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Organic beer of the week: Brakspear
Imagine doodling on a napkin, leaving the room for five minutes not thinking much of it, only to discover upon your return that you’ve actually sketched a minor masterpiece (not a Da Vinci, granted, but definitely good enough to be rejected by the Turner Prize). Well, something similar happens when drinking a Brakspear Organic Beer. Straight from the bottle it tastes fizzy, bitter and slightly bland. But left to wallow in the glass, the carbonation settles and the flavours begin to mellow, offering a satisfying yeasty vim with a sweet tang and fruity odour. It reminded me of a really excellent home-brew - no doubt due to the bottle conditioning that allows the yeast in the beer to continue maturing. Sublime stuff, and a fabulous session-beer - just give it a few moments to breathe first. Available from Asda for £1.54 a bottle or three for £4. [by guest blogger Dominic Bates]
December 9, 2005 in Food & drink | Permalink
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Comments
brakspear... wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!
Posted by: Phil Smith | 9 Dec 2005 17:41:32
Brew low cost beer. The amount of time you spend on brewing beer makes the small difference in cost between "just OK"
ingredients and top quality ingredients a minor point. Either way, the cost of brewing a 5 gallon batch is much cheaper
than buying a couple of cases of beer in the store.
Beer is made of cheap ingredients, so it doesn't hurt to buy the best. Surprisingly, the cheapest way to brew beer gives
you the best results: all grain brewing is the cheapest way to brew when grain is bought in bulk.
You do need a grain mill and a mash tun, so there is a small investment in equipment needed. But you should be able to
brew excellent quality beer for less than $2 per gallon, and you could brew a mild ale for as little as $1 per gallon, or
less than 10 cents per bottle (one gallon is about 10-1/2 12oz bottles). Most of my pilsners are about $1.50 a gallon
brews.
Other ways to reduce the cost of your beer are by growing your own hops and reusing yeast from the fermenter. Easy to do,
and it means that I don't have to buy yeast more than once every half year or so. The hops should last e through most of
the winter brews. So all you need is grain, which is about $0.70 per pound in a bulk purchase (much of the cost is in
shipping).
Beer Brewing Equipment Basic, simple, cheap equipment that gets the job done. Sometimes it adds to the challenge. But
through the mystique of brewing and remember that illiterate alewives brewed for centuries using tried and true recipes
and procedures before the dawn of kegerators, ph meters or hydrometers.
Beer Keg Brewing. After using bottles for years, you can jump to the corny keg (Cornelius keg). This is an important step
because it makes brewing so much easier. You can still bottle, but just a few bottles per batch, and use a corny keg to
fill the bottles. You can use corny kegs as secondary fermenting vessels. You can try out method where you leave the beer
in the primary for about two weeks until it clears nicely, and then upi carefully siphon it over to a corny, avoiding
transferring any trub.
Posted by: beer | 3 Mar 2007 12:57:58
