Brewing Bad with Wild Weather - our collabs' story

We often say it, but it remains true every time, we LOVE collaborations. With Valentine's Day been and gone, there is no exaggeration there. We genuinely are thrilled to write-up a new recipe, push a new concept, learn from others, play on others' brewkit and work together on a truly collaborative beer venture. But even they can grow predictable. At Weird Beard we are not those kinds of people! When Wild Weather Ales (WW) were looking to brew with us, we thought to do the whole collaboration thing a little different...

Bryan suggested we brew a different beer at each of our places quite close in dates and that we blended the two brews together, to release 3 new, collaborative beers. Our idea, although inspired by a black-and-tan, was to not be so obvious and to brew 2 beers other than an stout and IPA. There is no better way to hash out the concept of a recipe than over a few beers, so Bryan and Iain from WW met at the Lyric to do just that. I got to tag along.

Saying that, I wasn't just a "fly on the wall" and in writing this blog, I want to share a fair bit of the beers' design processes. I want the message to get across that this collaboration in particular was not a simple, neat exchange of a recipe sheet via email, which can be the case. First up there were a lot of fun options to brew and to blend which were discussed as we got some rounds in. I remember a Black IPA being suggested to be possibly blended with a Wheat beer as one idea. I also remember both sides were adamant we'd use Sorachi Ace. Now that won't come as a surprise to you.* And on the subject of Sorachi Ace, we got talking about the flavour and aroma profile of the hop and how it can be super coconutty, especially in darker beers. An example you may know is Fade To Black, our black IPA hopped with Sorachi. You may recall, and kudos if you do, that we even amplified the coconut flavour by putting the beer in BrewDog Camden's Hopinator with dessicated coconut at a tap-takeover and we even brewed a coconut version of the beer once.

On the subject of coconuts, and since Bryan and I had recently returned from a month-long trip to the States where our final days in Colorado had my hop-wrecked palate craving nothing but Oskar Blues Death By Coconut, we were inspired. The dark beer element would be a coconut stout! We wanted some chocolate and some coconut, nothing as sweet as Death By Coconut if you've ever had it; certainly more subtle so the blend of the 2 beers wouldn't be overpowering.

Which brings us to the second collab. The Wheat idea, with all the banana going on, didn't appeal to us. We had some thoughts of a Chocolate Orange Coconut mix and when we heard "oranges" we got to Saison. I won't say the minds of brewers are as simple as that, trust me I do not attempt to completely track Bryan's thought processes, but flavour matching and complimenting is key. Particularly in this instance. Adding orange peel to a saison wasn't too thrilling for us and after hearing of WW's antics with strawberries, peaches and all sorts of other flavourful adjuncts, we looked to their beers for more inspiration. Their Kaffir Lime Pale (Plain Sailing Weather) ignited that and the concept of a Kaffir Lime Saison, then blended with Coconut Stout seemed wild but not crazy. With my mini-Kanken stuffed with Wild Weather cans, our brainstorming session was over and the next stages of recipe development needed paving.  

Now this part is more lazy chemistry than Breaking Bad, but Bryan and myself had a night of preparing a dried coconut tincture, a suitable stout of our choice, Kaffir Lime Pale can, our Saison 14 (because it has loads of lovely Sorachi in it) and multiple glassware. We infused the stout to get the desired degree of coconut flavour and so, created a quick coconut stout for our experimentation. We then mixed a mashup of the Kaffir Lime Pale with Saison 14, but also kept some Saison 14 aside. We got carefully blending, tasting and comparing. As rudimentary as the tests were, it all tasted good and provided some security that we weren't all embarking on a collaboration that would put out downright rank tasting beer.

We brewed Coconhagen Interpretation, the Coconut Stout, at our place with WW over (it can be found in bottle, keg and cask). It's got a fair bit of chocolate malt and is full of oats for a creamy mouthfeel and luxurious taste to soften the darker and robust flavours of the style. Weighing in at 6.5%, it's a pretty typical ABV for us and we like a stout to have er, well, some "strength". We've hopped this treat of a brew, with our beloved Sorachi Ace for the fresh coconut aroma and flavour we mentioned earlier, and thrown some classic EKG so it's bitter enough so you're not fooled that you're drinking a liquid chocolate bar. It is wittily named after the Copenhagen Interpretation, an expression of the meaning of Quantum Mechanics that explains why the same quantum particle may behave in many different ways.  If you're wondering why it's getting so tech-y all of a sudden, you'll need to keep that brain of yours working a bit more to derive the solution.

