Trouble, the brewery cat

Recently Trouble Brewing invited Irish Craft Brewer to a barbecue and tour of their new brewery in Co. Kildare. Trouble along with Dungarvan is one of Ireland's newest craft breweries and both breweries are run by Irish craft brewer members. When I first joined Irish Craft Brewer a few years ago I went along to the first tasting night that they held in The Bull and Castle. That night I met Thom an enthusiastic home brewer who was studying brewing and hoping that one day he would open a brewery. Most home brewers have fanciful day dreams involving their very own brewery and brewing batches of wonderful beer but very few ever actually make that dream a reality. Thom along with Paul and Stephen who are also ICB members have done that very thing. I loved reading their blog as they battled with equipment, red tape and electrics while setting up the brewery. It certainly gives an insight into all the hard work and dedication it takes to turn the day dream into a reality.

Last Saturday we went along to L Mulligan Grocer where we boarded a bus bound for Trouble.  

The brewery is compact and they've really worked wonders getting all the necessary equipment into the building. Of course all us brewing fans were checking out the shiny mash tun and kettle and looking at all the pipes trying to work out what went where. We spotted the white board that we gave the guys as a present being put to good use. A white board is a handy thing in a brewery, it helps one keep track of what's in each fermenter and when it was put there. The festival bar that they use at events was pressed into service to slake the thirst of the home brewers. Many pints of Trouble's Ór were poured. It's a fabulous beer, I really like it. I think it is pretty much the perfect beer for summer drinking. There's a lovely soft malt profile with a fabulous slightly fruity hoppy bite. You should definitely try it if you get the chance. As always the Irish Craft Brewer list of pubs that stock Irish beer should help you find it.     

Paul worked his magic with the barbecue doling out burgers and sausages to some hungry home brewers. As he said you can't go wrong with beer and burgers. It was a great day but every great day can be made better with the addition of a kitten and some serious cuteness. Shortly after we arrived B spotted what she thought was a kitten running across the car park. She eventually arrived back with a small kitten. A mother cat was nowhere to be found and the guys said there are no houses nearby so the poor little thing was lost and abandoned. Milk was found and he lapped it all up so he was obviously hungry. Thom is a fan of cats and said if they were in the brewery more regularly he could have become the brewery cat. Thom eventually decided to bring the little guy home to see how he got on with his own cat. If they don't get on he'll find him a home. I'm hoping that the kitten will be called Trouble. From the pictures below you can see he definitely wants to be a brewery cat. 

 

 

Copper Coast Ale from Dungarvan

There are two geoparks on the island of Ireland and both of them feature on my very favourite places to go list but for very different reasons. Marble Arch Caves in County Fermanagh is a place I've been to so many times I've lost count. The caves extend far beyond the show cave and exploring them is a lot of fun. I particularly love Cascades cave with it's entrance maze leading to large river passages filled with decorations. It's a whole other world. You can read about Artur's cave diving exploits in the area over at his blog Hell and High Water, he's a bona fide explorer.

The Copper Coast, Irelands other geopark is down south near Dungarvan, County Waterford. I love the Copper Coast though I don't have a photo of anywhere in the area. Maybe its because I don't want to show anyone the place as it will ruin the most wonderful feature of the place which is the splendid isolation. When I worked shifts in Kilkenny I'd have days off midweek and I'd go to Annestown beach and fly my kite with the whole beach to myself. To me the Copper Coast conjures up images of beautiful deserted beaches with wonderful rock formations. When I heard Dungarvan Brewing Company had named their red ale Copper Coast I smiled at the perfect name.    

So to the beer at last, it pours a coppery brown colour with a nice cream head. It has a slightly yeasty caramel nose. It tastes of chocolate caramel with what tastes like a small amount of roast barley rounding it off. There's a nice bit of a hop bite which is great to find in a red ale. All too often red ales are far too much on the malty side of the equation so this is great to find. Though this is mostly a malt driven beer and it's nice and robust and not thin at all, another fault I find in many red ales. I loved the nice blurry carbonation which didn't ruin the beer by being too fizzy. 

