Beer Ritz & Copper Dragon Home Brew Competition

With the idea of creating something a little different, and with the hopes that this could be quite an educational and interesting experience, Ghost Drinker from Beer Ritz and Rob Percival from Copper Dragon have teamed up to bring the first B.R./C.D. Home Brew Competition entitled:

Operation Remix

The idea behind this Remix is twofold: Firstly - choose one of the three Copper Dragon beer recipes given. Secondly - take the ingredients specified, and do what ever the heck you want with them to create what you think will be a creative and tasty beer!

If you want to know the full scoop and details, visit this post on Ghosty's blog, but if you need an incentive, just know that there's some fantastic prizes available up for grabs. Not just that though... everyone who takes part in the event itself will be treated to a fantastic evening up at Copper Dragon after the final judging of the competition.

Time to show people the skills that local home brewers have!

Get those kettles and mash tuns warming...

REVOLUTIONS BREWING COMPETITION - WINNER AND UPDATES

Slightly belated congratulations to group member Peter Hindle for his victory in our first homebrew competition, held in conjunction with Revolutions Brewing Co. Here's what Mark Seaman of Revolutions had to say about the process:

"We were very pleased with the overall standard of entries. The judging panel comprised Andrew and myself, Kevin and Ruth who put on Headingley BF, Rhian from Arcadia and Colin Williams, who is our CAMRA brewery liaison officer. (Leigh Linley was moving house, so had to withdraw.)

"We met at Mr. Foley’s where Dean acted as our impartial pourer to ensure a genuinely blind tasting. It was a close run affair at the top of the table but the top three were...

1 – Peter Hindle - @pchindle – with a pale golden bitter, featuring a big peppery / hoppy finish
2 – Matt Lovatt - @braukerl – an interesting beer with a hint of coffee
3 – Gary Lester-Olivier - @bosium – a ruby / chestnut ale with more than a hint of 80/- about it.

"We scheduled the brewday with Peter for next Tuesday 13th. He seems excited about it, so that’s good. 30 odd casks of Replicas should be hitting the pubs just at the end of March"

Congratulations again to Peter, and we look forward to the launch of this beer shortly.

April Meet: Guest Speaker Announced

We're pleased to announce that for our third meet on Thursday 26th April, a brewing contingent from Ilkley Brewery Co. will be joining us. In contrast to the last meetings Barley Wine master class, the subject matter of Ilkley's talk will be on brewing low gravity, hop-forward beers, and for those who want to take part to then go away and put it into practice.  In a similar format to the Revolutions Brewing Co. competition, the brewer of the best beer (judged by Ilkley) will be invited over to their brewery for a brewday.

If you would like to join us, and for those of you who plan to bring beer, please can you let us know by commenting on this post.

They venue is Mr Foleys and I'll post a runnning order nearer the date, although it will read much the same as last time, be there to start for 7pm.



Cheers!

April Meet Up: Call For Dates

This is an advance call for dates for our April meet. Thursday's 19th or 26th are the preferred dates, and we have another interesting guest lined up. I know April is a way off, but if you could respond with your preference then we can confirm with the guest.

Similar format to the other meetings - 6 people presenting their beers to the group, with the option of bringing along bottles to try after the more structured bit of the night.

So, if anyone has beers that they'd like to bring along to present to the group, let us know below. We'll use the same format of first come first served, but if the number of beers goes beyond 6, we'll draw lots on the night.

Venue: Mr Foleys.

More details to follow nearer the date.

Revolutions Brewing Co. & Leeds Homebrew - Competition

With the aim of creating yet more interest in West Yorkshire brewing, Revolutions Brewing Co., in collaboration with Leeds Homebrew, have announced a homebrew competition.

The prize is a full 8BBL commercial brew (reserving the right to make any necessary technical tweaks) of the winner in a competition to produce the best 4.5% homebrewed beer of any style - the winner can of course come and participate in the brewday.

It will be released to market in April 2012 as part of our Rewind 33 series under the name REPLICAS (referencing the 1979 Tubeway Army album) - the beer will certainly appear in pubs throughout Yorkshire and further afield, including The CRAFT Beer Co. in London, Mr Foleys in Leeds and The Maltings in York, where the winner can enjoy a pint and bask in the warm glow of craft brew glory! It should also appear at beer festivals such as Rothwell, Doncaster, Leicester and Newark. We will encourage the winner to participate in publicity activities.

