Hive of Activity

Plenty of welding, cutting, brazing, dieing, crimping and buffing going on at the new brewery. Scaffolding and ladders, pipes and pipe-bridges, overstruts and understruts, flying buttresses and suspended supports...

Looking over the top of the mash tun and wort copper from above the office area. A whole mess of pipes: cold liquor, hot liquor, steam, hot wort, sparge, CIP, condensate, gas - and all in pretty colours too!

Can't wait to get going, but still a great deal to do yet - grist case and grist conveyor, copper chimney, boiler gas connection, boiler chimney, refrigeration system, heat exchanger, cold store, mash tun rake drive gear etc etc...

Men at Work on Big Fuse Box

At long last after many months the new electricity substation for the new brewery has been installed. The electricity people have been digging up the road and laying new cables and are finishing off the connections.

What a modern substation looks like inside - more of a big switch and fuse box really.

The lads pondering where the really big wirecutters are.

Our yeast makes great bread, pies and buns as well as award-winning beer

Swedish kanelbullar or cardamom and cinnamon whirls, straight out the oven. Perfect with a cup of coffee and a chat with friends - Fika as they say in Sweden.

My weekly loaf of Czech-style bread - 800g wholemeal wheat 200g wholemeal rye and a spoonful of aniseed. Dobrou chut'!

My 50/50 wheat/rye loaf - slow proving (rising) over a day and a night in my cold kitchen - a dense moist loaf and slightly sourdough-ish from the wild yeasts and lactics on the rye flour.

Apple and bramble pie with yeast pastry - lower fat than shortcrust but just as scrumptious.

Two apple and damson pies or pirogs - Russian-style yeast pastry turnover pies. They look a bit darker and shinier from the beaten eggwash glaze.

All of the above go really well with Ossian, although the sweet pastries and buns work well with the richness and maltiness of Lia Fail. Well here's to the joys of yeast - Slàinte!

Ken

Shipment of Inveralmond Beer off to Stockholm

Hej!

We've just sent a shipment of our lovely ale off to Stockholm in Sweden to be on sale at Akkurat in Södermalm. It's an excellent pub/restaurant/music venue in a really lovely part of Stockholm and well worth a visit for its amazing choice of beer. The knäckebröd or local crispbread is fab too!

Hej Då och Skål!

Ken

Ossian in London

Was down in London last weekend to go to the London Scottish Regiment's 150th Messines dinner, held to celebrate the Regiment's tradition, soldiers and fallen. There I was able to sup on the lovely Ossian which as ever was on fine form and it was great to see so many of the Jocks, as we call the serving soldiers, enjoying a pint or three.
The top table with the First World War Memorial behind.

I had a very good evening catching up with chums of old and even managed to catch the last train back to my digs at Richmond with an exciting change of train at Clapham Junction, which seemed to me to have hundreds of platforms - all looking exactly the same....

View from Upstairs

Here's very proud Managing Director Fergus standing on the mezzanine floor above the offices with the new fermenters with their shiny copper refrigeration pipework and general fitting out work in progress behind.

A view of the FV gantry -transportation bubble wrap still on the vessels themselves. The gantry is to be extended to the left over the copper pipes to meet up with mezzanine floor and the ladder is to be replaced by a proper staircase, complete with landing and naughty step for recidivist brewers!

Our valve hoard! Now should the handles point to the left or the right...?
Ill let you know my decision next week.

Cheers,

Ken

Pipework in Progress

At long last the gas folk have laid a lovely yellow gas pipe from the main over the road to our new brewery. The pipe leads into our shiny British Racing Green meter housing and finishes in a blanked-off end. Still waiting on the meter itself, but the tunnel for the gas pipe into the brewery building is to be dug out tomorrow.

Shiny copper pipes for the internal brewhouse water supply and tank refrigeration system which are being installed all around the walls at high level.

The new grist case awaiting some modifications to increase its capacity to 1 tonne of malt grist - basically an extra strip of stainless steel (316 for the technical) 300mm wide welded onto the sides.

I'll keep you posted with any updates in the new brewery, but certainly at the moment it's very exciting.

Cheerio for now, Ken

Baka baka liten kaka!

Hej!

Had a wonderful time over in beautiful Stockholm, met some great people and drank some fabulous beer! The Beer & Whisky Festival was amazing - plenty of beer from all over Sweden and the World (including of course our own Ossian and Lia Fail in bottle). For the dram lover also loads of whisky too from Denmark, Sweden, North America and even Scotland as well.

Many thanks (Tak så mycket, Madde) to our importer Brewery International Sweden for the excellent hospitality and pub tour.

