Yeastie Boys The Sun Before the Darkness

I have previously reviewed another member of Yeastie Boys Spoonbender range so you can check that out if you want the background. The Sun before the Darkness is a Belgian Strong Ale brewed with more of that wine sugar.

At 10% it is a mighty powerful brew. The powerful flavour of the Belgian Strong Ale combined with the powerful wine sugar makes for an incredibly intense flavour, the sum being even greater than the parts. I use the word powerful for a reason. It really is strong and the power of it all combined was a bit more than I could handle. It would probably work well in partnership with a rich meal but only try this one alone if you are up for a challenge.

Full Mash

So after talking about it for a long time I have finally managed to get my first full mash brew underway. After slowly collecting up brewing equipment and with a concerted push at Christmas and my birthday I finally had everything I needed to get started.

It all started out with a mash tun. I may post separately about how I built that (but basically I used this page as a guide). A huge pot, an auto syphon, a cooling coil and a recipe from Brewshop for American IPA, along with the ingredients to make it (not to mention a very rainy day where I couldn't do any painting) and there were no more excuses not to see what this full mash was all about.

Now, as with all brews, you  can't do anything until you have cleaned and sanitised your equipment. Unfortunately more equipment means more cleaning and sanitising so the morning was half gone before I could even start with making my mash.

Everything I knew about brewing was from reading about it or using common sense. I had never actually watched anyone brew beer this way before so there was a bit of feeling my way along. The old kitchen jug in the garage served me well for hot water. Even though the water boils at 100 degrees it is already much cooler than that by the time it hits the grain so as long as I used boiling water each time it was easy to reach the required 76 degrees. Once I had poured what felt like a fair amount of water in I closed the lid to the mash tun and left it alone for an hour.

After an hour I came back, coiled the outside tube into the huge pot I had received for Christmas and
turned the tap. A clear brown liquid made its way down the tube and slowly began to fill up the pot. After a while it reduced to a trickle and it was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be enough liquid to make up a full brew. However I had read that this was not uncommon and to get the most out of your grain you should sprinkle water over it in an exercise known as sparging. I didn't really have anything to sprinkle the water across the top but gently pouring more hot water seemed to slowly eke some more liquid into the pot. After a couple of hours spent doing this I was getting pretty bored so decided I would have to make the best of what I had.

I carried the big pot through to our kitchen  (unhelpfully at the other end of the house) and placed it on the stove top to boil. Before long the liquid was happily boiling away creating dirty looking brown foam that filled up the pot. I added the hops in the way described by the recipe and the brown foam started to take on a green tinge.

After an hour of boiling I took the pot off the boil and then back into the garage. I placed it down on the concrete floor  and lowered the cooling cool I had received for my birthday into the hot pot. Unfortunately the pipe was designed to screw onto an outdoor hose tap and I was using a normal indoor laundry sink. However ,a firm hand holding the pipe on the end of the tap did a fair job at keeping the cold water running through. I might have to see what I can do with the end of that pipe for next time. After quite some time the liquid was down to the required temperature of 20 degrees.

It was time to transfer the liquid into the fermenter. I could tell that there was a lot of sediment/muck in the bottom of the pot so I decided to transfer the liquid using the easy siphon I had also received for my birthday. It also seemed a way to avoid spilling it all everywhere when pouring the big pot into the fermenter. Unfortunately I couldn't really see what was happening at the bottom of the pot so ended up siphoning a lot of the sediment through anyway. I guess it adds to the flavour...it was also clear that there wasn't really enough liquid there to make a full batch. I few more jugs of hot water helped bring it up to volume although I assume it will dilute the final result. Last step was to throw in the yeast and the test the specific gravity. Still no idea what testing that all meant but at least it gave me a starting point as I left things to brew over the next couple of weeks. No hurry so might as well give it plenty of time to do its thing.

I emptied my wet grain out into my compost bin so hopefully the garden will benefit from the brewing goodness too.

