Clockwork Beer Company

Voucher deals - what's not to like?  A couple of months back we picked up vouchers for a short tour of the microbrewery at the Clockwork Beer Company on Clarkston Road in Glasgow, and on Friday night we headed along to have a look around, have a few samples, and grab a burger.

I hadn't been sure what to expect, but I'll admit I was impressed before the tour even began - we arrived early, and grabbed a pint of their Amber Ale to try which hit the right kind of notes for me, with a big hoppy hit from a relatively low-strength beer (3.8%).  After that tasty start, we were taken on the brief tour by Declan, the in-house brewer, who has worked there for just over a year following time at Brewdog and (if I remember correctly) Offbeat Brewery in Crewe.  That's a pretty decent CV, by the sounds of things, and he certainly seems passionate about creating good beer.

Brewing just twice a week, he's creating their core range - Amber Ale, Red Alt, Clockwork Lager - along with a monthly seasonal brew.  On at the moment is Thunder & Lightning, which seems like a stronger and maltier version of Red Alt, but we also had a taste of Hopscotch, a nice hoppy pale ale which is currently conditioning and should be on tap soon.

So how about those beers, then?  Well, the taste of Hopscotch was damn promising - more bitter than their Amber Ale with an even more pronounced hoppiness.  It was lovely!  The Red Alt was a decent malty red ale, nothing more than that, but the Thunder & Lightning had a bit more flavour going on and would probably deserve another tasting or two.  The Clockwork Lager, on the other hand, wasn't for me - I'm not a fan of lagers at the best of times, and this is an extremely sweet one which just didn't do anything at all for my tastebuds.  I'm sure it'll be fine for some people, just not for me!

To be fair, reading between the lines I get the impression that Declan would love to push the boundaries a bit and create some more experimental brews, but at the end of the day he needs to make beers that'll sell onsite since they don't bottle anything at the moment and I got the impression that they don't supply any other pubs.  I understand the need to stick to the basics from a business standpoint, but I'm sure some more left-field brews would probably find an appreciative market in such a busy pub and amongst the lovers of good beer across the city.  It'd also be interesting to see them think about bottling a few of their beers - the Amber Ale in particular is one that I'd happily pick up in the shops if bottles were available.

Is it worth a visit?  Definitely.  Decent beer, a good ambiance and - before I forget - good enough pub grub too.  I'll certainly be back to try some of the different seasonal brews in the future.

Homebrew #2 - Brewday!

In goes the malt!

On Sunday, Brewday 2 finally arrived - our first attempt at brewing from grain rather than from a kit.  We fancied a pale ale, so since we're complete beginners at brewing from scratch we adapted a recipe from a book, using 6lbs of pale malt and 113g of 3 different hops - Target for bittering and Fuggles and Goldings for aroma.  A proper English-style IPA - or at least that was the plan!

Having thoroughly cleaned & sterilised everything we got the kettles on and put around 13 litres of water into the boiler (or mash tun, which sounds a bit fancy for what's essentially a plastic bucket with a heating element in the bottom!).  We got this up to 75 degrees C, then tipped in the malt, using a sparging bag to avoid the malt caking the heating element and burning, and gave it a stir.  Things seemed a bit too thick, so we stuck in a couple more litres of water and then stabilised the temperature at 70 degrees.

Oooh, hot...

After 45 minutes at 70 with regular stirring and temperature-checking, we upped the temperature to 75 for 15 mins before draining the wort off into the fermentation bin. We then boiled up a couple of kettles (around 3.5 litres or so) and used this to sparge the grain - not a word I was familiar with before now, but it seems to mean just pouring more water through the grain to get out as much of the sugars as possible.

At this point we had about 15 litres of wort which we returned to the boiler (freshly emptied of grain, of course!) and then began to boil.  Once it reached boiling point we tossed in the Target hops, which created the most amazing hoppy smell to infuse the kitchen.  Other family members may disagree about whether the smell was amazing or not, right enough!

Vacuum packed hops

After 45 mins boiling we added the Goldings, and 5 minutes later we dropped in half of the Fuggles - keeping the remainder for dry-hopping once the fermentation is complete.  A further 10 minutes of boiling finished this part of the job, so we drained off the boiled wort.  At this point we'd lost several litres of steam, so we topped up to 20 litres with cold water to start to bring the temperature down.  The aim was to get it to 18 degrees as quickly as possible - to stop whatever chemical reactions are happening, or so I'm led to believe.  So we broke out the cooling coil next, and at this point everything got a little silly...

The cooled wort!