This is a beer for drinking with a nice hearty dinner, like a stew, pie or duck. This beer will go with any kind of roasted meat as the caramel flavours in both will complement each other. Of course you could always drink it sitting on your favourite deserted beach watching the sun set.

The music I'd set this beer to is something that I always used to listen to while driving around the Copper Coast on a sunny day, Four Tet's album Rounds. I'd liken it to the track 'As Serious as your Life' as it's laid back, complex and a bit sweet like this beer. And no I'm not going to even try to explain how I match beer and music... 

Michael Jackson award for Irish beer at The Porterhouse

Last week I told you about the Porterhouse independent Irish beer and whiskey festival. As part of the festival the Michael Jackson award for best Irish beer would be decided by a panel of judges. For the second year I was part of the panel along with Sean of Irish Craft Beer and John Wilson, writer with The Irish Times. We settled into a window seat in the Porterhouse Central so that we could get good light much to the amusement of passing tourists, some of whom stopped to puzzle at why three people were drinking beer and writing things down. This year the line up had expanded a bit and the judging was held in two venues, first Porterhouse Central and later Porterhouse Temple Bar.

We started off with ales and tasted most of them in Porterhouse central. There were a lot of fresh hoppy golden ales on show and I really liked them. A lot of work and care has obviously been put in by the brewers recently. An advantage to blind tasting is that you have no preconceptions. If the beer is bad on the day you just mark it as you see fit. As you don't know what the beer is you can't forgive it and mark it up by saying to yourself that it usually tastes good or that it was nice last time you had it. There were one or two ales which weren't so great on the day.

Some of the specialty beers and bottled beers were also tasted in central. These were by and large excellent. One of the bottled beers in particular impressed us beyond anything we had tasted. The second bottled beer was also a cracker with an intensely bitter bite.

We moved on down to the Porterhouse Temple Bar, it was nice to have a break from the tasting to give the taste buds a chance to recover. We had a lovely sunny seat around the old copper kettle on the top floor and awaited the delivery of the next beers. The lagers were first up with only three in the category. The first lager was very tasty and was clearly ahead of the other two. Definitely more flavoursome than macro lager and perfect for a nice summer's day. A prison diet of bread and water kept the palate clean. Our waitress was completely bemused and wondered why we were sniffing the beer. Then she realised we were tasting the beer like wine. She was a great laugh actually.

Stouts were up next and as expected this was tightly contested category. Irish brewers make some fabulous stouts and it was a very close run thing in the end. After this we tasted the last of the speciality beers and finished off the bottled beers.

Our judging sheets were taken away so that the final scores could be added up. We had some excellent food and tried to recover our powers of tasting. Then I waited around for a bit for the press launch of the festival. This year the announcement of the beers of the festival took place with the opening of the festival which was a good idea. I think it makes things easier for customers who might not have tried much craft beer. They can pick out an award winning beer to try out. 

Winners:


Best Ale: Copperhead by Whitewater
This is a lovely golden hoppy fresh zingy ale. Fabulous.

Best Lager: Amber by White Gypsy
A perfect lager for summer sipping with a nice flavour and bit of bite to it.

Best Speciality: 3 Kings by Franciscan Well
A smokey ale with a nice blur of spices in the background.

Best Stout: Wrasslers XXXX by The Porterhouse
The all conquering wrasslers wins again. It's just a fabulous stout with so much flavour.

Best Bottled: Oyster Stout by The Porterhouse


Overall winner of the Michael Jackson award for best Irish beer: Oyster Stout by The Porterhouse

A surprise for me as I didn't have any idea what this was when I tasted it. I was very impressed with this complex dark stout which looked perfect with a nice tint of red to it. A fabulous nose. It has a complex taste with hints of spices and it impressed us in spades.

Oyster stout in general is something I usually pass over. I really dislike fish and shellfish and I just can't eat seafood no matter how I try. So Oyster stout isn't something I go for on draught as it's quite smooth and not something to get overly excited about. It's completely different when bottled. The smoothing effect of the nitrogen is stripped away leaving you with an altogether more interesting beer. A much more complex and intense beer emerges. I'll be buying a few bottles to keep in the press.