Tasted lovely Swedish beer from Jämtlands, Nynäshamn Steam Brewery, Nils Oscar from Nyköping near Skåvsta Airport, Gotland from that Baltic island and Åbro from Vimmerby a couple of hundred kms south of Stockholm.

Nice food too - really good rye bread, gravadlax (salmon marinated in dill), lingonberries, herring - fried or marinated - and cracking knäckebröd (crispbread). Found a farmers' market in Södermalm in Katarina Bangata (off Götgatan) where I could have bought bags of everything from cheese to crayfish.

One thing about Sweden I liked very much was fika - the institution of having a cup of coffee and a sweet bun in a cozy cafe over hours of chatting. My favourite was the cardamom flavoured cinnamon bun or kanelbulle.

I'm inspired to bake my own Swedish buns, which are made from yeast pastry - hence the title of this blog from the Swedish nursery rhyme - Bake, bake, little cake!

Njuta mat och dryck! Skål!

Enjoy your food and drink! Slàinte!

Stockholm Whisky & Beer Festival

Hej!

Tomorrow the good lady and I are off to Stockholm for a few days. There is an abundance of design shops and galleries she wants to see but most exciting of all is the Whisky and Beer Festival.

Our Swedish distributor has a stand and we'll be helping out on the Saturday, so maybe we'll see some of you there.

Been watching Wallander on the TV and going through the Ingmar Bergman film collection to brush up on my Swedish - seen The Seventh Seal 6 times, only one more to go but my chess is still rubbish!

Hej Då och Skål!

Cheerio and Cheers!

Bryggeri Tur i Svenska

Hej! Välkommen till Inveralmond Bryggeriet.

Jag talar inte mycket svenska men jag ska försöka att skriva det här bra för våra svenska vänner, som Lars och hans kompisar fran Helsingborg, som var i bryggeriet nyligen. Vi brygger öl i tre etapper: Mäskning, Vörtkökning och Jäsning.

Mäskning - Vi krossar färdiggrodda malt, som Fiona förbereder här

och blandar det med varmt vatten i Mäskning Tanken.
Stärkelsen omvandlass till socker och vörten, som vättkan kallas, får en söktaktig smak.

Vörten flöden från mäskning tanken till vörtkokare

Vörtkökning - För att få sötwörten besk, kokas den tillsammans med humlen i timme och en halv. Så ju mer humle, desto beskare öl. Utöver humle ger ölet doft - därför så mer humle, desto doftare öl.
Här i Inveralmond Bryggeriet vi tillsätter mycket humle Jäsning - Vörten gå in på Jästanken, när vi tillsätter vårt eget jäst. Tio liter av jäst i varje brygd. Här vi har överjäsning, som tar tre dagari i arton och en halv Celsius. När jäsning är klar, har jästen stigit upp till ytan av vörten och det ser ut som ett beige-brunt bomullstäcke. Smaken på skummet är strävt beskt , eftersom jästen skum innehåller många hop bittra föreningar. Överjäsning få öl med fruktig och blommig karaktär.

Jastank
Efterjäsningen sker sedan i kylt (6 grader Celsius) mognande tank - i vårt bryggeri bara två eller tre dagar tills ölet bedöms vara redo att gå in i tunnor, eftersom överjäsning öl är fort öl och behöver inte en lång mognad. Mognande Tankar

Då vi fyller enkelt fåtta med ölet och bort till puben.
Heja! Skål!

Ossian in its natural habitat

Found a few pictures involving Ossian - one of my favourites. 'S e leann blasda a th'ann - it's tasty beer. This picture was from a barbeque on the Black Isle on a glorious summer's day.

Your local friendly neighbourhood brewmaster about to sample the fine Ossian in bottle complementing the olives and crisps on the table at a luncheon in the Sidlaw Hills.

Three happy drinkers from the Atholl Highlanders praising the speed at which the Ossian firkin was emptied at the Atholl Gathering 2009 - and hoping desperately that there was another cask in the tent.

A rooftop cask with a sensational pint awaiting the thirsty photographer at a housewarming in Perth a fortnight ago. The spire in the background belongs to St. Leonard-in-the-Fields Church. The firkin (of 72 pints) was empty after only an hour and a half!

It's a Foam Party!

I thought I'd show you a few photos taken inside FV6 last week at the start of the fermentation of Ossian brew #2166. The above picture was taken 2 hours after the wort was all in the tank - you can see the yeast head staring to cover the surface of the wort.

1 hour later and the stiff peaks of the yeast foam start poking out.

Another hour gone by and the whole head of yeast is looking like the Cuillins.

3 hours after the first pictiure and the Cairngorms are about to climb out of the fermenter! Shut the lid quick!