Elderflower Saison Fizz

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Elderflower

Elderflower – © Tony Hisgett

This is a log of the production of my first ever “Elderflower Fizz“. Every year I know when elderflower season has hit because I get terrible hayfever as soon as they’re flowering – although it doesn’t seem to be the elderflowers themselves causing the problem but something else producing pollen at the same time (current suspicion is barley). We’ve used elderflowers in jellies before and I love the flavour and have long wished to do something more with them – always to find the flowering is over before I get a chance. This year I was determined to brew up an elderflower “fizz” – and I did… I read many “recipes” online as research, quite a few of them were downright scary. Paraphrasing massively: “mix it all together in a bucket, leave it 4 days, bottle it up, make sure you release pressure every few days”. Bottle bombs! :-| I have taken a more beery and scientific approach… here’s how it was done:

Deflowered elderflowers.

Deflowered

Day 1 – frolic in the meadows and along the hedgerows:
It’s the 30th of June – a beaut warm sunny day, so we go for a walk away from the roads and collect 60 elderflower heads. When we get home we deflower them – a slightly tedious process using fingers and forks, but it considered best to minimise the amount of “stem” in the mix. We achieve a yield of about 165g of flowers from our 60 umbels. The flowers are placed in a clean plastic container, 2 litres of boiling water is poured over, and a tablespoon of lemon juice added to reduce discolouration. This mix is covered, left to cool, then popped into the fridge for 4 days to steep.

Day 3 – make saison yeast starter:
In the early AM: Make 1 litre of 1040 yeast starter using 105g of cane sugar and add a vial of Saison II from White Labs. I picked this yeast for two reasons: first is it was simply what I had to hand – recently bought for a planned beer brew; second I thought a “funky” yeast would be good to add a bit of extra flavour to something fermented simply from sugar.

Day 4 – early morning – cool saison yeast starter:
Place yeast starter in fridge to encourage yeasties to settle to the bottom. (It turned out to have dropped to 1030 in about 18 hours and the amount of yeast had built up nicely.)

Day 4 – evening – put it all together:
Decant clear liquid from the yeast starter to sterilised container and cover. Refill the original yeast vial (sterilised) with yeast sediment for later re-use – this is purely so I have some Saison II to culture up for a subsequent beer brew. Rinse the rest of the yeast sediment into the decanted starter liquid. Cover and leave aside to come to to room temperature.

Heat  2 litres of water with 2.3kg of sugar and the rind of 2 lemons until simmering. Simmer for 20 minutes. Strain in fresh juice of 4 lemons and the elderflower liquid, rinse flower pulp with 2 litres of water, then with clean hands squeeze out all the liquid you can. Cover this mixture and let cool to about 30ºC. [I believe I should have used less lemon juice, but many others who’ve tasted the fizz seem happy with the acidity – it has a bite reminds me of rather grim Western Australian Chardonnay.]

Fermentation Vessel full of fermenting elderflower fizz

Fermentation Vessel

When cooled pour the liquid through a sterile sieve into a sterile fermentation bin. I did this from a good height to help introduce some oxygen. Top up to 15 litres with clean, preferably well aerated, water. Wait for temperature to drop to about 20ºC before pitching in yeast.

Original gravity: 1074

Let this sit in a suitable spot to ferment away, my fermentation happened in a range of about 20ºC to 24ºC.

Day 9 – early morning – prepare champagne yeast addition:
At day 9 I’ve noticed that the gravity hasn’t shifted much over the last two days so it is time for the next stage. I’ve chosen to add a champagne yeast to chow through any remaining sugar to yield a “dry” end product. Create a 1040 gravity yeast starter as per day 3 and into this pitch a sachet of champagne yeast.

Day 10 – evening – champagne yeast addition:
At this point the mixture has had 6 days fermentation time.

Stable gravity with Saison II: 1042 (~4.2%)

Pitch in whole 1 litre champagne yeast starter and take a gravity reading so we can calculate the ABV yielded from the next stage of fermentation.

Champagne yeast OG: 1040 (watered down slightly by starter)

Day 15 – a status update:
Gravity check, now 1017 so approximately 7.2%. Has gone very cloudy now – hopefully a sign the yeast is still eager, would like this to come out quite dry.

Final Gravity

Final Gravity

Day 24 – prepare for bottling:
The gravity is stable and very low now – it is time to bottle!

Final Gravity: 0998 – wowzers – beastly yeasties!

This means we have about another 5.5% ABV from the champagne stage, giving a strength of approximately 9.7% before bottling.

