Three-C’Son — my Brains Saison

Three weeks ago I went over to Brains in Cardiff to brew a saison as part of their continental beer challenge, which has seen a group of writers swap laptops for lauter tuns and come up with a beer with its roots in the European mainland. I immediately decided that I wanted to do a saison, a pale golden one albeit with a  rigorous transfusion of American hops. We choose Centennial, Columbus and Citra, hence the name. On Sunday I was able to taste a couple of bottles of the beer and found it rather delicious, especially when paired with an aged, blue-veined Cheddar from Green’s of Glastonbury. It is pale and hazy in the glass, almost like a sunset seen through the filter of a disintegrating summer’s day, perhaps with the promise of something less benevolent to follow on the morrow. A sweet-sour nose, led by a snappy green apple note (plus a hint of fresh ripe peachiness); on the palate there is green apple snappiness, medium sweetness, a hint of white pepper and some fatness from the alcohol. The carbonation is sprightly with a moussec-like mouthfeel, while the finish has a initial light sweetness that is followed by an good dry finish. I loved it and am looking forward to trying it on keg at my local pub in the next couple of weeks. I like these brewing awaydays — I like the idea of suggesting various malt and hop combinations, I like the idea of trying to play with beer styles. It doesn’t make me a brewer anymore than the time I went up in a Hercules made me a pilot, but it all adds to the richness of life and given that 30 years ago you would have been hard-pressed to discover the ABV of most beers, never mind suggest that a major family brewery make a beer based on your own ideas, demonstrates how things have so changed for the better.

   

At Brains, or enjoying a brief holiday in other people’s working lives

Three Cs being added to an FV

It was Thursday morning at Brains, and I was helping to brew a saison on the brewery’s pilot brewery, which, as I tasted later on at the Great Welsh Beer Festival, has produced some gorgeous beers including Coopers Reserve, a 10% barrel aged beer that has so much depth I half expected to find the Titanic at the bottom of the glass. You can see me talk about it here.

The grist was pretty simple — lager malt and wheat, which means that it should be light in colour and hopefully slightly hazy. No spices were used but three hops — Centennial, Citra and Columbus — were added throughout the process with a handful going into the FV. With the aid of Brains’ head brewer Bill Dobson, I wanted to get the flinty, spicy, near-austere character of a saison (we used saison yeast), but also wanted to give it a bit of an aromatic kick. From what I remember I think it’s going to have over three weeks of fermenting and lagering before it goes out into the world. Oh and it’s called Three-Cs-son. If you try it I would like to know what you think.

My time as a journalist has always seen me parachute into other people’s working situations. I have been out with the oyster fishermen of Falmouth, gone up in the air on a Hercules for a piece on female RAF pilots and been backstage with a band about to go on at the Albert Hall. It is the same with brewing when you become very briefly part of a team, though I always know that I wouldn’t last two minutes in reality (I have a chemistry and general science deficit). For a moment though, on a morning like the one I had in Brains there is a sense of a different path I could have taken. But on the other hand I think it’s the fact of this holiday taken in other people’s lives that I have always enjoyed in journalism.

Philosophical musings over I went along with Bill and a couple of lads from the production team to the Great Welsh Beer Festival and enjoyed beers from Brains, Otley and clean sweepers Tiny Rebel. What did I learn? Not to drink a 10% Belgian Pale like it was cola and then run to catch my train.

Collaboration on a clifftop

In a week’s time I shall be heading to Cardiff with the aim of collaborating on the brewing of a saison with Brains head brewer Bill Dobson. I like working with breweries on designing a beer — I’m not a brewer and my two attempts at home brew have ended in failure. Both were from Boots’ kits and one was a brown ale, which I ended up washing my hair with, and the other was a pale ale that only the dog and my brother drank. It’s nice to be able to have an idea and find a brewer who doesn’t think something I suggest is half-witted (dark saison, India pale bock, black Gose, dry-hopped rye mild for instance). I’ve also opened up another collaborative beery front, this time in the field of writing. A month or so ago Pete Brown and I were invited by Badger to come on a cliff-top walk in Dorset and then write about it together, the results of which can be seen here. We had a great time, even though a week after our walk part of the South West Coast Path upon which we had trod collapsed. 