Thanks once again to The Porterhouse for asking me to judge, it was a great day. Judging beer is harder than it seems and it's a good challenge to the palate and taste buds to judge beers against each other blind like this.


Photo courtesy of The Beer Nut.

White Gypsy Brewery Tour

At Septemberfest Cuilán Loughnane brewer from the newly opened White Gypsy brewery asked if we'd like to come visit his brewery for an open day. Who could turn down such an offer?

The new White Gypsy brewery is in Templemore, Tipperary. On entering the building I first noticed the two large gleaming copper vessels. Cuilán revealed that they had been cleaned especially for the occasion. The equipment came from the old Kinsale brewery which is no longer operating. These are the kettle and mash tun. There's also a fermenting room and another cold room with a lot of conditioning tanks. 

As if a tour of the brewery wasn't enough there was a further treat in store.  Cuilán had brewed a stout and it was time to transfer it to secondary. This however was no ordinary stout and no ordinary secondary.

It's an imperial stout which are usually strong, rich, dark, aged beers. Cuilán gave us some of the history of stout and beer in Ireland. There was a great history of local beers before the all conquering Guinness changed everything. Cuilán wants to get back to that tradition, using the old recipes, having local people drinking locally produced beer and the beer being made with locally sourced ingredients that the farmer gets a fair price for. It's a great vision and I wish him every success with it. Listening to him talk you get the feeling that here's a man who knows his stuff and will make it work.

But back to the stout, we had a quick taste of it and it's quite harsh and strong, it's not going to stay like that though. It's going to be aged and this is where some timber based alchemy will happen. We watched as the stout was filled into three oak casks, one french oak, one american oak and one a cask that previously held Bushmills whiskey. That one in particular smelled amazing, just like whiskey even though it has been empty for a year. The stout will age for six months and will make it's debut at the easter festival at the Franciscan Well. I can't wait to taste it to see whats happened to it.

After this we went outside to the marquee that had been set up for the occasion. There was a pig roasting away in the corner, it had been fed on the spent grain from the brewery. A lot of local people had come up to the brewery to check it out and sample the beer. Hopefully they were impressed and make a success of the beer in the local pubs.

I even learned how to pull a proper pint from the cask under the watchful eye of Paudi from the Franciscan Well. It's White Gypsy's IPA which is really tasty. It definitely went really well with the pork roll. What more could you want of day, sitting in the sun with friends, drinking fresh cask IPA and eating proper roast pork? I also sampled the Dunkel and the Blonde, both are nice beers but I think the Dunkel is my favourite of the lot.

It was a great day out and many thanks must go to the Loughnanes for inviting us and showing us such great hospitality.  

Brew It Yourself, Franciscan Well, Cork 2009

On Saturday the 18th of April we loaded up the car with bottles of homebrew and some brewing gear and set off at a very early hour. We stopped to pick up Sean Billings who was wandering the streets with a corny keg full of beer while we tried to find his house. Eventually we were all loaded up and we headed towards Cork.

The Franciscan well Brewery kindly agreed to host the first Irish Craft Brewer Brew It Yourself event. The idea was that basically the ICB forum would come alive for a day and people could come meet up exchange advice, see the equipment and get to taste some quality home brewed beers.
A lot of organization went on from various members such as The Beer Nut, Beer Is The Reason, Ale Man, Sean Billings, Thom, TheSolutionTo, Geoff, N1umbus and many others (don't be upset if I forget you), mostly taking the form of many musings in this meandering thread.
The HomeBrew Company also came along so that people could actually buy equipment on the day. The event was also supported by The Bull and Castle pub.

