Brewery tours are go at Inveralmond Howff!

Tours have been running hot at the brewery here and top of the bill on the tasting charts is the lovely Duncan's IPA with its charming aroma from Czech Saaz and East Kent Goldings hops following up with a full malty palate and ending up with a lingering dry bitter finish. Yum yum.

On Friday we had a fine group from the Central Bar in St. Andrews gracing our wee howff - their pub was having a refurbishment so they came through to see how we make beer here and go through a tutored tasting. Here they are enjoying the atmosphere -

On Saturday we were host to a great group from the State Bar in Glasgow. Next time you are in this neck of the woods, do drop in and see Jason and his mum. They run a great old-fashioned pub which is a joy to be in. On Holland Street just near the Kings behind all the Sauchiehall Street madness.

Finally our triptych of tours ended on Tuesday with visit from the Milnathort Round Table with their super motto - Adopt, Adapt and Improve. We've taken this to our hearts and are looking forward to welcoming more to the howff (our adopted nickname for the brewery tap) to show off our scrumptious brews.

Slàinte, Ken

Lia Fail in Keg gets Bronze Medal and goes globetrotting!

We've had a busy time of it at the brewery these last two months - plenty of kegs of Lia Fail have been got ready to go off to customers in Finland and Australia. This is the first time we've sent off kegs to these places - bottles yes, but draught is a different situation, so it means plenty of cold-conditioning at -1 C, followed by filtering out the yeast and unwanted protein hazes, before racking the beer from the Bright Beer Tank into our PET recyclable kegs. The Finnish shipment will be arriving in a week or so but the Australians in Perth, Western Australia, will have to wait 6 weeks after the slow sea voyage.

A wee plus for us is that our keg Lia Fail for export garnered a Bronze Medal at the SIBA National Craft Keg Competition held at Hereford this weekend.

So I'm going to crack open a bottle of Lia Fail in celebration right now and settle down to a good read of Kalewala, taikka Wanhoja Karjalan Runoja Suomen kansan muinosista ajoista ('The Kalevala, or old Karelian poems about ancient times of the Finnish people'), the English translation admittedly, with the sounds of The Night of the Wolverine from the great Dave Graney, fab Australian musician, on the stereo.

Gippis & Slainte, Ken

Tanker Filling Station Revealed

Here's a wee shot of the back of a beer tanker. This one is filling up with Ossian along the red hose from Wednesday's transfer to tanker from Bigger Bertha, our 120 bbl conditioning vessel, and the 30 bbl FV5. The blue-handled valve controls the back or top pressure in the tank as it slowly releases the pressure built up inside as the beer fills up, with the released pressure (CO2/air) coming out to drain through the buff hose. We usually fill the tanker with about 1/2 bar pressure inside. The small red valve is for taking samples from the tanker. The T-piece on the inlet is to allow the first yeasty part of the beer flow to drain rather than go inside. The stainless steel valve to the right of the blue valve is the on CIP (cleaning in place) line which is connected to sprayheads inside the tanker.

When the tanker is full, fob or foam then beer comes out of the drain hose and it's then time to close all the valves and clean up! Filling a 150bbl tanker takes us about 2 hours, always checking and watching and listening...and looking forward to the finished bottles!

Slàinte, Ken

The Italian Job - part 2 - What have the Romans ever done for us?

Happy New Year to one and all! Let's hope it's good for all too!

Back at Brewery Mansions we've been very busy during the Festive period, getting beer ready to send off to Rome, Italy. Draught Beer, which is even more exciting than bottles and even more messy! And the two beers, Lia Fail and Ossian, are going in one-way 30 litre PET kegs, which are a great environmental boon as they save so much on transportation demands. Our Italian importer has been very pleased with our Lia Fail and Ossian in bottle and now has placed an order for the beer in keg. Which means cranking up the filter, shown below, with its filter sheets, bright beer-out sight glass and the side of the beer-out pressure gauge.

Keg beer demands extra attention for the beer, so we've been cold-conditioning the beers at -1 Celsius for two weeeks to encourage the precipitation of haze-forming proteins before running the beer through a plate and frame pad filter (at -1 C, hence all the condensation) to remove the yeast along with the haze, adjusting the carbonation to make sure it is at the correct level (4.4 g/l for the tecchies) and then, on the following day, racking the brilliantly starbright beer into the PET kegs. Here's a snap I took today of the flowplate with the 'rough' or cloudy beer flowing through - the glass above is my sample to ensure the clarity, of course...