At WW, we made Kwantum State, the Kaffir Lime Saison (it can be found in keg and cans). With a suitable pale and light malt-bill for easy-drinking qualities, Belle Saison yeast and Kaffir Lime, the beer has a twist on the citrus edge. Spiciness from the French farmhouse yeast compliments the zesty lime which works intricately with white grape notes from Nelson Sauvin hops. Plus, there is more Sorachi love going on with that thrown in too for lemon sherbert and some coconut. Another carefully formulated beer, so-named after Quantum State...I'm sure you're following the trend.

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Bringing the two together and blending a 50:50 mix, the blended product is called Such a Bohr. The name a nod to our unconventional collaboration methods and to Niels Bohr, the Danish Physicist who made monumental progress in understanding Quantum Theory. (At this point, if the penny hasn't dropped you ought to understand why you flunked A-levels Science). Such a Bohr can found in keg and cans. 

All these beers are launching at BrewDog Shepherd's Bush from 6pm tonight. Come along to meet and greet their makers, and taste the two separate beers and the clever blend physic-ally for yourselves. We're very excited for the beers and the event.

* What will, is we've actually used up all our Sorachi Ace and  we're still going out buying or trading for more Sorachi. Thanks Cloudwater, thanks WW! There's no stopping us #SorachiLove.

Poll to Choose The Maiden's Favourite Hops

Scream for me beer drinkers! SCREAM FOR ME BEER……. Ok sorry, I do get carried away, and I have the obvious selection of music playing in the background as I type.

Back in July 2016 we released the first of our Hops Maiden England series. The label text outlined the idea, and that’s what Cut & Paste was made for right?

“Yes, we find sanctuary in those big tropical fruit, citrus, piney U.S. and New World hops. But you dont have to be clairvoyant to see the problems.  Unfortunately, with the explosion of new craft breweries around the world, these hops are getting harder to reliably source from year to year.

We have taken on the challenge to create a really great Pale Ale, with just English hops. There are many classic English Pale Ales, but we wanted to get a little closer to the American Pale Ale, to bridge the styles a little. So with a set grain bill as the base of the beer, we will be experimenting with as many interesting new English hops as we can get our hands on, releasing several different versions until the Hop Maiden has found the perfect combination, and we can christen a new core beer.

This is the Hop Maiden. She does not listen to heavy Metal, but that girl will run to the hills to find us the best in English hops. “ (Worked out what I’m listening to yet?)

Since then we have brewed 5 different variations, and the beer gone down well with drinkers. It has been a lot of fun and challenging at the same time. Also, it has been very tempting to continue forward and have the hops change with each and every batch, like Little Things That Kill and Holy Hoppin’ Hell. But, we have beers that change and that was never the point of this project. We really enjoyed all the versions we brewed; some more than others. It is also debatable whether we achieved our goal, but a great beer that everyone at the brewery enjoys immensely has been born.

We all have our favourite "Hops Maiden England" and we are searching the Internet's rating sites, but we also want your help in deciding. So, it is time to dust off your beer note books, delve into the dark corners of your memory, find that napkin, anything and anywhere you noted down your thoughts on each or any of the beers. Use this info to get online and rate the version(s) you got to try, or simply let us know your favorite by voting in the pole below.

We will use this info to decide which version will become the latest member of our core range, under the name "Maiden England".

Listed, most recently brewed first:

• 12/16 (batch 388) Olicana, UK Cascade, Target
• 09/16 (batch 369) Target, Phoenix, Olicana
• 08/16 (batch 354) Target, Archer, UK Cascade
• 07/16 (batch 337) Olicana, UK Chinook, UK Cascade
• 06/16 (batch 328) Olicana, Minstrel, Bramling X

Which hop combination should be used for Maiden England?

Olicana, minstrel, Bramling X

Target, Archer, UK cascade

Olicana, UK chinook, UK Cascade

Target, Phoenix, Olicana

Olicana, UK cascade, Target

 

pollcode.com free polls

Part-Time Bookkeeper Required

Weird Beard Brew Co is looking for a part-time experienced bookkeeper. We are a fast-growing company and looking for someone who has the skills to really take charge of this role. Weird Beard Brewing Co started early 2013, by Bryan and Gregg, and is now well positioned in the London and UK brewing scene. We were Rate Beer’s 5th “Best New Brewery in the World” in 2013, and continue to push out innovative and interesting brews.