We arrived early and set a few things up such as the shiny new Irish Craft Brewer banner. Ale Man arrived and set up his very cool mobile bar. This dispensed his pale ale and IPA which were both very tasty. Sean also had his lager on tap which was a lovely and hoppy. Lots of fantastic home brews were on show throughout the day. Taf had a lovely cider, there was a lovely simcoe ale from Shane of the home brew company. I really liked Thom's pilgrim ale, an american style pale ale with loads of cascade hops. My own Black Abbey Dubbel was an explosive hit. I think the gravity hadn't quite dropped enough when I bottled it so it exploded out of the bottles. When it settled down it was pretty nice and there were two gentlemen who followed me around asking for more.

There was more going on than just drinking and chatting about beer though. Peter and Paudie, brewers from the Franciscan Well, decided to make a demonstration home brew version of their Rebel Red beer. Beer Is The Reason also brewed a beer using ingredients donated by The HomeBrew Company. The smell of mashing and hops filled the air and drew many curious people over to see what was going on.

A good crowd of people turned up which was great to see. Many of them were people who had brewed in the past and were hoping to get back into it. I think most people were very impressed with the quality and range of beer you could make at home. I think a lot of people are put off home brew by dodgy kits made years ago. Nowadays kits can give you great results if you buy the right one. I also discovered that wearing a Cantillon t-shirt attracts beer nerds like a magnet. This was ok though as I like talking about things like spontaneous fermentation and for once people weren't getting bored listening to me witter on about beer.

The Beer Nut was twittering live from the event using the wireless internet. A glass was raised to Barry of The Bitten Bullet in his absence as it was his birthday. Barry is a founding member of Irish Craft Brewer who moved to Germany recently.

The sun shone down, there were lots of people talking about and drinking home brew. It was a fantastic day.

Here's Shane from the HomeBrew Company with his shop which was emptying out by the end of the day. A friend of ours who came along bought a starter kit so hopefully we'll be tasting that soon.

After all that we moved on for some food and then with steering advice from the ICB Cork members we headed to The Bierhaus to sample some of their great selection of beers. I had a Galway Hooker Dunkel Weiss which I thought tasted a bit less fruity than the last time I had it.
Then it was on to the Abbott's Ale House which is a cool quirky little pub with a great selection of beers. Talking and drinking went on into the night. I'm not quite sure what's going on in the photo below though I have heard reports that Bavaria and syrup de picon might have been involved.



For those interested here's a link to a full set of photos of the day. You can also read Beer Is The Reason's blog post about the day here.

New Brewery Set Up

It's an exciting day here at Aran Brew. Last weekend we went up to Ikea in Belfast where we bought the stuff to make new shelves for my brewing gear. It was about 40 pounds all told for the shelves. Needless to say we also stocked up on some lovely english ales and ciders in the supermarket too.

My lovely husband who has a horror of flat pack furniture very kindly suffered the pain and put the shelves together. I gave them a coat of beeswax and today I put them in place and stacked all my brewing gear on them. Here they are.



I think they're great. The brewing gear had been threatening to take over the room since I started making all grain beer. This way everything is all neatly stacked up. Hopefully it'll make brew day easier as I used to spend ages hunting in all the stuff for some vital bit of kit. The add on baskets are handy for keeping chemicals and small bits of kit in. The shelves are adjustable which was a vital feature as brewing stuff is not a standard size. The better bottles even have their own fermentation shelf.





I think some mead brewing may have to be done to celebrate.

The Porterhouse Michael Jackson Award for Best Irish Beer

On Thursday the 26th of March I set out to The Porterhouse on Parliament Street in Temple Bar to judge the Michael Jackson award for Irish Beer. This a long article so sit down ideally with a glass of some Irish craft beer as an accompaniment.

For all those who are wondering what the one time prince of pop has to do with beer I better explain who this Michael Jackson was. Famously he was known as the beer hunter and one of the greatest beer writers in the world. He was a pioneer in raising the profile and popularity of beer. He's known for great books such as Great Beers Of Belgium and Ultimate Beer. He died in 2007 and every year beer lovers will raise a glass to toast his memory. Every beer enthusiast has at least one of his books on their shelves. A long time fan of the Porterhouse beers he used to judge the independent Irish beer of the year award. So this year when the competition started again owners of the Porterhouse and friends of Michael Jackson, Oliver Hughes and Liam LaHarte, dedicated the independent Irish beer award to his memory.