Siphon, or otherwise move, the liquid into another vessel (anything suitable for bottling from, a pressure barrel is what I had handy). The aim is to leave all the trub behind. The de-trubbed liquid is then refrigerated overnight to encourage even more yeast to drop out. Note: weight of the liquid is 15.3kg – assuming approx 1kg = 1 litre this lets me calculate how many bottles to get ready.

Bottled Elderflower Fizz

Bottled Elderflower Fizz

Day 25 – bottling day:
To the pressure barrel add 190g of brewer’s sugar melted in 200g of warm water for priming. The aim is for just under 4 vols C02 – a robust “fizz”. Stir gently and then bottle it! Now a waiting game begins…

RESULT!
A good fizz had built up after a couple of weeks and since then it has been tried by a few friends of ours as well as ourselves. (We tested it on ourselves well in advance to ensure it wasn’t poison!) Everyone seems to like it a bit better than I do, including Kat. I find it a bit too sharp for my tastes – and would aim to add half as much lemon juice next time perhaps. However several other independent opinions are positive – or maybe they’re just being nice ;)

My own tasting notes, made on October 3rd – about 2 months after bottling:

Glass of elderflower fizz

Glass of elderflower fizz

  • Eyes:
    • Colour is a pale straw, almost crystal clear.
    • Constant bubble streams rise through the glass.
  • Nose:
    • Yep, distinctively elderflower – not overt, but distinct.
    • There is a saison “farmy” note too – not sure you’d pick it without knowing to expect it.
    • Too much of a “boozy” note, à la sniffing a bottle of meths.
  • Mouth:
    • First to hit is sensation rather than taste: fizz prickle, lively carbonation.
    • Flavour is perfumed, kind of soapy really.
    • Sharpness akin to a rather astringent Chardonnay.
    • This is backed by a “woody” spice which almost makes up for missing body.

Thoughts: it needs less “meths” aroma and maybe rather than less sharpness it needs more body – a source of tannic acid perhaps? Something like that to balance it out. The saison yeast has helped here – I think with just champagne yeast it would have been really harsh on the tongue and nose.

Well – despite some misgivings I consider my first attempt at a “country wine” style of thing to be a success. Next year perhaps a couple of tweaks… cheers!

Elderflower Saison Fizz from Yvan Seth on Vimeo.

Kitchen Experiments: British IPA Tempura

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Deep frying tempuraI’ve had it in my mind for a while to try “IPA Tempura” and I bought a few bottles of IPA-type beers to do this with. About a month ago, finally, the experiment happened. From an original six IPAs I picked three to try this with (to make it more manageable when only cooking for two people, plus I’d drunk one of the original six already… oops.)

The IPA-type-critters I selected were:

  • Durham Brewery “Bombay 106” (7.0%) – styled as a “traditional IPA” this uses pale malts and a lot of British hops, it is dry-hopped with Goldings. What we get in the mouth is a big earthy IPA – full of peppery spice and resiny bitterness. Not your brash new-world hop-aroma-explosion, something far more cultured. Imagine it sitting in a big old leather chair, reading a leather clad tome, wearing a dinner jacket and smoking a pipe.
    Pale Malts – British Hops – EARTHY IPA
  • Hardknott “Infra Red” (6.5%) – a pretty punchy IPA-type beer, it describes itself as “oxymoronic” being a “red IPA”. Infra Red has been one of my favourite beers since I discovered it some years past. I think it may have changed a little through time, becoming just a little cleaner & lighter, less full figured – but it is certainly still a head-turner. Anyway – a rich beer with a powerful hop hit using some new-world hops.
    Darker Malt Body – American Hop Punch – RICH RUBY IPA
  • Williams Brothers “Joker” (5%) – this is more a what I consider a “British IPA”, it takes on the big American hops and combines them with a crisp clean pale malt base without the big sweet caramel note present in a lot of US IPAs. Yanks call it “balanced”, I call it beer that tastes like Werther’s Originals. That said, this Joker was a bit on the lighter side as far as the hops go – almost more of a hoppy golden ale than an IPA. Nimble, light on its feet, a beer that can very easily slip past you leaving the merest whiff of its presence.
    Pale Malts – US-Hop Dominant – CRISP LIGHT IPA

Beer Tempura Test Subjects

Now unfortunately I didn’t get a really brilliant British “pale” IPA, my favourite variety – crisp, low sweetness, light malt profile, about 6%, and super-charged with hops. This was the sort of beer I had, for some reason, expected the Joker to be… so I was a little disappointed. But oh well!