The cooling coil is basically a copper coil with a length of hose on each end.  The premise is simple - sit it in the wort, run cold water through it and it'll reduce the temperature of the wort pretty quickly.  Problem was that we hadn't tried this in advance and it turned out that the hose attachment was quite short and wouldn't fit the tap on the kitchen sink so we had to ferry the full fermentation bin outside and connect the coil up to the outside tap while keeping a lid over the bin to try to avoid any contamination.  Thankfully it cooled down pretty quickly, but it's not an experience I'd like to try again so we'll be making some amendments to the cooling coil before our next brew!

In goes the yeast!

So at this point we were pretty much finished - it was just a case of adding the yeast, sticking the fermentation bin lid & heater in place, and putting it through out of the way to get on with the fermentation.  First, of course, we measured the specific gravity which came out around 1.045 - meaning a potential alcohol content of around 6%.  A good strength for an IPA, hopefully.

So that was that - several hours work condensed into a few short paragraphs.  No doubt we made plenty of mistakes and we've certainly learned a lot about how we can improve our process for next time.  The most important part, of course, will be the taste test which will hopefully come in a few days.  It's now been happily fermenting for 4 days or so, so we'll check the gravity every day and hopefully be able to put it into the pressure barrel in the early part of next week.  At that point we'll dry-hop it with the remaining hops, but we'll be able to have a taste first and see how it's turned out.

And I tell you, I can't wait!

Hops, hops and more hops!

With brewday planned for Sunday, we've ordered up all of the requisite ingredients and are just awaiting delivery.  After a bit of discussion, we've decided to brew two IPAs - one this Sunday, and one in a couple of weeks once the first one has fermented out.  We'll barrel each of them and see how they taste before deciding on the recipe for our third brew later in the summer which we intend to bottle.

More detailed ingredient information will follow on Sunday once we've finished brewing, but suffice it to say that I'm excited about the hop choices.

For this week's brew we're going for an English IPA, using Target hops to bitter it and a combination of Fuggles and Golding to add aroma and flavour.  They're great hops, but I've always thought them a little boring since they're used in so many fairly traditional beers.  What we're hoping is that by adding enough of them it'll result in a nicely smooth and flavoursome IPA which restores a bit of faith in good old English hops!

The second brew, however, is a bit more exciting - we're going to throw in a bunch of New World hops and aim at a mightily bitter and hoppy IPA which is just the kind I tend to enjoy drinking.  Alongside the ever-reliable Cascade - which is used in some of my favourite beers - we're also using Green Bullet, Kohatu and Pacific Jade.  I'll be honest, it's a total experiment - I've read a lot about the hops but it'll be the first time we've used any of them so hopefully the combination works.

I tell you, Sunday can't come soon enough - can't wait to get brewing!

A small experiment in which the de-label-ability of beer bottles is tested...

So the good news is that my dad and I are gearing up for our next couple of home-brews - it's been a while since our pre-Christmas brew, but we've been planning and investing in some new kit and are tentatively aiming to get the brew underway next Sunday.  More details nearer the time!

We've decided to do two brews in quick succession, with the aim of kegging the first one and then try bottling the second one.  We reckon we'll need around 60 330ml bottles for this, so we have been manfully forcing down a selection of beers over the past few weeks in order to have enough bottles.  As you can imagine, this has been a terrible hardship...

Having built up a supply of a good couple of dozen bottles, I decided to spend some time de-labelling them today.  I'd thought this would be a relatively simple process.  I was wrong - some breweries use labels which are so heavily glued in place that it's a nightmare trying to get them unpeeled!  So, for anyone trying to go through a similar process, here's my scientifically accurate top tips for which beers you should seek out and which you should avoid!

The hit list

• Brewdog - turns out their labels are actually plastic, so a quick 5 minute soak and the labels elegantly peel off in one piece.  Only one of the bottles I had left any glue residue, the rest were as clean as a whistle.
• St Andrew's Brewing Company - paper labels, but not too heavily glued so they come off easily after soaking - albeit they break up into several pieces.
• Mikkeller - mostly paper labels (or those that I had were, anyway) but these came off great after a quick soak.

The shit list

• Redchurch Brewery - good beer (their IPA, if I remember right) but the label was extremely heavily glued into place.  A total nightmare to remove.
• Kernel - on the plus side they have small labels, but pretty securely glued on and took some effort to get off.

The hit and miss list

• Fyne Ales - their Sanda Black IPA label came off in a trice, but Zombier was a hardier one and caused some problems.  Seems appropriate, somehow.

So there we go - take from that what you will!  Time to go and add another bottle to the stock, I think - I've got a Kernel Centennial IPA waiting for me in the fridge!