Wednesday 6 April 2011

I'm too much in love

My Atlantic brew in March remains a target for next week.

The pace of change at Sharp’s at the moment is greater than ever. Numbers like £4m for expansion, 280k hectolitres per year are no longer pub fantasies but enthralling commitments and milestones. If you had told me when I did my first mash in the 50 barrel brewhouse in 2002 that within a decade the brewery would be twenty times the size and I would be part of the team driving that change I would have phoned Bodmin mental hospital to alert them to their latest escapee. There was an ugly old-looking bloke on the BBC South West breakfast news, he reminded me of me. The cost to me of all this is less time in the gym, less time for brewing experimentation and less time on the blog. For this, my faithful friends I apologise.

12 Brew four: Camden Brewery
You don’t need me to tell you that Camden Brewery is new, shiny and sexual. I should however be able to give you an insight into the team and their ethos as brew 4 progresses. I am most of the way to sorting the details of April’s brew. This one is going to be a bit different (aren’t they all?). I am taking 400 litres of a 3 year old cask-aged barley wine (10.1% ABV) up to the guys at Camden Brewery, then we are going to select (brew?) some beer(s) to blend it with to make a two-brewery-brewed blend collaboration. Ahead of my visit, I have sent up a couple of bottles of the beer so they can get a shortlist of beers and then we are going to get together, select the beer and produce the blend. The beauty of this is that it will involve the need to sample the prospective beers, then the various blends of these beers until we hit the winning combination or the floor in a heap of alcoholic dysfunction. This beer will then be packaged and sold by Camden. I would claim that this is a novel approach to collaborative brewing but I’m sure that a load of brewers in America will be yawning at the idea.

A lot remains to be finalised on this one and a few logistical questions need to be addressed before it can go ahead. Not least how I am going to get 400 litres of beer in the boot of my Z4.

Citra is dead, long live the King Singers.

3 comments:

BeerReviewsAndy said...

A z4? didn't realise you were also a hair dresser ;op i'm only jealous (hope it's grey and got the hard top though)

Only had one of camden's beers, was very tasty and smelled of refreshers.

oh yeah and i hope some of that 280k hectolitres will be Monsieur rock

Stuart Howe said...

It's pink Andy with yellow flowers. I'll see what I can do with M.Rock.

Mark said...

Exciting! Camden make great beer and the idea of blending beers from each brewery to make a completely new beer is great. :)

BeerBirraBier.

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