Preparation

Vegetables to tempuraThings to tempura…
For “tempura-ing” I have “candy” beetroot (from my own garden), red pepper (capsicum), baby corn, carrots, and spring onions plus some defrosted frozen “baby squid”. To prepare:

  • Slice beetroot into 2mm thick slices – best to use a mandolin.
  • Slice pepper into 2mm thick rings – mandolin again.
  • Halve the baby corns.
  • Halve the spring onions lengthways and separate tops from bottoms.
  • “Matchstick” the carrot and tie in small bundles with some garlic chives.
  • Pull tentacles from squiddies, and open out and halve the bodies and give them a light cross-hatch scoring across the inner flesh.

Make sure all of the above is dry, pat dry cut surfaces and rest on paper towels.

Oil…
You want to get your oil on the stove before preparing the batter. Please be careful with hot oil, it is dangerous and over-heated oil can combust! Remember: Don’t drink and fry! You really want to have a suitable thermometer to monitor your oil temperature.

I’m using a litre of sunflower oil (under £2 worth), but any oil suitable for deep-frying will do the job. Use plenty and put it in a saucepan/pot that leaves plenty of space. Preferably on a burner at the back of the stove. Get the oil in the heat – your target temperature is 180°C.

If you have a deep-fryer this is all much simpler!

Preparing tempura batterBatter…
One of the well known “secrets” of tempura is cold batter. Some recipes call for icy cold water others for everything being at fridge temperature. So two hours before preparation I put a bag of ordinary plainflour in the freezer. I put my eggs and beers into the fridge (~4°C). Then 15 minutes before production I popped my beers into the freezer too. It’s going to be one FRIGID batter.

Batter ratio based on a single large egg:

  • 1 large egg
  • 120g plain flour
  • 190ml beer/water/liquid

I have also made a “control” batter that uses ice-cold water instead of beer.

To mix the batter simply put the egg into a suitable bowl, whisk it until combined, whisk in the beer (gently, it’ll “fizz”), then mix in the flour. The flour should be very loosely mixed in – a bit lumpy is what you want. To aid this, and to seem more authentic, my mixing tool of choice is chopsticks. :)

FRY!
Your oil is at 180°C… your batter is mixed (if there is any delay pop your batter in the fridge, but aim to have no delay), your tempura-bits are prepared, it is fry o’clock!

Quickly and carefully dunk an item in the batter then drop it into the hot oil. It is good to have the item a bit drippy, this adds to the tempura effect. Do a few items in quick succession – do not over-crowd. Let them fry for about a minute, then flip and give another minute before fishing out and putting on paper towel. Let the oil return to 180°C before doing the next batch.

For raw seafood that isn’t sashimi-grade you may want to fry for a little longer, experiment and work out what the “sweet spot” is. For thin small/squid like mine I think a minute extra is plenty.

Tempura vegetables - close upEnjoy!
Tempura is best enjoyed right away. If cooking for others aim to be serving straight from fryer-to-table in batches. For a more social time hang out in your kitchen with some beers. (Please be sensible with the beer whilst hot oil is in action!)

A bit of a dipping sauce is normally served with tempura – a simple one combines soy sauce umami with the zing of lemon juice or rice vinegar. Based on this I knocked up a sauce for each beer. About 4 tablespoons of the beer, 1 of soy, 1 teaspoon lemon juice (from a bottle alas), and a splash of rice vinegar “to taste”.

Analysis…
So – do we have a winner here? Not a clear one. Kat prefers the Joker based batter, and on the topic of the sauce “none of them” – if pressed she preferred the Bombay 106 as she enjoyed the decent beery hit it gave. I’m told I should have put less beer in the sauces :( Kat also says the Infra Red would probably be more suited to something of a pakora … there’s an idea for next time! :)

Each batter definitely had its own character – note no seasoning was used, no salt and no pepper – the dipping sauces provided some seasoning but my tasting of the batters didn’t use the sauces. All three beer batters gave a distinct “seasoned” edge, an umami, that the plain batter lacked. They also coloured up more than the plain batter – possibly due to sugars in the beer (the Infra Red batter was always noticeably darker – not surprising). The Joker batter simply tasted like a damn good batter, not specifically beery and with no bitterness. The Infra Red batter was the most true to its beer – mainly a malt profile thing, but also with a touch of hop bitterness & resin coming through. The Bombay 106 was the most definitively “beery” batter – it has a beery flavour, and the most distinct bitterness. By comparison to all three the plain batter was a bit… dull, really. None of the beer batters seemed to be better than the other for “tempura effect”, however the plain one was a little less “puffy” and more authentic in appearance.