What the Romans have ever done for us, is, indeed, to enjoy our beer! Grazie!
Slàinte + Salute! Ken

Christmas time approaches and the shop is open!

Only two days to Christmas, but the shop is open and we're getting better at using the card machine with all the good folk popping in for minikegs of Santa's Swallie for the Festive Season.

We're open for off-sales tomorrow 10-4pm and even on Christmas Eve itself (Saturday 24th) with yours truly between 12 - 3pm. On Saturday I'll be doing tastings in the shop, perhaps with my puppet alter ego (thanks Johny & Sìma from Liberec in Bohemia who carved and clothed me). As you can see I am quite partial to a fine glass of Ossian...

Look forward to seeing you.

Have a good Christmas and be good to your beer!

Slàinte, Nollaig Chridheil is Bliadhna Mhath Ùr!

Ken

Beer is Art - Can Art be Beer?

I've often thought that Brewing is an Art, some say a Black Art, but I would tend to promote the concept of the result of Brewing, that is, Beer, being Art, since the activity of Brewing itself has more than a touch of Alchemy - turning base materials into something precious. Beer undoubtedly is a thing of beauty, deemed valuable and, moreover, gives satisfaction too, and it could be argued that there can be nothing more enticing after a hard day's work than a foaming glass of ale, created by the brewer as artist for his or her patron, the customer.

Whether Art is Beer is a more difficult question to answer, but I have been assisted in this task by the above installation. I took the photo in Prague, at Klub Architekturu, in Bethlehem Place, back in April this year. The tank drilled out with hundreds of holes to give it a giraffe-like look is a former 200hl lagering tank. Beer would mature inside for months before heading off for racking into kegs. Here as an Art Installation it underscores the power and might of the yeast in the maturing beer, creating the bubbles of carbon dioxide at the near freezing temperatures of the lagering cellar over the 2 to 3 months of maturation. The holes cut into the the tank represent the these bubbles. Art as Beer? Well I think so.

I'm off to Prague tomorrow morning to bring back some of this incredible yeast so that we can brew some more of our Sunburst Pilsner and if I'm lucky I might find some more art to share with you.

Na Zdravi,

Ken

From the Gleam of Burnished Copper to the Starbright Sheen of Stainless Steel

Came across some old snaps from my brewing past the other day so I thought I'd share them with you.

AD 1995. A young(ish) Ken standing beside his pride and glory - the 100hl wort kettle and lauter tun of the Redback Brewery in Melbourne. The copper brewhouse was a German 1951 Ziemann beauty and I used to brew the award-winning South German-style wheat beer 'Redback', a Munich Dark Lager and a Bohemian pilsner, basking in the copper gleam! The copper had to be polished with huge tubs of Brasso every year - a two-day labour of love...

AD 2000. Cleaning the original Inveralmond mash tun at the old premises. Ah, the power of the green scratchy pad! But as you are probably well aware, cleanliness is next to Godliness. This is the mash tun that won us the 2001 Champion Beer of Scotland.

AD 2011. Beside Big Bertha with her 100 hl of Blackfriar due for Finland. This is the tank that produced the Blackfriar that won Gold at the SIBA 2011 Strong Bitter Competition in Edinburgh last week.
You could perhaps call this piece from the full head of curly brown locks to the glistening pate of receding hairlines!

Ah memories...

Slainte, Ken

Santa's Swallie grainout is Go!

Here's an action shot of Duncan, our latest addition to the Downriver Barleymen - an anagram for guess what? Answers on a postcard, please.

But to our blog of today...He's graining out or removing the spent grain or draff from the mash tun and he's holding a shovel, yet he's not digging out the mash tun, as we have commissioned a big auger, or Archimedes' Screw, for taking the spent grain directly from the mash tun into the hopper and then down to the bottom of the auger and up through the wall and then dropping into the awaiting trailer, as shown below.

We're thrilled with the auger and how it works and it means that the inside of the brewery is much tidier and cleaner without the big boxes that we used to dig the grain out into and furthermore it gives us more floor space to put more fermenters/conditioning tanks/malt pallets...Hooray!

For the beer enthusiasts out there, the spent grain in the pictures is from this year's first brew of Santa's Swallie.

I think this means that the festive season appproaches, so I'd better get on with the Xmas presents...