Brains gambols on making a Lambic

I don’t normally put press releases on here but I thought this one a bit of fun…

Brains Craft Brewery launches Lamb-ic Ale

Brains’ craft brewery team has taken an interesting angle to their latest cask beer. Taking inspiration from the traditional lambic style of beer from Belgium, Lamb-ic has an added unique Welsh twist with the addition of finest Welsh lamb to the brew.

Brewed with malted barley, un-malted wheat and a blend of Fuggles and Golding hops, the beer has been matured for up to 12 months in open barrels with chops of finest lamb from the Welsh hills of Ceredigion. Open barrel fermenting allows Lamb-ic to be naturally fermented with wild yeasts that give lambic styles of beer their unique taste. A naturally cloudy, orange beer, Lamb-ic (5.3%) has a sour lemon juice beginning which blends into a deep richness from the lamb. Each pint will be served with mint sprinkles on top which adds fresh and herby notes to the pint.

The Brains craft brewery team were inspired by a trip to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver where they tried a hickory-smoked bacon porter. An increasingly popular type of beer in the US, the team set to it to brew their unique Welsh version.

Lamb-ic is the latest experimental brew from Brains’ 15 barrel brewery and follows a American White IPA, a Bavarian-style Weiss beer, a Czech style pilsner, and a coconut porter.

The beer will be available in 30 Brains pubs from Friday 5^th April. For a full list of stockists visit www.brainscraftbrewery.com/find-our-beer

St David’s Day celebrated in beer

As it’s St David’s Day and I’m Welsh I thought I would eat a metaphorical raw leek and throw a casual American-style salute to five current favourite Welsh beers. First up would be Otley O8, a lush bomber of a beer which offers banana and even banoffee notes on the nose, while the character that chimes on the palate is chardonnay-like, fat and plush, though thankfully lacking the soaked oaked character that drenches and drowns the chardonnay of today’s Poundland wine culture. Breakfast grapefruit adds to the zest with a rich, luscious finish that makes me want to join the Men of Harlech in defending Rourke’s Drift. Of course, there’s also Saison Obscura and I really would love to try Odessa, but one mustn’t be greedy. 

Last week I went to a Brains beer and food dinner in London, with a menu devised by Melissa Cole, who also managed to coral three former rugby players (Tom Shanklin, Rob Jones and some English bloke, Jonathan Webb) onto stage for a bit of an after-dinner do. For me the stand-out food and beer match of the evening was Milkwood with a ham hock terrine — the creamy, aromatic beer (which has rye crystal and Golden Naked rolled oats in the mash) wrapped itself around the saltiness of the terrine and acted as a platform levering the flavours to a higher level. However, delicious as it is, my current favourite amongst the Brains oeuvre is their Dark, which always makes me think that Santa’s just fallen down the chimney leaving a cloud of soot everywhere — along with creamy chocolate and coffee beans coated in dustings of milk chocolate; a truly magnificent beer. I do enjoy a few jars of Brains Black as well. Looking forward to see what their micro plant will come up with. 

When I grew up in North Wales, the local beer was Wrexham Lager, which I would have with a dash of lemonade before moving onto Stones Keg (with a dash of lemonade) or even some cocncotion from Ansells (with a dash of lemonade). Now, there seem to be breweries all over the place with four of them within half an hour’s drive of my mum’s place. Purple Moose are resolutely old school, producing a fabulous selection of bitters: strong, golden, best and light.I do like Dark Side of the Moose, but for that favourite beer moment I recall a glass of Glaslyn at the Albion in Conwy (recently reopened with the aid of Conwy, Purple Moose, Great Orme and Nant breweries) — a blast of tropical fruit and resiny hop on the palate underlined by a base of grainy, biscuity malt, while a great bitter finish rolled around the back of the throat, a voice echoing in a cave, where perhaps Arthur and his knights still sleep. 