Tempura vegetables laid out with sauces and beers

As for the dipping sauces – they had very similar characteristics, but were all more noticeably beer-based. The Joker was a smooth sauce that complemented all batters. The Infra Red was my preference – it tasted unmistakably of the beer and needed to be used in moderation. Whilst the Bombay 106 tasted like serious “beery soy”, and I didn’t really like it that much.

Were I to serve a beer battered thing to someone based off this experience which would I choose? I’m not sure – I think it would be down to context. If I simply wanted a good versatile batter the Joker is ahead of the game here – because it is a pretty normal beer with enough body to beef up the batter but simple and light enough to not distract or clash. I’m not really sure why or how it is an “IPA” but it is a good beer. If I want to showcase a beer edge then it is the other two that have that edge, with the Bombay 106 being suitable for both the squid and the vegetables. The Infra Red batter was specifically Infra Red flavoured and was a good complement to the vegetables, but was too much for the squid. If I was trying to highlight specific beer flavours matched against the beer in question it’d be the full Infra Red set I’d pick (batter, sauce, and beer).

As for pairing with tempura-everything? Again the Joker wins here. It isn’t anything crazy or different on the beer-front, but it has a good body and flavour to match the battered goodies – complementing without overwhelming.

There’s no clear winner here – but that was never the point! The point is beer batter isn’t just beer batter – the beer you choose is important. I’d be interested to know what successes, and perhaps failures, others have had with beer batters.

Right now I’m wondering how a stout would go in a batter for sweeter vegetables. Or perhaps for deep-fried black pudding… or haggis? *SQUELCH* *POP* *BOINGBOINGBOING*[1]

[1] …the sound of my heart tearing free of my chest, popping out my mouth, and bouncing off into the distance whilst making sad whimpering sounds.

Tempura squid

Z5ZV4A3YYCTF

#GBBH – bitching about beer

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GBBH beers lined up in my kitchen.

Prologue

To open, a Twitter conversation observed & enjoyed last week:

Next up Quercus Smoked Oaked Porter #Sainsbeerys pic.twitter.com/uwizO743iF

— Phil Hardy (@Filrd) September 18, 2013

@Filrd The crate of that in Sainsbury’s has been untouched, all 3 times I went in recently. How is it?

— Nathaniel Southwood (@NateDawg27) September 18, 2013

@NateDawg27 @Filrd I rather liked that one. Do I like too many?

— David Martin (@rdgmartin) September 18, 2013

@rdgmartin @Filrd Nah, I think some people are being dicks and are too fussy.

— Nathaniel Southwood (@NateDawg27) September 18, 2013

There’s a bunch more to the conversation but as Nate is in Twitter-stealth-mode at the moment you’ll need to be following him to be able to see the juicy bits.

Discourse

I admit to being one who can be pretty fussy and negative about beer. Although I doubt Nate’s comment above is directed at me as I’m merely one of many similar fussy beer geeks. However, after pondering the conversation I am coming to the conclusion that broadcasting my dislike of specific beers really is being a bit of a dick. I have since unlinked my Untappd from my Twitter. I still want to write my beer notes (which are mainly & most usefully for my own future reference) but I’ve decided that it doesn’t do anyone much good to be telling the (very limited) “world” of my Twittersphere that I think beers are crap – in fact it can be quite the opposite of good. Two reasons:

  1. Being bitchy and negative about a specific beer can upset fellow beer drinkers and can also make brewers angry, or even hurt. (I’m sure I have managed to trigger both together.) This isn’t a positive contribution to the community.
  2. Just because I think a beer is crap doesn’t mean anyone else will – I try to go into drinking a beer with a clean mental palate, but if someone I know has moaned about a beer (or said it is brilliant) this can be difficult. I don’t want to put others in the same situation.

I drain-poured three of the Great British Beer Hunt (GBBH) beers I tried. They just weren’t making my mouth happy and these days I find I have less and less patience for beer that doesn’t sing to me. If I’m not experiencing pleasure in drinking a beer then it is probably going to find itself in the sewer, pronto. I’m beginning to think of my liver as a finite resource.

GBBH beers on the shelves in Sainsbury's

Attention Sainsbury’s shoppers, there’s some damn good beer in isle 3.

What does this say of the GBBH line-up, that there are at least three crap beers in there? No!, of course not. All three have received positive feedback from people who’s beer tastes I respect, and sometimes don’t agree with. I love smoked beers, but really didn’t like Querkus, however Bob Arnott who “positively dislike[s] smoked beers” found that he “really quite enjoyed it“. No – the only thing my own mixed opinion confirms of the GBBH line-up is that it is diverse. That’s what is wonderful about beer above other drinks: the sheer diversity of flavour and experience encapsulated by one small word. For every beer I don’t like there’ll be many who love it, and vice versa.

