat features like filtering and sorting that a paper list doesn’t provide. :)

We’ve been trying to push this onto Google Play but Google Play isn’t playing ball with us for some reason – after a 12 hour wait: still no listing. So, for now, if anyone is really keen on trying out Kat’s app you can do so by downloading the APK directly.

Beer List

Beer List

Filtered List: Thursday, Keg Sorted by %ABV

Filtered List: Thursday, Keg Sorted by %ABV

First your phone will need to be configured to allow apps not from Google Play to be installed. To do this go to: Settings > Security – and then tick the Unknown Sources option. Now: download the APK:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD APK

(Don’t worry… we promise it won’t harm your device! It is a very simple app and Kat has some others on Google Play.)

Once the APK is downloaded you can select the download notification and it will ask if you want to install the application. Select “Install” … and we’re done! [You can now untick the Unknown Sources option.]

Launch the app and it’ll download the latest beer list data from our online database – this initial step takes a few seconds to complete, but should be less than a minute.

Beer View - shows location of beer

Beer View – shows location of beer

Brewery View

Brewery View

The blurb about the app features/etc that will (eventually) show up on Google Play is:

** ALPHA – has a few known bugs!

An unofficial 2013 Independent Manchester Beer Convention Beer List app!

We got hold of a sneaky pre-release of the IMBC beer list and adapted our existing beer list app for IMBC. There are a few rough edges still as this was a very last minute job! But the essentials are there…

– List of all IMBC keg & cask ales
– Filter by day (top left of beer list view)
– Filter by cask/keg (top middle of beer list view)
– Sort by name, brewer, or ABV (top right of beer list view)
– Beer location (Room 1, 2, and 3) is in the beer detail view

After installation the list can be live-updated by selecting ‘Refresh’ via the top-far-right menu, we will update things if there are any glaring errors or omissions… so long as we’re sober enough to operate the database.

Finally, as the IMBC list states: “Please note all beers are subject to availability and they could change at the last minute, so please don’t be upset.”

TODO / Future improvements:

1) Re-jig filtering mechanism
2) Add wishlist!!
3) Add search!!
4) Add events and notification
5) Auto-sync the app list with the online database