Rolling Hitch IPA 5.2% abv

Last night I sampled a bottle of Darwin Brewery Ltd Rolling Hitch IPA and thought that it was the dog's wobblies, it's gone straight to the top of my favourite bottled beer list, beating St Austell - Tribute by a nose.

The Write Up

Rolling Hitch 1864: A Traditional shipping rope knot - of which thousands were produced and tied on Wearside's famous roperies and ship yards.

Darwin Rolling Hitch: An award winning classio style India Pale Ale, produced with only the finest British pale malts combined with rich Amarillo hops resulting in a refreshing fruit flavour and clean hoppy aftertaste.

This one did exactly what it said on the tin(bottle) very refreshing, nice fruit flavours but not massivley overpowering but the Amarillo hop aftertaste lingers for ages, I've emailed my local micro brewer to enquire about getting hold of some Amarillo to have a crack at making a pale Amarillo brew this side of the wallet emptying season.

I'm going to get a half dozen of these in and save them for a special event in the near future ;o)

Hookey Street - Winter Ale

A few weeks ago I took the advice from Delboy about what to brew and he came up with this:

5000.00 gm Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 90.3 %
410.00 gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (19.7 EBC) Grain 7.4 %
130.00 gm Chocolate Malt (886.5 EBC) Grain 2.3 %
49.00 gm Northdown [6.50%] (90 min) Hops 30.1 IBU
20.00 gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (15 min) Hops 2.6 IBU
20.00 gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -

Having never brewed a dark un before I didn't know what to expect, I got 25L at 1056 in the fermenter this went down to 1010 so it's 6%.

I'm well chuffed with the results, a nice dark beer which isn't too heavy and certainly doesn't taste like a 6%'er, I think i'll be enjoying this one in the colder months, next time I get a chance to brew I think i'll do another (maybe target 5% though)

Here it is

Tamworth Beer Festival

We went to the Tamworth Beer Festival on Friday 7th, we all had a great night, can't remember too much but ended up getting an overpriced take away from a posh indian and a cup of tea in a taxi rank.

These pictures / flashbacks are from the night.

The smaller of the two 'walls of ale'














You can just about see all of the kegs on this picture, there was a bottled beer/cider table just behind me also.





Lee put a really brave face on being dragged along to a Real Ale Festival.






He...well...he....was having a close look at the beer!







Mick seemed pleased with his selection of Cumbrian Lad, nice drop!






Neil, who apparently had a really shiny left eye brow!







Me, with what appears to be 'The Beer Sweats' too early in the night!






A much, much happier Lee once he'd found the strong cider and bottled lagers!






Entertainment for the evening was TreeBeard, they were great, crazy folk music covers and ale!





Towards the end of the evening Mick tried one of Lee's strong ciders, i'm quite sure he didn't like it!!!

36 Pints of Goats Milk

On Bank Holiday Monday my brother & his wife purchased a 36 pint keg of "Goats Milk" from Church End Brewery for around £42 (bargain), it's a superb afternoon quaffer at 3.8% and ideal for the BBQ, it's a nice light tasting ale with a predominant Styrian Goldings aroma, it went down very well indeed, here's my brother making sure the keg was definetely empty. Cheers!

A good Barbie and Barbie-Brew!!

The Bedford Arms - Toddington

Today we visited friends in Toddington and visited The Bedford Arms, I had a couple of Wells Eagle IPA which were a nice afternoon session bitter. This is the write up from the Charles Wells web-site..

IPA long-standing favourite within Charles Wells' heartland and famed for it's rare, notably dry-bitter finish, Wells Eagle IPA (Alc. 3.6% Vol.) is starting to emulate the nationwide success of its premium bitter stable-mate, Wells Bombardier.

“A complex finish of bitter hops, nuts and citrus fruits.”
Roger Protz
(British Guild of Beer Writers and Editor of The Good Beer Guide)
The popularity of this perfectly crafted pint is described by award winning beer writer, Alastair Gilmour:
“The aroma is of freshly sliced ripe apples. Its amber hue is emphasised by a tight rich head which set it up as an ale with real credentials.”

Cheers for a great day guys!

Toecutter Fermentation

Well fermentation got off to a flyer, this picture is how it looked 8hrs after pitching the yeast.

Brewday Friday 24/08 - ToeCutters Twist

Todays brew is this one : Toecutters Twist

5000gm Pale Malt (MO) Grain 98%
100gm Crystal Malt Grain 2%
26gm Fuggles [4.90%] (90 min) Hops 12.6 IBU
35gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (90 min) Hops 10.4 IBU
30gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (15 min) Hops 4.6 IBU
50gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (0 min)


Yesterday everthing that I'll need for the brew was given a clean and the grains were weighed out. I'm using 5kg of Crushed Marris Otter pale malt and 100g of Crystal Malt. This picture shows the colour difference between the two.


I got a nice early start today and had the boiler switched on by 06:30.

The steps here were:

Heat the mash liquor to around 78 degrees

Transfer the required quantity (in this case 12L to the mash tun)

Leave the tun to stand for 5 minutes to heat through

I then checked the temperature and found it to be too hot still, i needed a strike temperature of 72 degrees I added 2 L of cold water to get the temperature down to 72.

Once at 72 I doughed in (mixed in the grains thoroughly) I had to adjust the temperature to my required mash temp (65 deg C)by adding a further 1L of cold water.

1tsp of CRS was then added and mixed into the mash to get the PH to 5.2

The coolbox mash tun is then closed and wrapped for 90 minutes.


At the end of the mash the temperature was 64.5 so only a half of a degree drop over the 90 minutes.

Next I ran off the cloudy first wort runnings into a jug and returned them to the mash tun, the flow of wort from the jug was diffused using some foil with holes in it. The purpose of doing this is to filter the wort through the grain bed until there are very few or no grain particles coming through. .










The runnings were free from particles after 4 litres had been returned so sparging started, using water from an old FV which has now become my HLT. I use a spinny sparge are which sprinkles hot water (80 degrees) onto the grain bed the wort is then run slowly into the boiler.



I adjust the flow so that the input matches the output so there is a constant flow through the grain bed.





I collected 30 litres in total 25 in the boiler and another 5 in a seperate vessel, the 5L was used to top up the boiler to replace the wort lost through evaporation.



The wort was then brought to the boil and the bittering hops added (26g Oregon Fuggles and 35g Styrian Goldings.





While the boil was underway I made up a yeast starter (DaaB's flying starter) with Safale S-04 yeast. I rehydrated the 11g of yeast in 200ml of 35 degree water in a large PET bottle, then took 400ml of wort after 15 minutes of the boil and cooled it to 25 degrees then added this to the bottle, shook it like crazy and squeezed the air out.




15 minutes from the end of the boil I added the aroma hops (30g Styrian Goldings) then 10 minutes from the end of the boil I added a whirlfloc tablet to aid the coagulation of the protein break matter.

At the end of the 90 minute boil I added the aroma/steep hops 50g Styrian Goldings.






Then I dropped the immersion cooler in to bring the temperature down to around 28 degrees.







Once cooled the wort was transferred to the FV using grativy to help aerate it.







I hit my target OG (1046) and pitched the yeast, hopefully this should be fermenting away within a few hours.