In fact, what the Sainsbury’s GBBH promotion is doing is shoving a vast variety of beery tastes and flavours right in the faces of their shoppers. They’re backing brewers established and new, big and small – from Thwaites to Hardknott (to make a probably-wrong guess at the extremes of the set). The range covers styles from the everyday humdrum to the truly odd, from the pale and insipid to ichorous mouth-coating flavour-bombs. Sprinkle black pepper on my beer, are you nuts?! Encouraging exploration and experimentation. Half the beers in the range have interesting food paring potential – in fact I really think Sainsbury’s should be pushing a food element as a background theme to the GBBH.

Quite simply Sainsbury’s are doing a FAR better job of championing beer than, for example, the “Let There Be Beer” campaign – and they have been doing it every year for a while now.

I probably won’t buy more of these beers from Sainsbury’s – but that’s just because I don’t really do supermarkets much (once a month at most) and Sainsbury’s is possibly the most difficult of the major ones for me to get to. But maybe if I’m in the area, maybe then. I’ll not declaim this beery marketing exercise, and will diss the beers no further – for Sainsbury’s are doing good work for the promotion of beer diversity, expanding the horizons of beer drinkers, and that is good for all of us.

Epilogue

Now, I can’t promise I’ll never tweet about a beer being crap again – that sounds an impossible task. It’ll happen. Also, I will continue to say exactly what I think of a beer on Untappd, and as always I’d suggest that with any such a website that brewers bold/masochistic enough to look must take any individual feedback with a grain of salt (unless specific flaws are described, especially obvious ones like “half the bottle is now spread across my ceiling”). I don’t “rate” beers any more – any ratings that I have on Untappd are historic. I’ve decided that simple numeric zero-to-five/ten/whatever scales just don’t make sense for the experience of drinking a beer. It’s too complex and too much comes from context, too much is subjective, moods alter experience, as does time and place – I will stick with words, not numbers, even if the words are “this is shit”. I think everyone sensible in the beer community knows the nature of rating/review sites and this is an OK place to put such opinion as compared to the much more social/shared medium of Twitter.

GBBF: CAMRA Bar Management Training

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Bar and Kilderkins

These kils need to be on that scaffold… time for some proper work.

I did my first GBBF this year. My first as a volunteer I mean. Except I wasn’t there just to pull some pints, I was attending the CAMRA Bar Management Training that is held at GBBF every year. What is a “CAMRA Bar Manager” – what does this so-called “training” cover? Some would make jokes about beer gut cultivation (doing fine there on my own alas), choice of correct sandals (was a confirmed sandal wearer before I moved to the UK), and beard growth strategies (follicly challenged in the face department alas). Hey, I make fun of CAMRA too sometimes. However, the training really is a good and useful thing for anyone who wishes to care for cask ale – especially in a beer festival environment.

Trainees

My fellow GBBF Bar Manager trainees.

How do you get to do it?
The training is for CAMRA members and you need to be nominated by your regional director. In my case I was lucky to have been pushed into it along with a colleague from North Herts CAMRA branch because our festivals lacked technical knowledge, plus as of this year we’re running a festival in summer and this requires cooling equipment. Under some guidance I’ve done most of the “cellar” for the last couple of festivals, and looked after the cooling at the last festival. (Luckily we had the GBBF technical director to hand to give us a crash-course.) I say “under some guidance” but there are only a couple of folk in the branch who’s guidance I particularly trust, whilst I’ve had some downright suspect instructions from others! Basically I was a little confused and certainly lacking confidence.

If you’re interested in doing the training I suggest that first you need to be involved with your local branch and have an interest in running festivals. If your branch lacks technical knowledge (many seem to) and you’re keen, you probably have a good chance of getting on the course. (However numbers are limited, so if at first you don’t succeed…). This year the course had people along ranging from 18 years old through to (at a guess) well into their 60s. We only had one woman on the course, which isn’t surprising I guess – is that in line with active membership or below? For my branch it is certainly below. Anyway – one is better than none. The trainees had travelled from all over, a chap even harking from the Isle of Man – plus a dude from the US doing the course as part of some exchange programme.

Scaffold Training

We learnt how to put together this modular scaffold stuff. (Not rocket science… but there are some tricks to it.)