Through my involvement with Irish Craft Brewer and writing this blog I was asked to be one of the judges for this years Michael Jackson award. My fellow judges were Tom Doorley, renowned food and wine critic who doesn't discriminate against beer. Tony Brookes manager of The Head Of Steam, a series of five real ale pubs in the UK and importer of Irish craft beer. Séan Billings, home brewer extraordinaire and founder of Irish Craft Brewer. Good company to be in.

At the press launch for the festival I went incognito and read up on and sampled a few of the beers that I would be judging.

There were twenty three beers to be judged in total so we settled down for a nice afternoons work up on the bright third floor of the porterhouse sitting round the old copper kettle. The beers were tasted blind so we had no idea which was which. Rachael and a bar man whose name I don't recall had the job of climbing all the stairs to bring the beers up, thanks for that guys. A representative from each brewery was present to check the quality of their beer before it was sent up. There were four lagers, twelve ales, four stouts and three speciality beers.

I'll try to give a flavour of what's involved in judging a beer and how I tried to mark each beer. We marked the beer under five categories, appearance, smell, taste, mouthfeel and drinkability.

Appearance: This is simply what does the beer look like. Is it nice and clear? Does it have a good colour? Does it look appealing/make you want to drink it?

Smell: Give the beer a good sniff. What can you smell? Anything at all? Malt, hops? Floral? Sweet? Spicy?

Taste: Finally take a sip of the beer. Swallow it slowly. What can you taste at the start of the sip, in the middle and at the end on the back of your tongue? Does the taste linger afterwards? There are loads of flavour descriptors for beer as seen in the beer flavour wheel at the right, can you taste any of them?

Mouthfeel: On the next sip let the beer stay in your mouth for a while. What's it's consistency? Is it light, heavy, watery, chewy, thin, too fizzy, not fizzy enough?

Drinkability: After the first sip do you want another one? If not that's not so good. After a few sips are you left wanting more? If so good.

All these things combine to make a great tasting beer. So we started into our onerous task tasting each beer and evaluating them all carefully and fairly. We had bread and water in between each. Of course when tasting this many beers you can only have a few sips of each. Getting drunk will ruin your tastebuds and you won't be able to evaluate them fairly. When I told people I would be judging a beer competition they all thought it sounded great as I'd be drinking many many pints of beer. I think over the whole afternoon we didn't drink more than two and a half pints in total. It was also spread over a few hours and with plenty water too. Not quite the drinking session people think judging beer would be.

Lager:
The first lager proved to be the best. Everyone admired it's appealing yellow gold colour. It had a lovely floral nose and a great bitter taste. It was the sort of beer you could imagine yourself having a few of outside in the summer.

Best Lager:
Gold – Hersbrucker brewed by Peter Mosley of the Porterhouse
Silver – Belfast Lager brewed by Bernard Sloan of Whitewater Brewery

Ale:
This was the biggest category and the most difficult to judge as we tasted many fine ales. There were around five beers here that I thought were fantastic. There were about two ales that I wasn't so keen on but other judges liked them so it was just a matter of personal taste.
Ale number five was delivered up to the judges and we all remarked on it's perfect appearance. A beautiful dark ruby colour with a lovely natural white head. It had a lovely sweet rich spicy smell. The taste, beautiful caramel toast and bitter playing off each other to make a complex tasty ale. Fantastic mouthfeel and great drinkability. We all wanted more and all were agreed that this was a top scoring ale that would be very hard to beat.
Until ale number nine arrived nothing impressed us as much as five. But now there was another contender for the top spot. It had the looks and a great floral, grapefruit smell but would it be able to measure up in the taste stakes? Yes it would, a fantastic bitter citrus beer balanced wonderfully by a complex biscuity malt taste. Great mouthfeel and in drinkability stakes we could only say it tasted of more please.
After much discussion we decided that on the day ale number five had the edge.