Here are the rules, such as they are:

1. The beer should be brewed to a target ABV of 4.5%.

2. It can be any style – (except Milk Stout please – we’re doing one in February!)

3. It must use only European hops – a) to test you all on a level playing field and, b) to avoid any issues of scarcity of US / NZ versions when it comes to the commercial brew.

4. You must divulge your full recipe and method. We reserve the right to “tweak” it for technical and / or commercial reasons.

5. We will set up a judging panel of people outside the group, including ourselves, to determine the winner.

6. Entries must be submitted in bottles by 28th February 2012 – judging will take place on February 29th – the brewday will be in Castleford in early March.

7. Please submit your bottles with your name, contact details and recipe to us at the address below, or alternatively drop them at Mr Foleys or Beer-Ritz marked for our attention.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FIRE UP YOUR BREW KETTLES!

Revolutions Brewing Co, Unit B7, Whitwood Enterprise Park, Speedwwell Road, Whitwood, Castelford, WF10 5PX

Running Order - Thursday 12th January

Some info about this Thursday's meet-up [edit]AT MR FOLEY'S ALE HOUSE IN LEEDS[/edit]. The hour slot from 19.00 to 20.00 is going to be filled by Dominic from Thornbridge Brewery, who will be making a presentation on how to brew barley wine, answering any questions thrown at him, and should time permit, performing some live kitten juggling.

There will also be a special announcement about a collaboration between the Leeds Homebrew group and Revolutions Brewing Co. Please try to be "in da house" by 7pm for this.

The 8 - 9 slot will be for panel tasting of members beers. We will be limiting this to 6 x 10 minute slots, so if we have more than 6 people wanting to present to group, we will draw lots on the night. Please bring enough beer for a dozen or 15 samples - maybe a couple of litres? There is always the option to share and critique after the structured part of the evening is over.

So in summary:

18:30 Arrive and get a beer
19:00 Welcome / Talk / Q&A
20:00 Tasting of members' beers
21:00 Meeting adjourned. Carousing optional.

Broadford Aire Porter

Grist:
Maris Otter Pale Malt - 76.1%
Brown Malt - 8.4%
Crystal Malt - 7.9%
Black Malt - 3.8%
Flaked Oats - 3.8%

Hops:
Galena 10g – 12.0% @90mins
Galena 10g – 12.0% @30mins
First Gold 10g – 7.8% @10mins
First Gold 40g – 7.8% @0mins (steep 20 mins)

Final Volume: 19 Litres

Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.2% ABV
Bitterness: 31.4 IBU
Colour: 28.9 SRM
Yeast: Safale US-05
Mash: 90mins @ 66c
Boil: 90mins
Water treatment: In the HLT 1 camden tablet. In the mash 3.4g gypsum.  In the boil 4.4g gypsum, 3.8g epsom salts. 
As with most brew days, there is at least one thing that will go wrong, in this instance it was the last minute realisation that either I made a mistake on my order and ending up with Flaked Barley rather than Flaked Oats. 

Moving on from this minor glitch I used what I turned the HLT on and weighed my malts out.  The mash was the next thing to go slightly wayward, when you have your 4 year old being helpful and when you are trying to help cook the dinner and get the kids to bed, things tend to slip.  I had the HLT to strike temp of 78C and added a kettle of boiling water to the mash tun to pre-heat it.  Time passed. I came to mash in, but forget to re-heat the tun, this meant that I had to mess around to get the mash temp to my target 66C.

Mashing out, HLT temp set to 78C again and a quick temperature check on the tun told me that something had gone wrong.  It was 62C, I usually only lose a degree over 90 mins.  Carried on with the brew, batch sparging.  I usually try to take hydrometer readings throughout the mash, but decided to try to do this by tasting the wort.  This worked in that I got some experience of this method.  I stopped sparging with 3L water left in the HLT.  Got the boil on, 90 minute boil with the additions detailed above.  FOr my 19L brew length I collected 13.6L at around 1.058 (temp corrected).  I decided to liquor back and added 5L boiled/treated liquor. giving me a final volume of 18.6L at OG of 1.044.  Pitched the US-05 yeast when the temp hit 23C Happy with this, but there are some learning points:

• Check your ingredients well before your brewday.
• Always pre-heat mash tun with boiling water.
• When the mash tun is half empty, correct the strike temp? or at least give the tun some external insulation.
• When sparging, use the calculated liquor volume to avoid having to liquor back so much.

You can see the rest of the pics here.

Looking forward to the next Leeds Homebrew meeting 12th January 2012.

Contributor: David Bishop (@broadfordbrewer)