What is covered?
A suffusion of beer festival information! The course is misnamed in a way. Whilst set-up and care of cask ale was core, we also had sessions on health and safety, risk assessment & insurance, ordering kit from HQ, foreign beer, beer flaws & infections, dispense technicalities (a keykeg made an appearance – yes, they can be perfectly OK as “real ale”), scaffolding, beer logistics & stock management, and cider. So really you could call this a “festival organiser course”, I think I probably could have a go at running a whole festival now (if I was that masochistic).

The course is a mix of theory sessions, hands-on practical sessions, and for the majority of the time plain old hard graft behind a GBBF bar. Every trainee is given to a GBBF bar manager (Buster Grant from Brecon Brewery in my case) and expected to get stuck into all aspects of looking after the bar (whilst trying not to get in the way too much).

Beer beasties!

Beer nasties under the microscope in the GBBF QA lab. They take this stuff seriously.

GBBF trainee schedule, in brief…
I arrived on Saturday August 10th, signed in and immediately reported to Buster – for the first two days trainees are handed straight over to their managers to provide extra muscle for set-up. First job: kils are arriving on pallets and need to be up on stillage. Cooling was hooked up. Beer lines and pumps set up and cleaned.

A typical GBBF stillage exists in two distinct parts – one is what you see behind the bar: a scaffolding structure with a lower and an upper deck where casks are sitting under cooling jackets. Part of the art of setting this up is deciding where to put the casks in order to aid efficient take-down. I.e. under Buster’s system the 1st and 2nd casks on are all out to the edges so that the outer cooling systems can be broken down early. There is no prescriptive one-way-to-do-things however, and each GBBF bar manager has developed their own methods and tricks. There are some constraints of course, such as: there are typically 4 kilderkins of each beer and these need to be arranged such that the line from a given hand-pump is able to reach them all. (Having done this GBBF I can very much see why kils are a necessity!) [Edit: I forgot to explain the “second part” – this is a huge refrigerated box located behind the stillage that has the other half of the beer in it. Up on a double-layer scaffold. The cooler boxes are much simpler to set up and manage and some think it should all be done that way as it is so much easier – however others think the “look and feel” of a festival is not as good without all the kils out on display.]

The first casks were vented and tapped on Sunday so they would be ready for the “trade session” on Tuesday. Through the week the remaining casks are vented, tapped, and hooked up to lines as required. Twice a day the volume of beer in the casks that are on is measured with a dipstick and this feeds in to deciding when to vent the next-casks-in-line. When a cask runs dry it is sealed up and moved to “the crypt” at the end of the day.

This all amounts to a truly epic operation. Have a look at the crypt for an idea of the scale of things… (you can drag the image around for a full 360-degree experience… Google did NOT make this easy to achieve!)

The actual coursework and theory of the training is held in sessions from Monday through to Friday. Monday is a quiet day for a good bar team anyway – as most of the set-up is done and it is just a matter of spit-and-polish. A day of rest before the beer-drinking hoards hit the festival on Tuesday. Throughout the weekdays trainees split their time between the sessions and helping out at their bars wherever they can be of use. Everything from beer technicalities to serving customers at the bar – plus quite a bit of mopping at times.

Colin thirsty for hops...

Colin thirsty for hops… enjoying a beer in the Voly after another long GBBF day sitting on my head.

The reward at the end of every night is time for a couple of free pints in the “Volunteers Arms” (aka “the voly”) – the staff-only bar (with over 200 different beers on over the course of GBBF – it is a beer-festival within a beer-festival). It was a long week with post-voly bedtime most nights being about 2AM. However we didn’t need to be on-site until 10AM(ish) so that’s not all that bad.

At the end of the final day, within 2 hours of 5pm “time at the bar”, all casks and equipment were off stillage and on pallets. On Sunday the 18th, my last day, I was mostly in the crypt sorting and stacking dead casks. One final batch of hard graft before scooting home on the train for a much needed night in my own bed before heading back to office drudgery on Monday.

It was a long 9 days – and the seriously hardcore volunteers have a couple more either side to make it about 2 weeks on-site. Dedication to cask ale!

Handpumps....

The handpumps of Bar 19.

Cask ale care…
(especially with my own festival in mind)…
All the topics covered interested me. (Well, to be honest: the cider session was a nightmare). But I was really there for the beer. How does one serve cask ale in good form? Unfortunately there isn’t 100% agreement on this! However most disagreement comes down to peripheral issues like whether or not venting tools were good and how you should arrange beers on stillage. The term “dark art” came up more than once. However there was enough of a consensus for me to build up a plan for my next festival. I’m lucky enough to have one that isn’t complex – we have 1 cask of each beer (a mix of firks and kils) and they all go on at once for 2.5 days of service starting Thursday evening. Here’s my rough timeline – feel free to critique it. Please.