Best Ale:
Gold – Bock brewed by Cuilan Loughnane of White Gypsy Brewery
Silver – Galway Hooker brewed by Ronan Brennan and Aidan Murphy of Galway Hooker

Stout:
There were four stouts and each of them scored very highly with not much to choose between three of them. The fourth stout delivered up though was clearly a case of saving the best until last.

Stout four looked the perfect picture of a stout with a lovely head that wasn't too white, it looked a bit creamy which I like, inky black too. The smell and taste were exceptional. We had our winner.

Best Stout:
Gold – Wrasslers 4X brewed by Peter Mosley of the Porterhouse
Silver – Plain brewed by Cuilan Loughnane of White Gypsy Brewery

Speciality Beers:
Speciality number two was certainly special. It looked like a great stout and it smelled wonderfully of chocolate. It's taste was fantastic and all the judges liked it. In terms of drinkability, well the sampler glass was finished by one of the judges who said he wanted more to check it actually was that nice.
Speciality number three was another weiss beer which looked great and tasted of bubblegum, lemon and spices. It wasn't too sweet which was surprising. One of the judges made this their favourite of the three.

Best Speciality Beer:
Gold – Chocolate Truffle Stout brewed by Peter Mosley of the Porterhouse
Silver – Friar Weisse brewed by Russell Garret of Franciscan Well Brewery

A debate followed to decide which of the beers should be crowned overall winner. It was a really difficult decision after all the fantastic beer we'd had. There was great quality and taste on show overall. The Bock brewed by Cuilan Loughnane of White Gypsy and Messers Maguire is a great beer, complex and full of flavour. It deserves a much wider audience and hopefully winning this competition will bring it that since it will be stocked in all the Porterhouse bars for a year.

Michael Jackson Award:
Gold – Bock brewed by Cuilan Loughnane of White Gypsy Brewery
Silver - Wrasslers 4X brewed by Peter Mosley of the Porterhouse

With the hard work over we posed for some photos then the certificates for the awards were presented. Peter Mosley from the Porterhouse had a lot of certificates at the end. Cuilan Loughnane from White Gypsy/Messers Maguire looked genuinely surprised when his Bock was declared the winner of the Michael Jackson award for best Irish beer.

After this we adjourned to the bar for some pints with no pressure. It's much more tiring than you think to judge a beer. You have to concentrate on it and try not to get tipsy. Of course we had a pint of the winning beer and a great chat to all the brewers involved. But that's another story. It was great to meet Tom Doorley and Tony Brookes who were enthusiastic and knowledge judges. Thanks a million to everyone at the Porterhouse for asking me to be involved with this great award. This will be the beginning of great things for the Irish craft brewing scene. Brewers Unite, indeed!

Cantillon Public Brew Day, Brussels, 7 March 2009

Cantillon Public Brew Day, Brussels, Belgium, 7 March 2009.


It's six thirty in the morning on a rather chilly morning in Brussels somewhere near the Gare du Midi. Me and Dave been following The Beer Nut and his wife who have negotiated the train system and given all the directions because it's too early for us. We're now somewhere in a run down looking neighborhood passing some waste ground when what looks like an old garage turns out to be the brewery we're looking for. The famous Cantillon lambic brewery.

Walking inside is like walking back through time, it's one of the most unusual and unique breweries I've ever been in. We met fellow Irish Craft Brewer Sean who directed us to the coffee and croissants which we ate in the brewery bar beside the fire which had just been lit. I think I woke up enough at that point to really start looking around at that stage.

It was announced that the english tour was starting so we traipsed off after our guide who was great, he gave a good explanation of brewing and how Cantillon brews for the non beer nerds though I suspect only beer nerds would be on a brewery tour at 6.30 in the morning.

The mash in was just beginning. A mixture of 65% barley malt and 35% unmalted wheat is fed into the mash tun where it's mixed with hot water. Paddles driven by a system of gears and belts mix up the porridge. We left the mash tun at this point where hopefully the enzymes would be gearing up to convert the starches in the grains to fermentable sugars.





We walked up the stairs which were old, wet and wooden. I liked this complete disregard for modern life with it's stainless steel stairways with handrails and signs telling you not to fall over. If anything the look of these stairs would make you more careful.