This role is for 15-20 hours per week, we have some flexibility in terms of how and when those hours are structured. Ideally with at least 2-3 years’ experience with previous responsibility for the finances for a growing business. We are looking at implementing QuickBooks in the setup of this accounting system so knowledge on this is essential.

The duties will include but not limited to:

•             Supplier invoice posting

•             Supplier payments

•             Supplier accounts reconciliation

•             Raising sales ledger invoices

•             Credit control activities

•             Manage the sales ledger

•             Bank reconciliations

•             Being responsible for amounts due for monthly beer duty and VAT.

•             Manage the monthly transactional accounting for the business

•             Reconciling of all balance sheet accounts

•             Ensure that the month end income statement and balance sheet are accurate and complete, all postings are correct and that they reflect the current position of the business.

•             Development of the internal reporting and support of the ongoing development of the systems to improve profitability and business performance

•             Perform daily bank reconciliations

•             Input vendor invoices and credit card expenses

•             Prepare customer credit notes where necessary

•             Follow up aged debtor

Job Locations: Hanwell, West London

Required Experience: 2-3 years, booking keeping and accounting.

Salary: £23-25K pro-rata

A love of craft beer would be advantageous.

Apply today to be part of a great team. Unfortunately, due to the high number of applicants we are unable to reply to everyone. Please get in touch email a copy of your CV and covering letter to recruitment@weirdbeardbrewco.com

Benefits

•             Onsite parking

•             Buy beer at wholesale price

•             Flexible working hours

•             Box of beer on your birthday

In the spirit of the B(e)ard

As it's Burn's Night this evening, I felt inclined to contemplate some interesting and/or inspiring Scottish folks, and distract all (and particularly myself) from a certain uninspiring American. I also wanted to give our resident Scotsman, leadbrewer Ryan, something else to feel proud about on this patriotic day.

I'll be honest, listing the cool Scots that come to mind, Robert Burns, isn't top of my list. There's Sean Connery, Sir Arthur Conen Doyle, Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor - dare I admit it's because Bryan's got me into G.O.T - there's Richard Madden, as famous actors from things we watch. Music-wise, I'll be the only one from the team pogo-ing with excitement to Idlewild, but there's appreciation for other Scottish bands Mogwai, Primal Scream, Biffy Clyro and Nazareth. But none of these guys, like good ol' Mr Burns, have a day dedicated to them where people drink and be merry, in which case, I do think Burns trumps them in that respect.

So, what's everyone having to accompany their haggis, neeps and tatties? If you're not partaking in any sort of shenanigans to celebrate the life and poetry of Robbie Burns, then here's an excuse, aside from #Tryanuary, to raise a glass of some delicious beer or, even, whisky. Go on!

Our chosen bevvie for tonight would the Wee Heavy we made, "Don't Worry Bee Heavy". This was the second beer we brewed in collaboration with Brussels Beer Project (BBP). A quick jump back to when we first met BBP: Dimitri (Sales, Events and Marketing) and Yves (headbrewer) made the long and arduous journey to our brewery one Open Day. This blog recounts that very first visit and the gesture to do so did not go unappreciated. When we had an opportunity to brew with them, it was a sure “Yes”. When, Yves was back in London town and wished to brew again, that too was a “Yes”. They're super guys.

Yves puffing on one of the cigars which were destined but not used in our 2nd brew

BBP’s brews with London brewers have been focussed on the theme of “London”. Our first collab, “Churchill’s Delusion” was a Tobacco Mild, playing up to Milds being a very English beer style and cigars being so very Churchill, a prime British figure. Our second collab, was still to be quintessentially British. With most of the team up in Manchester for IndyMan, Ryan, who we've mentioned is the Scot amongst us, was left to hold the fort and decided upon a Wee Heavy. This style, also known as a "Scotch Ale" characteristically is a copper-brown beer, of moderate strength with sweet, full-bodied malty, caramel flavours and a touch of roasted bitterness. If you've ever had Alesmith's Wee Heavy, then you'd know that definition is a major understatement to how deliciously complex this style could be. 