Slàinte, Ken

ps Anagram unscrambled - Inveralmond Brewery

Ossian on Tour in Outer Hebrides

Was over in cycling and holidaying in Barra recently for what we call in Gaelic am mìos pògan. Translated it means The Month of Kisses, which you'll know as Honeymoon. I was very chuffed to find that the good lady had packed a few bottles of Ossian into our saddle bags. The beer was greatly enjoyed with our sandwiches at the top of the neolithic and bronze age hillforts that we visited. That's the mighty Atlantic behind me standing on top of the very dramatic and naturally-fortified Dùn Bàn, a few miles west of Castlebay.

I had thought about taking over a polypin on my bike (as below when I delivered beer to the Gordon Duncan Memorial National Treasure concert in Perth Concert Hall) on the ferry from Oban to Barra, but decided in the end that my main tipple would be whisky as Barra was where Whisky Galore was filmed (although the island in Compton Mackenzie's book is Todday)and because the 36 pint polypin might have been all drunk during the 7 hour ferry crossing! So the Ossian bottles were a real treat. Tapadh leat mo leannan-sa bhriagha! Thanks my lovely darling!

Back at the brewery now and getting on with sorting out draught Lia Fail for export to Sweden.

In the meantime Happy Cycling! And Monthes of Kisses!

Slàinte,

Ken

Out with the Old - In with the New...

We had a few wee tears welling up in our collective eyes this morning, as our old 10-barrel brewery - mash tun, copper, hot and cold liquor tanks together with 3 FVs plus assorted odds and ends - was loaded on to the lorry above. Destination South to Paul at Northumbrian Real Ale, whom we wish the best of fortune and fun brewing great beer on what was really good kit for us. We did over 2000 brews on it over 12 years before we outgrew it and got to know it all quite well. But nothing stays the same, so we're getting ready inside the brewery to commission our new 120 barrel conditioning tank below (CT7 at the moment) which is being constructed up in Drummuir (in a former distillery, by the way) by the same folk who made the FVs on the lorry above. The dimpling on the sides forms part of the cooling jackets, which will enable us to keep the maturing beer cold, but they'll be hidden by the 50mm of insulation and a thin stainless steel outer skin.

So here's a toast to the old and a welcome to the new!

Slàinte, Ken

Bridalezillas Wedding Extravaganza...

There was a wedding a few weeks back, which gave rise to that proud and noble institution, the bridale or wedding-ale.

As the tale goes in that great Finnish epic 'The Kalevala', the bridale must be brewed before the wedding feast - (Chapter 20, Slaughtering an Ox and Brewing), so at the beginning of August, our last brew of Inkie Pinkie for this summer was decreed as the Bridale for your humble correspondent's wedding to the Lovely Lady Arlene.

On the Day Itself, There was The Exchange of Vows, The Cutting of The Cakes (Dundee Cake on the flashing cake-stand and a Chocolate Sponge for the youngsters)  and perhaps the most vital ceremony of all, since there is brewing in the blood - The Tapping of The Cask, complete with tap-bearing bride and mallet-wielding groom being marched around the hall by the Pipe-Major before the happy deed was done.

With a certain ivory dress in close proximity it's a good thing I've had plenty of experience at putting in cask taps...

A Bonnie Bride, a Delicious Bridale and a Great Cèilidh!

Slàinte

Ken

Wood Fired Beer!

Here's a wee pic of my first brewery - Leederville, Perth, Western Australia, circa 1991. Wood-fired - no electric or gas, just a firebox for heating.

We've been having a bit of a home-brew discussion in the brewery this week, as 3 of us are regular practitioners of this dark art, so I had a look at home for some relevant snaps.

To those of a technical bent, there will be seen a mash tun, insulated with wood (1'' x 2'' dressed all-round for the carpenter amongst you), hydrometer, sparge liquor tank - with patented slotted spoon sparge distribution system - Redhead matches and pencil (why pink I cannot remember) for brewing notebook. The wort running into the 10 gallon copper cauldron - it's the old clothes washhouse copper in the shed at the bottom of my garden- was for an 120/- Edinburgh Strong Ale. The boil itself should have taken 90 minutes, but my pals and I were having so much fun chopping up the old blocks of jarrah, an Australian really hardwood, to feed the firebox underneath that the boil lasted four hours! Had to keep adding water to keep the gravity down....

The beer was called Flaming Copper Cauldron and had an adequate strength of 7.7% abv. Tasting it was like a leap back into Scotland's brewing heritage - strong, heady, dark, rich, malty and sweet, oh so sweet, but still luscious and lasting...I even won Homebrewer of the Year with it.

Times like these, oh they were the days...but now we have Blackfriar. Huzzah!

Slàinte, Ken