We had a look at the two kettles which would be filling up with wort in a few hours. The boil lasts three hours with an evaporation of 25%. Hops are added for their antiseptic qualities only. They are aged hops and they don't add any flavour or aroma hops at all.

It was then up to the attic where it's cold as the fresh air getting in is vital to the process. It also helps with the storage of ingredients. This is where Cantillon veers off on a tangent from most breweries. Up until this step it's merely eccentric, they use old equipment and a rather odd mash regime but up here is where it gets properly strange. Most breweries pitch or inoculate their wort with a specific strain of brewing yeast and any other organism in the beer is considered to be undesirable.



In Cantillon however they open the windows give a big shout out and invite anything and everything to a party in the big copper bath tub. Here's the aptly named cool ship before all this happens.



Later on in the day it looks like this.



The wort is splashed and aerated as it falls into the bath. The copper in the bath and the cool temperature outside ensures the wort cools down by the morning. Cooling wort is most prone to infection as all manner of beasties want to eat all that sugar. In most breweries the wort is cooled rapidly in sterile conditions and the yeast pitched as quickly as possible to avoid infections. In Cantillon whatever lives in the air and rafters is allowed to colonize the wort, it's a mixture of different wild yeasts, brettanomyces, and various other microbes.

They are somewhat picky about which microbes come to the party and only brew in winter as in summer the real trouble making bacteria are about. After the all night party the wort is moved to old wooden casks to ferment. When you walk into the room the smell of sour beer hits you in the face. It was pretty potent particularly as it was so early.



The casks are left open with the hole covered for the fermentation. When fermentation finishes the cask is sealed and the wait begins. A sign in the room says 'Le temps ne respecte pas ce qui se fait sans lui' which means time doesn't respect that which is done without him. Many breweries advertise their dedication to time and tradition but most of them measure time in weeks. Cantillon will wait three years before tasting and blending of the casks begins. Each cask is different so they must all be tasted and then the skilled brewer blends them together to make the famous gueuze.

In the cask room there is also a fruit press and filter which is used to crush fruit to make juice for the kriek and framboise. Kriek is made from cherries and the framboise from raspberries which are blended with year old lambic. Many lambic breweries have given up on this tradition and use sugar, aspartame and flavoured syrups to make their fruit flavoured beers. I've had one of them and it tasted like an alcopop.

Our guide also explained the casks are cleaned the traditional way by putting hot water and some chains into them, sealing them and then spinning them.



The lambic is then bottled and after this it can be stored for a long time. Our guide pointed out that we are witnessing the beginning of a process that will take three or more years. It's a small brewery and they only brew 20-30 times a year and since it's aged for so long they can't brew to meet demand.

A brewery tour wouldn't be a tour without a tasting. At this stage it was eight in the morning so breakfast beer was on the menu. I've had a few lambics since Dave has liked them for years. I've not liked any of the lambics I've tried and was worried I was coming all this way to watch the brewing of a beer I did not like. We can't get Cantillon in Ireland you see.

I tasted some gueuze and it's extraordinary, I know everyone says that about Cantillon but it really is. It's nothing like any beer I've ever had. It's wonderfully tart and fresh with fruit flavours of sour crab apples. It's more like champagne or something than beer but it's much better than champagne.

We also tried the Iris which I loved. It's smells a lot better than the gueuze which is probably due to the fresher hops that go into it.

After our early morning tour we went back to our hotel for a snooze. Beer that early in the morning is too strange. Later on in the day after lunch we came back to look at the beer filling the cool ship.

We decided to split a bottle of Rosé de Gambrinus after our second tour around the brewery. Yes it's pink beer! Not just any pink beer, I can confidently state that this is the best pink beer in the world. It's absolutely amazing, tart and fruity like the raspberries that go into it. The Beer Nut very kindly agreed to bring home a bottle of it for me, I'll have it instead of champagne for my 30th birthday.

The rest of the photos are here if you want to see more.

Cheers guys.