Our take had to have complexity but also loads of individuality, something BBP and ourselves love to dose our brews with. To achieve this, we used 13 malts as opposed to the normal 3-4 grains. To name a few: roasted barley for the more bitter and toasted notes, chocolate malt for dark choc bitter-meets-sweetness, Special B for candied fruit and caramel flavours, biscuit malt for Digestives sweetness, light & dark crystal as well as amber for more caramel and the quirky addition of peated malt for a smoky edge. Originally, we wanted to continue the theme of our previous collab and make a Tobacco Wee Heavy but there is no way in this country, that we could crumble cigars into a brew. Peated malts suited us fine and we got the layered flavour profile we wanted. We then balanced the roasted and subtle smoked flavours with a lot of honey. We kept the hops earthy and European with EKG and Target. Finally, we pitched Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast to give rise to all those raisin, Dundee cake-like, stone-fruit flavours and desired esters that work in harmony with the honey to give the beer its warmth and richness.

Yves powered hard through his post IndyMan hangover and on our labour-intensive kit; BBP made a wise move in the beginning to invest in a pretty much fully automated brewhouse. Despite the tough day, Yves' whole experience, input and opinion of this beer is one that he’s exceptionally proud of. "Don't Worry Bee Heavy" embodies a lot of our and BBP’s ethos and style of brewing. With a nod to all this, we’ve ensured the branding for "Don't Worry Bee Heavy" is just as strong. As an homage to Yves and to our brewer Kit, both with dreadlocks and both who brewed this beer with Ryan, our Lup’in has dreadlocks. The nod to the Scottish element behind the beer and the Scotsman who wrote the recipe, is prominent in the gingery wig and tartan. The name, a playful pun, which I love, on the honey and Wee Heavy aspect of it all.

Wee heavily hope you enjoy this beer as much as we do and even more so if you're enjoying it tonight.

Slainte!

Statement on Gregg Irwin's Forthcoming Departure

Weird Beard Brew Co was originally founded by 2 home brewers: Gregg Irwin and myself, Bryan Spooner. We both started doing a little bit of everything, but slowly and naturally gravitated to certain, and separate roles. Gregg was more naturally suited to the Sales and business side, with his people skills and previous experience of running his own business. While I, with my Engineering background, was much happier in the brewhouse, using my hands, hiding from people and brewing the beer.

As we grew as a company in size and staff, I like to feel that we evolved into a team; a family with everyone involved doing their bit and helping build the brand. Weird Beard is now more than the sum of its parts and indeed more than the 2 original founders. Its identity is the people who work for us: past and present. Currently, we have 8 full-time members of staff: 4 in the brewery and another 4 in the warehouse/office unit just a few doors down on our industrial estate. Both Gregg and myself take leadership of each building and the part of the business of which that represents. Maybe here lies the first signs of our uneasy relationship with each other.

The beer is brewed, packaged, and finally passes a quality control check in Unit 5. I lead the brew team (Ryan, Ben & Kit) and with their help develop and brew 95% of the beers. We have a very open door attitude to the beers we brew, and any member of the Weird Beard team can suggest ideas and help out on a brew day. (Absolutely every member of our team has had to brew with me, even if only, just one time.) With the advice and information from the Sales team, I plan the brew and packaging schedules, along with making sure we have the staff in the brewhouse to facilitate this. The brew team manages all of the consumables required for these tasks like ordering ingredients, bottles, boxes etc.

Once the beer has passed QC and is good for release, it will be taken by our Warehouse Manager, Patrick, from the Warm Room to the warehouse at Unit 9. Once in the warehouse, Patrick orders the labels etc and uses any spare brewhouse staff to get the labels on the bottles. Rachel, our Sales Manager, then manages UK sales of the beer, whilst Gregg is across Export Sales. Natasha, who has filled almost every role in the brewery at some stage, is currently running Events and Social Media. She plans and runs events, orders any promotional items and deals with Customer Support and Social Media. All this happens in Unit 9 under the watchful eye of Gregg, who spends his days chasing money, paying bills, dealing with our accounts and all of the other fun business stuff involved in running a brewery.

Obviously, all important decisions are made by both Gregg and myself. However, we’ve experienced there is often a compromise here, as both directing parties have differing visions of what Weird Beard is and where we should be going. It is not surprising that Gregg has become unhappy; sitting in an office for long hours and from time to time, butting heads with your business partner is not a fun way to spend your days. Also, the ever increasing size of the team means there are more people to attend the fun events, so one of the more enjoyable parts of a director’s role slowly disappears.