Garage Project Summer/Sommer

Not only are they experimenters, Garage Project are also collaborators so as well as having beers for a purpose they also like working with others to create their beverages. One such collaboration is the long distance partnership with the Norwegian brewer Nøgne Ø to produce Summer/Sommer, a summery themed rye Ale. The idea behind the beer is something I can totally buy into. In the Northern hemisphere it is common to have special brews just for Christmas. They are generally darker and designed to keep you warm in the snowy weather. NZ Christmas isn't really anything like that so why not try to capture the best of both?

Summer/Sommer does just that with the sweet taste of honey and rye. This is all topped off with spices, just like a Christmas Ale. It is very summery although it is one to enjoy quietly and slowly on a summer's day as you might end up asleep in the sun after drinking too many of these 7.7%ers.

Garage Project L'il Red Rye

Another birthday brew from my brother was Li'l Red Rye from Garage Project. This one is a red ale crossed with a wheat beer. The name is of course a play on Little Red Riding Hood and as is the Garage Project way there is an artful but dark label to go along with it. It is also worth noting the wolfy origins of the hop plant.

It pours a lovely rich brown colour. The flavour itself is something I haven't tried before, with the sweetness of a wheat beer when you first drink it but then it finishes you up with a lingering hop taste on your tongue. I'm never sure about these dual variety mashups (a reliable beer pun)  and although Li'l Red Rye is a tasty enough drink I'm not sure whether I am drinking a red ale or a wheat beer. Need to try it again some time before I make up my mind.

Garage Project Burning Globe

I can always rely on my brother to get me something interesting to drink on my birthday. This year it was some brews from Garage Project. Garage Project likes to make its beers for an occasion. Burning Globe was first brewed to mark 400 years since the burning down of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames in London. The labels says it now marks 450 years since the bard's death, although I am unsure how that maths works....It was first served at the Southern Cross, from an oak barrel, as a part of an event for the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ.

Not only was it brewed for a special event, there is also a story about how it came about, being the idea of Garage Project's brewer's daughter. The first batch was brewed by her and her father over a weekend in anticipation of the event above.

The beer itself is an English Ale. It is nice and malty with only a touch of hops, the sort of things you would be happy with in any London Pub. However, the "burning" comes at the end with a smokey finish in your mouth. I am not a massive fan of smokey beers, but this one gives you that smokey aftertaste without hanging around forever. The bard would assuredly be happy to quaff this ale.

Morland Old Crafty Hen

When I lived in London you could always rely on an Old Speckled Hen as a tasty reliable and widely available ale (as well as sponsor of nights on Dave). I was therefore pleased to see that my friends Ian and Amy had bought me an Old Crafty Hen for my birthday. Old Crafty Hen comes from the Morland Brewery in Suffolk, which is owned by Greene King who also own various pubs across the UK.

It has only been around since 2008 and is apparently a combination of the Old Speckled Hen and a discontinued Greene King beer called 5x. It comes in a clear glass bottle which is unusual when most of these sorts of beer come in brown. The Old Crafty Hen is an English Strong Ale.  At 6.8% it is pretty strong for an English beer but pretty standard compared to many modern NZ craft beers.

The beer itself has a strong malty taste to it. It continues with a fruity flavour across your tongue and then an ever so slight hop to finish it off. This might be one to try again on a cold winter's night to remind me of the way you warm yourself up from the cold in the UK.

Funk Estate So'phisticuffs

A distinctive brewery that I have seen offering its beers on taps at bars around Wellington for a while is Funk Estate. It's picture of a woman with a big afro stands out from the usual pictures of hops and brewery names. The three young guys behind Funk Estate look very different than their logo and seem to be a direct product of spending your formative University Years in a newly booming craft beer culture in Wellington. Long may the remain inspired.

Other than at the bars (which I am not at very often) I haven't really seen any Funk Estate beers for sale in bottles,  so in a chance look in the Craft Beer Fridge at New World Railway Metro when I was supposed to be picking up family dinner I saw an opportunity that was not to be passed up,  Funk Estate So'phisticuffs.

It is an IPA,  which is a competitive market in NZ. I have already said that I think sometimes the IPA seems to be a competition for how much hoppyness a brewery can pack into its beer. So'phistocuffs is much more balanced, with the malts and the hops working together to produce a very tasty beer. This is just what I like when I drink an IPA and I will happily track this one down again.