Posts Tagged ‘firkin’
Mid-week update.
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Tomorrow night our Scottish Ale will be making its cask debut at Metropolitan Coffee House and Wine Bar (902 Charles St.) for their regular Firkin Thursday event. For those of you unfamiliar with Metropolitan, it’s a wonderful neighbourhood bar/ restaurant … a solid tap line-up and fantastic food. The Firkin will be available in the upstairs bar from 6pm. The Scottish Ale returns, bigger and bolder, after a years hiatus due to the renovations at The Pratt Street Ale House last January. It’s a completely new recipe, full bodied with an underlying sweetness you’d expect from a Scottish Ale with hints of smoked and peated malt in the finish and is about 7% abv.
Next Wednesday (13th) The Peeping Tom Porter will make its cask debut at our pint night @ Frisco Grille in Columbia. Also on tap will be the Scottish Ale and 3 Lions so come along, meet the genial brewers and snag a souvenir pint glass.
The Peeping Tom will also be on cask @ Max’s Taphouse on Thursday 14th January.The Scottish Ale & Peeping Tom should be hitting the taps at the Ale House sometime next week. For those of you in the D.C. area casks of Peeping Tom, the Scottish Ale and dry hopped ESB are shipping to Churchkey and ESB should be heading to the Commonwealth Gastro Pub also.
By-the-way, I’m shamelessly promoting January as “buy the brewer a beer month” … yeah, that’s right, it’s my Birthday soon and I have now spent over a third of my life brewing beer …. how did that happen?!
Cheers for now
Steve
Mid week round-up
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Well here we are …. the last brew day of 2009! We’re ending with a Bishop’s Breakfast and, as it happens I’ll be filling some firkins and a kilderkin with the Bishop’s Indulgence and moving the rest to conditioning. I’ll be starting the next year with a bang by brewing the Hot Monkey Love … a statement of intent for the coming year! I’m awaiting delivery of 4 Woodford Reserve barrels (big shout out to Barrett @ The District Chophouse for supplying the info for making it possible) so we’ll be doing some interesting things with those. The first 3 seasonal brews for 2010 are in various stages of process. The Scottish Ale (7%abv) is in conditioning, The Peeping Tom Porter (4.4%abv) is fermenting and, as I’ve already mentioned, the Bishop’s Indulgence (8%abv) is moving to conditioning today. Firkins of the Scottish Ale will be going out to Max’s and ChurchKey next week so look out for them on tap in the near future. In the second week of January I’ll also be brewing the Strongman Pale Ale which will probably be around the 7.5% – 8% abv mark.
Casks of the Bishop's Indulgence
Four firkins of The Bishop’s Indulgence will be shipped to outside accounts. A kilderkin with American Oak is staying at The Pratt Street Ale House for release in early February.
Don’t forget to enter The Friday Question …. you’ve got until Friday a.m. when I’ll post the answer.
Cheers for now. Have a great New Year celebration.
Steve
Thursday Night Is Cask Night!
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Seems that Thursday Night is a good night to get cask conditioned ale in the region. As usual it’s firkin night in the upstairs bar at Metropolitan in Federal Hill from 6pm. Tonight’s featured cask is our Merry Ole Ale, a 6% abv spiced brown ale. Max’s on Broadway and Frisco Grille out in Columbia have also started featured cask nights on Thursday. One of the ales on the engines at Max’s is our “William’s Winter Warmer”, 8% abv with just a hint of festive spice, perfect for these cold nights. I don’t know what Frisco’s featured cask is tonight but the Merry Ole Ale is on the beer engine at the moment. Here at The Pratt Street Ale House we’re hosting the SPBW Christmas Party in our upstairs bar with 3 firkins on the bar for those guys but don’t forget that we have 3 beer engines at the downstairs bar serving cask ale all the time, with a special ($3 pints) night on Tuesday after 5pm.
cask ale news
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Ever wanted to know a little bit more about cask/real ales? Ever wondered what happens inside the cask? Well you won’t have to wait too much longer. Sometime in the New Year (date to be confirmed, most likely early February) we’ll be having a beer tasting with a difference at The Pratt Street Ale House. It will be a sort of informal seminar about cask ale production and cellarmanship with tastings of a few casks prepared especially for the occasion. Of special interest will be the chance to see how the yeast forms a sediment in the cask using a glass ended firkin generously provided for the occasion by Steve Parkes, brewing guru and main man at the American Brewers Guild. The event will most likely be ticket only and will be held in the upstairs Library Room. More details will be posted as they are finalized.
Speaking of casks we will be sending out more firkins of Best Bitter and Dry Hopped Ironman Pale Ale to ChurchKey and Best Bitter and E.S.B. to Pizzeria Paradiso in D.C. so look out for those if you’re in the D.C. area.
cask news
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Cask ale seems to be alive and well in D.C. thanks in no small part to the recent opening of Birch & Barley (1337 14th St. NW) which has 5 (yes! 5) beer engines along with 50 regular taps. I spoke with Greg there yesterday who told me that the cask ale is flying out and then promptly ordered every cask that I had available so expect to see Oliver Ales on the beer engines in the very near future (7 firkins ship out on Wednesday). It looks like an amazing place, check out the photos and review in the archive at the Yours For Good Fermentables blog, can’t wait to get over there for a beer.
