Woodville NanoBrewery

Brew 3 - Chocolate  HopNob (Not-so Black IPA)  Brew day: 27th April 2020 Dry hopped: 2nd May 2020 Bottling day: 7th May 2020 Background I picked up a personal favourite during a shopping trip to Tesco - Proper Black by St Austell Brewery.  I love this beer enough to have given it 5 out of 5 on Untapped. A beer as black as stoat to the eye but as hoppy as it's golden cousin - Proper Job (another fave).  I am keeping another load of bottles for my next batch; which coincidentally, I wasn't planning on doing for a few weeks. Removing the label from the Proper Black bottle, made me think about how much I enjoyed this brew. Spur of the moment, I decided that a Black IPA should be my next brew.  Again, quite new to the all grain brewing lark, I scoured the Brew Dog Recipe Book for a Black IPA. A few stuck out. #347 - Technicolour Black at 6.5% was tempting but a little strong for something I am aiming for. #61 - AB:06, an Imperial Black IPA at 11.2% is a littl...

Brew 2 - Lockdown IPA Brew day: 28th March 2020 Bottling day: 1st April 2020 After the success of Alice Porter, I wanted to brew something a little lighter in both colour and strength. The impending lockdown period due to the Covid-19 outbreak was upon us and I fancied making a beer that was both drinkable and sessionable. Sifting through the DIY Dog back catalogue offered plenty for the imagination but a favourite go to beer really stuck out - Indie Pale Ale.   I really enjoyed this beer and can often pick it up in the local shop. It is a decent and well hopped IPA that I can usually all night. The recipe looked simple enough and the malt bill was small meaning a fairly cheap order - which arrived from Get 'Er Brewed  (5 days from order to delivery). The previous brew day using my new kit was such a success, I decided to scale up the batch and aim for 20 litres of wort - produced in 2 separate batches, then mixed at the end before adding the yeast. ...

Brew 1 - Alice Porter Brew day: 16th November 2019 Bottling day: 22nd November 2019 I was first introduced to a Live version of Alice Porter whilst on Honey Moon in Edinburgh during a visit to BrewDog at Lothian Road. I couldn't turn down a beer that shared a name with my Daughter and it turned out that the beer was incredible. Chocolate, Coffee, Milk all in a smooth and strong Baltic Porter. For me, a real 5-star beer that I really wanted to try again.  A few weeks later, I stumbled across the recipe in the freely shared DIY Dog recipe book and decided this as my first all grain brew. BrewDog, despite their critics, make their malt bills freely available to all and encourage people to recreate their most famous brews - you can find the recipe book here . I had used the recipe book before when we had attempted to recreate Punk IPA a few months previous and found the information contained within it enough to get started.  The recipes are tailored to 20L batches; I only i...

So, where to begin? What is a nano-brewery? I've always loved beer and have tried my hand at producing some too using basic extract kits purchased in budget stores such as Wilko's. As a scientist, I found the process of brewing very methodical but the the results were never quite what I wanted. I usually opted for producing 40 pints and storing it in a pressurised plastic keg. The beer never kept for long and my impatience often put pay to any chance o f a decent brew. This change more recently when I was introduced to all grain home brewing by my soon to be brother-in-law Rob when he purchased a range of bespoke kit (cool box mash tun and coffee urn boiler) to begin making his own brews from scratch. I chipped in on a couple of brew days and began to learn the trials and tribulations of all grain brewing on a small scale. (I'll cover this in another post perhaps...) After a little reflection and some time spent researching, I decided that I wanted to brew in my...