Notes courtesy of Peter Burgess

Attending: John Watson, Dave Caiels, Dave Beaton, Kevin Warnes, Steve Bennet, Andy Whittaker, Roger Yates, Nik Leng, Peter Burgess.

Nik Leng gave a fascinating talk on Barrels. From early Egyptian 1900 BC to the present day. He covered:

• The use of clay pots for brewing in.
• Goat skins as fermentation vessels with wooden hoops.
• Romans using timber tubs and wooden hoops.

He then progressing onto metal hoops around tubs until some bright spark put two tubs together and the barrel was born.

Fast-forward to the 1960’s and 1970’s where metal took over. Aluminium and Stainless Steel. And today we are using plastic, Key Kegs (not re-usable) and Poly Kegs (re-usable).

Ivan, the Landlord, then gave a talk on how he runs his pub using 30l and 50l Key Kegs and Poly Kegs. Generally no finings used as all his beers have to be Vegan friendly. [RS edit: There are vegan friendly silica-based finings available, such as Brausol.] And as he says, hazy beer is deemed to be OK these days. These kegs keep his beer fresh for up to 3-months. Inside is an ingenious gadget called a cask widge which is a floating, nose weighted vertical dispensing tube. He also touched on the 16 craft beers available to us on the day. Most of which we sampled were quite outstanding and the Red Kite came out on top as the supreme champion!

Nik then continued to talk about 160l standard barrel sizes, pins at 20l. Soft spiles used for conditioning and hard spiles taking over once the barrel is open. The hard spiles being replaced once a session is over. He also talked about how to use shives, and how not to, vertical dispensing systems, cask widges which apparently work brilliantly for 5 to 7 days.

Cleaning with paracetic acid was touched upon and then Steve B piped up with his ingenious method of steam cleaning using an old-fashioned paint stripping gadget! See this blog on Steam Cleaning.

Next up was tasting the Oakham’s Citra bottled version. Unfortunately, this wasn’t met with much enthusiasm from the floor. Yeasts which we could possibly use were discussed, but again not with a great deal of enthusiasm. Suggestions were floated around using something clean fermenting, such as US05 or similar.

Alternative supply of base malt following the demise of the Munton’s arrangement was talked about. Possibly Paul’s at Elmswell, Wibblers at Southminster or Briarbank.

A short break for lunch was then followed by the serious tasting of beers which members had brought along. In strength order:

• Kevin’s 3.4% mash hopped bitter (150g of hops). Very light and drinkable, but no bitterness.
• Dave B’s 4% Irish Stout from David Line. A well received flavoursome beer standing up well as a low alcohol version.
• Dave C’s 4.4% Bitter using Nottingham yeast. Good aroma, finishing dry, a fine example of an old-fashioned pint of bitter.
• Andy’s 4.5% Pale Golden English Ale brewed for the Shed Brewers festival. Yeasty esters with fruit and banana characteristics without the strength of Belgian Beer. Very good.
• Dave C’s 5.2% Black IPA 2022 Xmas brew using Cara 3. Good nose, lightly hopped and very drinkable.
• Kevin’s 5.4% English IPA. The slight sweetness was thought to be perceived from the hops. Very drinkable but some smart arse sommelier said it was not to style!
• Peter’s 5.4% Estrella Galicia Especial as a clone from the book Clone Brews by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. Well received.
• Andy’s 5.6% Dark Matters stout. Well balanced and not too over toasty. Once again very well received.
• John’s 6.5% Strong Bitter. Thames Valley 2 yeast from an undisclosed Hampshire brewery by Brewlabs using dark candy sugar. A lovely bitter from John’s store cupboard.
• Steve’s 8.0 % Belgian Strong 18 months old using the old favourite MJ ‘s M41 yeast. Sweet by design and a lovely drink.

I should just mention that throughout the afternoon Helen, Ivan’s better half, treated us like Lords. Serving all her beers at the table from their very comprehensive printed beer lists. An exceptional venue for our meeting.

The Shed Brewers Festival, and the ACB Homebrew Competition at Briarbank were discussed, and all information is now on our website.

To sum up. A pretty good session, thoroughly enjoyed by all.