Also check out Bertha’s in Fells Point who are going to start a regular(ish) cask on the bar type thing. We’re shipping out a pin (that’s a 5.4 gallon cask) of Blackfriar Stout with vanilla beans in the cask on Wednesday … could be on the bar that evening … I’ll keep you posted!
cask update
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
New on cask today ….. drum roll …. Hot Monkey Love, oh yeah. Come try one and then compare it to the regular tap version. The malt flavors explode out of the cask version, exquisite!
Also coming soon will be William’s Winter Warmer
I see a Winter Warmer in your future!
Two of the firkins are on Oak, the first of which will be released in mid December.
goodnight william
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Well there it is, done for the year. William’s Winter Warmer has been “put to bed” in FV1, one of our 14 barrel vessels, yeast has been pitched and the wort vigorously roused to aerate it as much as possible. Aeration is very important at this early stage, especially for a relatively high gravity beer such as this, to promote good yeast cell division and get fermentation off to a rapid start. If we were to under aerate for example we may experience an extended lag phase and we’ll be in for a correspondingly lengthy fermentation which may require re-pitching of active yeast. Ensuring that we have a viable yeast pitched into a well aerated wort at optimal temperature (70F in this case) will get us off to a good start and avoid problems further down the line. It is for this reason that we collected our 7 barrels of wort in a 14 bbl FV, it is physically easier to rouse (and hence aerate) the wort. The large head space in the open fermenting vessel also helps avoid loss of yeast from the vessel as the yeast head rises during exponential growth or due to rapid release of dissolved CO2 from the fermenting wort which sometimes happens as the night time ambient temperature falls and the wort is then roused the following morning. I collected the wort at an original gravity of 1.080 and will be aiming to attenuate to about 1.016 before crash cooling giving a final a.b.v. of a little over 8%. I will fill a number of firkins with William’s Winter Warmer, at least 2 of which will be aged on Oak for release in January.
Cheers
Steve
The Anatomy of a beer festival
Monday, October 19th, 2009
Baltimore Beer Week is over. The dust has settled (or should I try a more beer-centric analogy …. perhaps “the lacing is on the glass”) and we have a few moments of quiet reflection before going about our business. Our business of course is making beer so not much change really except maybe I can get a bit of sleep and spend some time with my son! I have to admit that the 10 days of Baltimore Beer Week were filled with contradictions for me. Much of this has to do with unrelated influences but, nothing exists in an isolated state, so the rigors of daily life imposed themselves on occasion and made for a very tense and stressful time! Without doubt though the Beer Week was a joyous celebration of all things beer. The scope of events was mind boggling and certainly required some careful planning in order to maximize the number of events that one could attend. In terms of scale there is little that could come close to the Oktoberfest at the fairgrounds but most important for me was the 6th Annual Chesapeake Real Ale Festival. This event is close to my heart for a number of reasons. I have a personal involvement with the event as I have been fortunate enough to work with the wonderful people of the SPBW (big shout out to Dominic and Alan) for these last 6 years as the host brewer. Also cask conditioned ale is the cornerstone of my brewing history. The first 6 years of my brewing career were spent with the Firkin Brewery, brewing nothing but cask conditioned ale. I had not even touched a keg until I started brewing for Oliver’s. So, for me, cask conditioned ale is the norm rather than some sort of niche product. You may have noticed that cask conditioned ale is often referred to as “Real Ale” and there is good reason for this. It is ale in it’s most natural form. It has a purity, if you like, untouched by the processing techniques of the modern brewery. The cask is filled directly from the fermenting vessel with the addition of finings (to aid yeast flocculation and ultimately it’s removal from the beer that is served at the bar) and is designed to mature in the cellar. Secondary fermentation in the cask produces a low level of carbonation. The beer is then ready to be vented, tapped and served. Cask ales are not designed to be aged excessively, in fact the opposite is true. Whilst some of the “bigger” beers benefit from aging (for example, our Hot Monkey Love had been in cask for 8 months prior to the festival) most ales should be used within about 4 weeks of the fill date.