  1. Monday: (preferable) or Tuesday (ASAP) get all casks on stillage and under cooling.
    • Would prefer Monday with casks sitting overnight before venting, but that incurs the cost of an extra night of overnight security.
    • Conflict exists about whether or not to be variously violent with casks to “redistribute muck and finings”. My position is violence here doesn’t seem necessary. Plus they have already been rolled around the ground quite a bit at this stage.
    • Conflict exists here with respect to use of soft/hard pegs. My position is that soft pegs should only be used where casks exhibit excessive activity. Hard pegs should be applied as soon as activity dies down.
    • Ideally casks should have a few hours to sit at this point prior to venting.
  2. Tuesday: vent and tap all casks.
    • Hard pegs firmly in all casks unless there is excessive activity.
  3. Wednesday AM: 1st check of beers.
    • If good mark as “OK”, otherwise mark as appropriate – making note of any particular taints or excessive haze.
  4. Wednesday PM/evening: 2nd check of beers.
    • If good mark as “OK”. Any still with with excessive haze that hasn’t changed since the 1st check to be tested for overnight with isinglass and aux finings (if possible).
  5. Thursday AM: 3rd check of beers.
    • If determined that finings should be added to any beers, do it now. Carefully & in-place, using a funnel and bent tube. (This is how it is done at GBBF.)
  6. Thursday pre-opening:
    • Check any non-“OK” beers before opening. Attach/flip their cask-end-cards for “OK” beers. Soft spiles in “OK” casks for duration of service.
  7. Thursday end-of-night: Stock-take with dip-sticks, and hard spiles in all beers.
  8. Friday pre-opening: Check any beers not yet “OK”. “OK” them if possible.
  9. Friday end-of-night: Stock-take with dip-sticks, and hard spiles in all beers, perhaps plastics in any below half-full.
  10. Saturday pre-opening: Check, “OK”, etc…
  11. Saturday end-of-night: It’s all over!
    • Pack up as much kit as possible before bed as it all needs to be packed and off-site by Sunday arvo.

This isn’t actually a massive change from my usual schedule – but it does contain more detail and care than previously! Any glaring problems in the schedule? Please let me know in the comments or on Twitter… Some trivialities are omitted, it is the general timeline that’s the important part. It contains things I did not do before, such as:

  • Much more fine-grained checking of the beer in the lead-up to opening.
  • Using finings on beers that really don’t seem to want to drop bright.
  • Regular stock-taking throughout the festival (we need a flexi dipstick!)

My primary goal at any beer festival is: serve an enjoyable pint of beer. Sometimes the beer works against you and it seems to be a given that less-than-perfect pints are not unexpected at CAMRA festivals. I wish this were not so. We should be shining a light upon what a good pint of cask ale can be. Alas the beer works against you sometimes. I have had perfectly fine tasting beer arrive dead flat. What do I do then? I’d like to mark it as crap and send it back to the brewer – cue frustrating arguments. If it tastes fine, has condition, but carries a little haze or “cast” (a very very light haze) I put a note on the cask-end card and tell the bar staff to give prior warning along the lines of “it tastes perfect, but has a little haze to it”. (When we have unfined beers this is perfectly OK of course – though this is more difficult to explain to staff, let alone customers!) Anyway – enough of an aside here, this paragraph is what comes from my personal experience prior to GBBF. (GBBF training cannot offer any silver bullets for these issues.)

These are the tools of the beer QA/lab.

These are the tools of the GBBF Beer-QA lab. Probably a bit more than I really need…

Tools & Toys…
My branch has a couple of toolboxes. Mostly they’re full of rusting relics. Post-training we’re going to have to audit the selection… and we already have a shopping list! Perhaps more on that another time, “The CAMRA Bar Manager’s Toolbox”?

One interesting point is the obvious issue of returning part-full casks. We just hammer in the hard spile and put a cork in the end. While this is clearly not sufficient to stop beer leaking out I’d figured it was simply “the done thing” as it is the thing that is done. After having worked at GBBF, with an actual brewer as a bar manager, I now know this is one of the things that can make brewers quite grumpy. So… want to keep your friendly brewers friendly? Your festival should have a de-shiving tool and sufficient replacement shives and bungs. Any beers returned with a lot still in the casks should have new shives and bungs fitted and ideally be marked as part-full. If the beers were “wrong” in some way this should be marked in some way too – red tape over the bung helps to identify casks with a possible infection. We shall be obtaining such a tool (a sturdy screwdriver can do the job, but the correct tool is easier & safer) and some bags of shives & bungs.

