Feb 2017 Meet Writeup

A meetup of two halves. First half a brought a number of session pale ales with introductions, light discussions and banter. Second half brought the serious complex, strong, unique beers and topics of water treatment!

Welcome New People

With a few of our regular members away this month it was nice to welcome a couple of new faces Steph and Ali.

Steph decided a number of years ago that he wanted a career change and wanted to become a brewer. After moving to the UK from Italy and obtaining his brewing science degree he now works for Joseph Holt's brewery.

Ali has been brewing a while and originally started brewing cider back when he was a teenager. He rather amusingly said hes probably the only person not to really like beer until he brewed it.

Water Treatment

I (Craig) have recently been trying to dive into the world water treatment lately whilst trying not to drown in the science. After asking a few members online I have been supplied with enough information to get me started. Although advise can be conflicting its been useful to read a variety of material.

We could probably do with a post specific to Manchester regarding water treatment. I don't have the knowledge to write such an article so if any of our members would like to write one please do let me know! I have been supplied with a useful Manchester specific worksheet but I am not sure if we have permission to post it.

In the meantime if you are interested in getting started with water treatment the following links might help:

https://www.unitedutilities.com/services/your-water-supply/drinking-water-quality/
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=64822
http://www.ezwatercalculator.com/

Upcoming Events

Stockport Beer & Cider Festival Homebrew Competition

Stockport & South Manchester Branch is again running a competition among local home brewers to find up to five beers for this year's Stockport Beer & Cider Festival.

Judging for the competition is on March 12th and 19th. Good luck to all that have entered.

Scottish Beer with Ron Pattinson - Sunday 2nd April

As part of his Macbeth Tour, beer historian will be coming to Manchester on Sunday April 2nd to talk to homebrewers, brewers and beer enthusiasts about the misconceptions surrounding Scottish beer.

Hosted at Beer Nouveau in conjunction with Manchester Homebrew and Chorlton Brewers groups, Ron will be tasting some samples of Shilling Ales recreated from recipes of the 1800's and taking us through how the beer style evolved over the century before dying out.

Full details can be found here http://manchesterhomebrew.co.uk/sunday-2nd-april-scottish-beer-with-ron-pattinson/

Bolton Beer Festival

Some of our members are from the Bolton area and mentioned the upcoming beer festival April 27th - 29th. Full details can be found here http://www.boltonbeerfestival.org.uk.

Manchester Beer Week - Homebrew Expo Is Back

With the success of last year Manchester Beer Week will be back JUNE 23 - JULY 2 2017! And with that we will be once again hosting us will be Beer Nouveau. Just like last year all homebrewers will be welcomed to show off their beers to the public and compete for the best in show prize. If you didn't get along the expo last year just take a look at the beer list from 2016 http://manchesterhomebrew.co.uk/19th-june-manchester-homebrew-expo/

More planning and details will be required. No doubt at somepoint we will be calling on all homebrewers to help out.

Beers In Attendance

• Stu - 3.7% pale brewed with noble hallertauer taurus hops, calafornia lager yeast at 14c and mostly pilsner malt.
• Dan - 3.7% pale ale brewed with hallertauer blanc, maris otter, carapils and safale s-04 yeast.
• Dan - 4.4% pale ale brewed with hallertauer blanc & mandarina. Sadly didn't get to really try this one as it was rather explosive.
• Steph - Pale ale brewed with cascade hops, orange peel (2g per liter), coriander (1g per liter) and safale us-05 yeast. Really well balanced flavors which is difficult with coriander.
• Steph - Single hop pale using Azacca, pale malt, wheat, munich and safale us-05. Azacca on its own in this beer shows it as an ideal replacement for mosaic/citra hops.
• Dan - Belgium pale brewed with Saaz hops and white labs WLP500 monastery ale yeast.
• Keith - God Make Me A Stone - 5.5% bretted beer with dandelion, tansy, nettle and elderflower. A complex beer that gets a great deal of bitterness from the tansy. Best sipped to really appreciate it.
• Craig - 5.9% dry stout brewed with 8 different malts, brambling cross hops and white labs WLP004 irish ale yeast. A sneak peek at a beer brewed for the Stockport homebrew competition.
• Keith - Your A Funny Box - 5.5% Bretted wit brewed with rowanberry. The combination worked really well. Turns out Arron has a shrub/tree of this in his garden. Soon to be harvested later this year I suspect.
• Stu - Belgian IPA - brewed with styrian, amarillo, and citra hops. Fermented with giga achouffe belgian ale yeast.
• Arron - Belgian Dubble - 8.1% A bolstered version of Greg Hughes dubble recipe. Brewed with pilsner malt, special b, caramunich, hallertauer herbrucker, tettnang and candy sugar. Using white labs WLP530 abbey ale yeast.
• Arron - bubble and squeak (left overs) IPA - 9.1% using up his magnum, cascade, amarillo and ahtanum hops.
• Ali - DIPA 9.2% - maris otter, crystal, cascade, azacca, citra and sorachi ace.
• Dan - Imperial Stout - 9.6% using 10% brown sugar, roasted barley, black malt and crystal. Using 1 packet of safale s-04 for just 4 litres of wort.
• Ali - Coffee Porter - 7% A massive coffee bomb! 200g Guatemala elephant coffee beans for a 5 gallon batch.

Top Tip Of The Month

Using coriander seeds in a beer can be difficult to predict. Often the strength of the seeds can differ dramatically between packets. This can be down to the length of time they sit on a self/cupboard.

Best to buy spices from a Chinese supermarket where spices are bough more often and therefore are less likely to have been on the shelf for too long.

Note

You can also find us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/mancshomebrew/

**As always there may be inaccuracies in this article as beer was consumed on the day and whilst writing the article.