· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
Great weekend judging with some lovely people at . Even bagged 2 rosettes for my sour quad and my whiskey barrel quad. Judgingwise, dark and amber lagers flight yesterday, session stouts yesterday. Did a talk on the theme of the comp coming up in August: Brew Local Brew Brighton. Got to meet and chat with Lars Garshol the kveik researcher. Happy times!
Little experiment this year with a tiny crop of barley. I found some growing last year, so I've used them and some harvested from fields to create a little square metre patch in my garden. If I have a bit more space next year, I'll use these to seed hopefully enough for a small batch of beer from home harvested wheat, hops and some wild yeast. Though it may very well not be enough for even that!
A lovely day out in the woods yesterday making a beer heated entirely with stones. This is I think the fifth time we've brewed in the woods. The first 3 or so times we were direct heating over the flames, only last time my friend suggested we try the old method of using stones. They work like a dream, no nasty soot or smoke to worry about, pretty good temp control. We didn't get up to a rolling boil, but got pretty close to it.
No idea how they got here but it looks like I've got some barley randomly growing in my garden! I'm kind of wondering whether to preserve the seeds and sow them in a small patch next year, then do the same till I get enough to malt for a batch of beer. Commercial yield is about 600g/m2, so I'd need 10m2 to even think about it. Anybody got a bit of allotment space free in a few years?!
Autumn harvest time. Bit later than usual as I've been away for a few weeks. Have some now 7-8 yr old hop plants that are doing pretty well. It's a bit of a process but you basically take them down, chop them up, strip, dry, vac pack and freeze them. I get about a 1-1.5kg of dry hops from them, enough for 100 litres or so of beer.