Gregg is currently looking for a new role in a new company in the beer industry. When he finds this he will give his 1 month’s notice that he wishes to leave his directorial role in Weird Beard. He will still have a financial interest in the company, remain a shareholder, although reduced to leave me the controlling stake. In the short term, this will mean little will change, except all the top decisions will now be made by just one person. The day-to-day running of the business and brewing will not change. Soon we will be appointing someone to take on the Accounting and Sales, which Gregg has and no longer wants ownership of.

Even so, we will always acknowledge that Gregg has played a vitally important part in Weird Beard. We would not be who we are today without him and would, quite possibly, not exist. But his departure need not be a bad thing. First off, someone else in the industry is going to get a dedicated, knowledgeable and passionate new member of their team. Gregg can hopefully find his mojo and get behind making some beer he is truly passionate about again. As far as Weird Beard goes, the beers we brew will be the same; it will be the same people coming up with the ideas and making the beer but with just one person at the helm, it will be one vision. There will be no more compromise, no lengthy to and thro that often end in a stalemate with no change and no progression. Any underlying tension because of differences in directors’ opinions that has hung over the brewery like a cloud will disperse, leaving morale higher and leading to a much more relaxed environment.

I'm not saying it will be plain sailing and easy from here; there are challenges ahead. We need to find the right person to fill Gregg’s day-to-day role, but we are not looking to fill his incredibly large boots. The staff will no doubt feel uneasy whilst any changes take effect and while things settle. Sales may fall as Social Media potentially gets into a panic over Gregg's departure. It’s important that people beyond the brewery realise there has always been a quieter person by Gregg’s side also running the brewery and willing to take on a lot of the responsibilities Gregg will be leaving behind . My role is the one which will evolve the most in this time and I have prepared myself for this.

We will all miss Gregg and also Alison, Gregg’s wife who has been a great help and ray of light around the brewery since day one. We all wish him the very best of luck for the future and hope to see and work with him many times yet, wherever he goes. Moving forward, Weird Beard will continue to do what we do best and keep putting out new and interesting beers. We’ve already released some excellent new beers this year and have plenty more where those came from. Also, we’re looking forward to many more prestigious festivals this year. In terms of physical expansion, we are already growing some more, taking control of our third unit in our industrial estate in the coming days. We are not going let this change in our team, as significant as Gregg has been, slow us down. We can assure you, we will be making the best of this time of change. Collectively, we have plenty of aspirations, new recipes and plans and I am determined for us to see them through.

Bryan Spooner

Co Owner, Head Brewer, Production Manager

Pig Smasher - The tail about the beer

26th October 2016.

It was an extra special day for our Weird Beard calendars. For those who have been following us for a while, you may know it marked our 4 years of “Weird Beard Brew Co” coming into fruition. For those who follow us more closely and are close to us, it also marked headbrewer and co-founder, Bryan’s birthday. And the cherry on the top, we brewed with the guys at Against The Grain (ATG), at their brewpub over in Louisville, Kentucky!

Let’s set the scene a little more around this collaboration brewday...We had a couple of the team over in Louisville for the annual Shelton Brothers’ Festival. This awesome fest moves around the States, is held each year and all the National and International breweries, which the Shelton Brothers’ distribute, are invited.  So we knew we’d been in town where Against The Grain have been making their innovative beers and it so happened, a couple of Indy Man Beer Con’s ago, we’d struck up a friendship with the founding members at ATG. Well, if jumping around to “Jump Around” in the deep-end of a drained pool at one of the UK’s best Beer Festivals is by any means a definition of friendship. I digress...The equation of us being in Louisville and catching up with ATG meant a beer needed to be made together. With Bryan and my flights booked, the brewday was booked in and we were all set to make beer!

The brewpub is one of 2 of ATG breweries; it is their first location and situated in Slugger Field at the corner of Jackson and Main Streets, Downtown Louisville. The actual brewery part is located above the smokehouse bar and 2 storeys up a ladder. This made for a pretty awesome view of the restaurant filling up as the brewday progressed. See picture below. The collaborative brew team consisted of ATG’s brewery operations manager and one of the founders, Adam, their headbrewer, Amelia, and lead brewer, Brian plus our headbrewer, Bryan. I was more behind the scenes/behind the screens social-media-ing the action. We were greeted bright and early by all including another founder, Jerry, with the quintessentially American breakfast of coffee and donuts. With a maple syrup iced one with candied bacon in hand, this is how Bryan’s birthday brewday commenced. Looking back, the fact Bryan had a pig-based donut and the beer being called “Pig Smasher” is quite fitting indeed!