Great Orme and Conwy make brilliant beers, with Telford Porter and Welsh Black amongst those I would happily spend an evening getting to know, but it’s Mwnci Nell from one of the newer North Walian breweries Bragdy Nant that currently I would place as my rhif pedwar beer. It’s a strong-armed, hefty big hitter of a dark bitter that drinks far too easy for its 5.5% strength (some would call it a porter but I’m not bothered as it is delicious). 

And as I write all this I realise how unfair and childish the whole list thing is, so for the final beer I will just say a couple that I have enjoyed in the last 12 months have been Rhymney Export and Waen Porter House Blue, the latter being a porter/stout hybrid (to my palate but I am not going to split hairs about it) with a slight sweetness at the end thanks to the addition of fresh blueberries, some of which are added to the mash and others at the end of the boil. I thought it fabulous served alongside a chocolate fondant with bucks fizz ice cream, which was part of a beer and food matching dinner Mark Dredge and I did at Kilverts last year. So plenty to think and drink about (and I’ve not started on my favourite Welsh pubs: Bunch of Grapes, City Arms, Penrhyn Arms, Kilverts, Pen-y-Gwryd for starters) — Dydd Dewi Sant hapus i pawb.

Brains Black, navvy boots and post-industrialism

‘You’d drink beer out of a navvy’s boot, you would.’ Said elegantly though with a bitter bite, it seems to me. A man with a neat beard, eyes half-focused, laughs as he passes over a pint. A pint, a glass, a draught, of Brains Black, passed over, into my hands, via the hands of Wilco the beer cupboard and shed guru. Around the murmur of the crowd, the background mood music of cocktail jazz. A year on from inception it’s a birthday party for Brain’s Black, a Welsh stout that can more than hold its own against another popular brand that I usually have a pint of Sunday lunchtime at whatever rugby club my son is playing at. This is my first time and it’s rather a luscious drop. Bible black (I had to say that, though I’ve left out heron priested shore), creamy, espresso foam atop, smooth mocha character, easy drinking, keg (and so what — Brains, where were you at the SIBA craft keg comp a fortnight or so ago?). So here we are, upstairs at the Yard, the former home of Brains, St David’s night and all that, in a slick re-imagining of the post-industrial age with the innards of the former brewery on show alongside a scatter of ironic flourishes (video of a log fire anyone?). A slick modern space but another direction that the pub has to take to get people through its doors, a bit like Brains Black really, another way to get people into drinking great beer, whether keg or cask (and there’s plenty of that especially as Brains Dark is one of my favourite milds). As for the navvy’s boots, I shall labour in vain to find one, but much as I hate to say it: we’re in a post-industrial age. 

Is this a Brains pub?

Is this a Brains’ pub? The City Arms. The barman nods. In name only says the chap at the bar as he looks through the mullion-paned windows at Gate 3 of the Millennium Stadium. I was going to a match at Arms Park in the 70s, he continues, bumped into Stanley Baker with a trilby on his head, bit of a tough nut he was, he’d had a few as well, he was off to the rugby. Wish I’d had a camera. He died a couple of years later from lung cancer. Do you like what they’ve done here I ask? Not bad comes the reply. But is it a Brains pub? 

Oh yes there’s Brains Dark, SA and Bitter, but there’s also Marble Best (grapefruit star crossed with tangerine, mouth-catching bitterness that clangs away like a demented bell-ringer), Abbey Vale’s Resolution and Otley’s O5, plus others (14 cask in all). Taps and bottles also proliferate. The interior is honey-coloured distressed wood, while remembrance is the theme of décor: sepia-toned prints of yesteryear, old gents, old teams, old towns, rugby, beer and a label of the year award for 1989 for a Brains commemorative beer. This has only been open in this guise for several months, but I like — I’m not sure that the old boy nursing a half of SA does.

I wish I could stay longer but I’m off to Pontypridd prior to brewing with the Otley boys tomorrow (with BAD on tour in Aberdeen this is obviously the week for karaoke brewing). As beer bars start to emerge in all sorts of places (I hesitate to use the word grow, there will always be a pedantic desire for the statistical basis for the word grow and I don’t have it), the City Arms is a refreshing, warm and civilised celebration of beer, and rather brave of the brewery. Yes, this is a Brains pub.