GBBF bar banner

Featuring “Let There Be Beer” – a travesty.

Finally…
I have great personal conflict & angst over my involvement in CAMRA. On the one hand I think cask ale is great and worthy of advocacy, I love the CAMRA community, and I love being involved in and going to beer festivals. On the other hand I  have found the organisation’s vague support for pubs disheartening – though that seems to have improved greatly in the last year. I’m regularly angered over CAMRA’s willingness to be an advertising-front for JD Wetherspoon and their friendliness with some “brewers” who’re also actively destroying pubs. More recently, I’m really irate about their ill-conceived involvement with this whole Let There Be Beer shambles. LTBB is primarily (solely) promoting big-brand beers available on the cheap from your local supermarket. This does nothing for cask ale and is actively anti-pub.

I swing between really enjoying being a part of CAMRA and feelings of ARGH, CAMRA! *angryface* I QUIT! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I have, quite inaccurately, split the target of these feelings between “what normal CAMRA people do” and “what HQ decides”. HQ gets the anger pointed in their direction and meanwhile I get on with beery things with the normal CAMRA folk. The ones who love beer, enjoy beer festivals, and mostly just want to have a good time. Whilst doing so they hope that they can help others discover the beer they love to drink and ensure its availability in the future. We are volunteers putting our own time into something we love. GBBF is the product of 10s of thousands of hours of volunteer time – I can’t help but be impressed by that, and be proud to have been a member of the 2013 GBBF team.

I’ll be back.

Certificate

I did it all for this – I’m official now. Look – it has a shiny sticker on it!

Complete photo-set:

Are you a bottle hoarder?

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I struggle against letting bits of this and that pile up around the place. I don’t like hoarding stuff, but I also don’t like throwing stuff out. The latter mindset there usually wins. I have been making a concerted effort to just throw out beer bottles. But looking around just now I can gather together a shelf-full of the things despite that. I’ve just tossed three Sharp’s Single Brew bottles in the recycling. That wasn’t hard. Not sure why they were still on a shelf in the study – perhaps a sort of “gotta catch them all” mentality. (I think I had 1, 2, and 4…)

This led me to wander about and see what I’ve still – after quite some effort – not managed to let go of.

del Borgo bottles

We have the mantelpiece “del Borgo collection”. These are beautiful bottles. Custom made for del Borgo – this sort of detail tickles me in a special place, the St. Peter’s oval bottles do as well. Add to the custom container some quite beautiful labels and tossing these in the bin would feel like throwing away art.

New Zealand bottles

There’s also the “New Zealand 2011” collection. Red Zone Enigma barleywine – a beer that survived the Christchurch earthquake and was collected and bottled when the brewers could get to it again. Steampunk Strong Ale – bought at the brewery’s roadside shop in Riwaka. I passed it on a road-trip returning from the Mussel Inn and screeched to a halt with an exclamation of “brewery!”. It was impossible to resist the “Steampunk” branding. The Liberty Debilitated Defender – the last beer we drunk from our NZ collection, that’s the sentiment behind it having a spot on the shelf. Memories of a wonderful time in New Zealand…

Memorable bottles

Others are just memorable beers. Wild Beer Co Ninkasi, so good I bought a second bottle recently (for a big bottle of beer this is very rare). The Magic Rock Bourbon Barrel Bearded Lady – love screenprinted bottles, even if they are a bugger from the homebrew perspective. Buxton’s wacky Smokey and the Band-Aid. BrewDog’s crazy Sink The Bismarck. Beery memories.

Bashah Reserve bottles

Tucked away in a corner we also have, only just recently relived of their content, the BrewDog Bashah Reserve bottles. These Johanna Basford labels really are art. Toss them in a bin? Callous!

*sigh* … but, really, the bin is where they all belong. :(

Now… how about the boxes full of bottle caps then? :-|

Bottle Caps

Pretty sure there are more of these somewhere…

Do you have a beery collecting habit? Bottles full of beer – there’s some value in that at least. But empty bottles? Bottle labels? Glasses? (Oh, I have quite a few of them too…) Bottle caps? Beer mats? I know my tiny collections are but a nothingth of some out there… I know a chap with a front room stacked high with (carefully indexed) beer mats.

[I am totally ignoring collecting bottles for homebrew use. This I do also! But that is a practical thing – they’re in boxes and not being treated as “collector” or “display” pieces.]