So, onto the Real Ale Festival …. preparation started in earnest several months ago when Alan Moore of the SPBW began the laborious task of contacting brewers, distributors and sales reps to gain commitments to supply casks to the festival. Over time a list grew and we knew that this was going to be a very special festival. The placement of the event as one of the closing highlights of the first ever Baltimore Beer Week helped push this celebration of cask ale to an unprecedented scale! Clearly we were going to need more casks than ever before. Fortunately people such as Erin Tyler of Legends Ltd exist and was on board early to help arrange for us to ship empty casks to the Boulder Brewery, Weyerbacher, The Bruery and Lagunitas so that we were able to offer the festival goer a more diverse range of cask ale than ever before. Of course this whole process is never as straightforward as it sounds and the possibility of some no shows sent us scrambling around for more casks (and a big shout out to Casey at Max’s and Clipper City for helping out here!) For whatever reasons casks we had hoped to get from Lagunitas, Magic Hat and Evolution did not happen but we still managed to present the best line-up of cask beer that I have seen for a very long time. Needless to say we had various other logistical issues to deal with from making sure that we had enough tapping equipment, planning where we would put all of these casks to ensure that everybody attending would have the best possible festival experience and so on. Obviously this is still a learning experience and some issues that we hadn’t foreseen will be addressed next year, most notably bathroom facilities to deal with the increased number of attendees. Set up of the actual festival is made easier by the army of volunteers supplied by the SPBW who hauled all of the casks from the basement and placed them all per our set-up plan. Assistant brewer Justin oversaw this part of the deal and I returned later that night (2.30am to be precise) to deal with the task of venting and tapping the 39 casks we had distributed throughout the Ale House.
Just finding storage space for all of the casks was a challenge
It turns out that venting and tapping that many casks is quite an undertaking and I didn’t leave the Ale House until 6.30am. It felt like managed to get to bed just in time to get up and go back to work! I’ll have to plan this one a bit better next year. Of course, the proper stillaging, venting and tapping of the casks is of paramount importance to quality of the product. We wanted to ensure that all of the beer was presented in the correct way so that the beer had time for the yeast to settle and excess carbonation to vent. Tapping can sometime be hazardous as a few casks were excessively lively and in one case there was so much pressure that the tap was blown from my hand and I was left wearing a few pints of pale ale! Not fun.
the lounge area. Mmm .... Hot Monkey Love
side patio
side patio
upstairs bar area
upstairs bar
upstairs function room
Once the final beer line-up was in place Alan made laminated signs for each one and Sarah our events coordinator printed out a list of all of the beers with room for the discerning beer fan to make notes and we even provided pencils … that’s how much we love you guys! The event was staffed by volunteers who did a wonderful job, cheerful and enthusiastic one and all! The Ale House provided a special festival menu for the day, as the weather negated the possibility of using the outside grill that we have used in previous years. Speaking of the weather, the cold rain didn’t seem to dampen anybody’s spirits. The outside areas were well covered and I hardly even noticed the rain (but hey, I’m English so I’m used to it!)
Mr. Alan Hew, member of the SPBW or English Country Gentleman ... you decide?
Bad weather can't keep people away from good beer!
under the tent on the side patio
side patio
Current president of the SPBW Alan Moore (left) and former president Dominic Cantalupo without whom these events wouldn't take place
Erin of Legends Ltd (supplier of many of the great beers present) and some brewer guy!
Alexander D.Mitchell lV (Correspondent for The Mid Atlantic Brewing News)(left) and Justin Dvorkin (Co-owner, Pratt St. Ale House)
the aftermath
So that’s it. The Real Ale Festival has come and gone for the 6th year. Bigger and better than ever before with more beer from more breweries than ever. More people than I could possibly mention were involved in making this event such a success. You know who you are. Thank you. Here’s to next year!
Cheers
Steve
Happiness is a warm… beer
Friday, October 16th, 2009
Well, not warm exactly but not cold! It turns out that a great way to spend a cold, wet Thursday night is to sup a few pints of Oak Aged 3 Lions served straight from the cask on the back bar at Bertha’s! With the beer at about a perfect 52F I can’t think of too many places I would rather have been last night. The only thing missing was a roaring open fire and it would have been heavenly. At 7.5% alcohol by volume the alcohol warmth of the 3 Lions is perfect for such miserable weather but it ’s really the hints of coconut and vanilla that the oak aging imparts, the open malt flavors that the correct serving temperature allows and the calm, subtle carbonation of the cask conditioning that really bring this beer to life! Of course as many of you already know the Chesapeake Real Ale Festival tomorrow will offer an abundance of such delights. It really is going to be one of the most important events of the festival season so make sure you don’t miss it.
Cheers
USQUE AD MORTEM BIBENDUM
Steve
Real Ale Festival Update
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Preparations for the Real Ale Festival are going well. It looks as if the weather isn’t going to co-operate this year but the side patio will be tented in preparation for rain. This year will also be the first year that we will be using the first floor bar and library room for firkins to help ease congestion …. it’s going to be a busy one …. advance sales have already hit the 400 mark! Firkins are being delivered daily. There are some real treats for you this year such as the Stone Oak Aged Arrogant Bastard (well named considering the hoops they made us jump through to get it here!) and excellent selections from Flying Dog, Clipper City, Du Claw, Troegs, Lancaster and many more. I will post a full list after tomorrow’s delivery. Our cask room is fit to burst with all the additional firkins crammed into it!
Got Firkins?
This really is going to be an incredible festival and testament to the popularity of cask conditioned beer. If you haven’t already got a ticket, get one NOW!