Now for the important bit, the beer itself; we had decided to go for an American Red. We don’t get to see those often and always enjoy them when we do. To get that truly red hue, the grainbill featured, amongst other malts: Special X, CaraRye, Red malt and a touch of roasted barley. For the hops, it being an American Red we went for....yes, you’ve guessed it, all-American hops: Bravo, Simcoe and Chinook in the Kettle. For the dry-hopping we added more Bravo and threw some Summit into the mix.  For an alternative take on the style and to play up on the caramel semi-sweetness that lies beneath the hoppiness of American Reds, we added ample honey into the boil. The resulting beer ticked all the boxes for a classic American Red, chock full of lovely, citrus & piney hops but with the honey adding an interesting dimension of sweetness to the flavour profile. At 6.8%, it goes down easy; not too sweet, not too resinous and as the label states: no animals were harmed in the making of this beer! There may come a day bacon goes into a beer of ours (certainly not my idea) but as things stand we’re putting out vegetarian and quite often also vegan friendly brews.

As for the name of the beer, that is something of a story. We at Weird Beard are quite selective about how we name our beers and because of that we do have some fantastic names for our beers. ATG are particularly playful and witty in naming their beers so we really had to come up with something that fitted the bill. And this small dilemma manifested itself for a little while as we had no obvious inspiration for a name after the brewday. I remind you that we were over in the USA primarily for the Shelton Brothers’ Festival. This kicked off 2 days after our brewday with ATG with the first day of the beer-filled antics being on the Friday. The venue for it was at the Copper & Kings Brandy Distillery in Butchertown district of Louisville. It was a delightful day, lots of sunshine, lots of people and lots of beer. There was a not-so-nice aspect to the day and that was the Eau De Butchertown. Being a vegan myself, you’d think I may be escalating the situation but ask anyone who was there, that smell was potent! It came in waves and it got quite bad that someone had to enquire “What actually is THAT smell?” To which the response was: “Oh they’re smashing pigs today”. 

Reminiscing back to the brewday, and our time in Louisville, the idea of naming our ATG collab "Pig Smasher" as suggested by Brian, with “an ode to the ol' Butchertown stink” (quoting Amelia from ATG) seemed like a very Weird Beard and Against the Grain thing to do.

Christmas Extravaganza Open Day 2016 Line-Up

With the weekend on our doorstep, we thought to kindle your excitement for our upcoming Open Day by announcing what's in store for the event.

First things first, since the Defacer mini-cask we had on in August went down a treat (even at 11.1%), we decided to have another super-special beer on cask. This time, we've got a one-off polypin of Rye Smile (10.6%) Rye Wine. Come early to not avoid disappointment, once it's gone, it IS gone. Then, our exceptionally exciting Keg-list is as follows:

Black Christmas, 4.5%, Cranberry Christmas Stout

Little Things That Kill, 3.9%, Session IPA *latest recipe*

Sadako, 9.5%, Imperial Stout

*Against The Grain Collab Release* Pig Smasher, 6.8%, Honey Red Ale

*Brussels Beer Project Collab Special* Churchill's Delusion, 5.7%, Tobacco English Mild

*Redemption Collab Special* South Pacific Pale, 6.7%, Southern Hemisphere Pale Ale

Plus in bottles, we'll have our core, occasionals and these select specials: 
Safe Stout (released only this week)
Churchill's Delusion
Something Something Dark-Side
Something Something Barrel-Aged
Double Perle (Buffalo Trace Edition)
Sadako (Bourbon Edition)
Rye Smile (Regular and Bourbon Edition)

Just a reminder, all drink-in will be happening from Unit 5 - our Brewery; all take-out will be happening from Unit 9 - our Warehouse.

On top of all the above liquid-deliciousness, you can expect the following tastiness:

• the yummiest artisanal Scotch Eggs & Sausage Rolls (veggie options incl) by Pig & Hay
• thirst-quenching Square Root sodas including their special Pear & Aronia (a.k.a Chokeberry!)
•  what we call, "snack-crack", Karkli
• heart and soul warming Indian Street Food by 10 year veterans of the Great British Beer Festival, King Samosa

Also, it being the holidays and all, we've got a whole next level of merch for sale. Jump in on informal brewery tours, just collar someone at the bar if interested. 

We can't wait for Sunday, hope to see you folks there!

Safe Stout - the fun & games of brewing it

Good brewing involves a healthy dose of craftsmanship amongst other things. When you’re witness to good craftsmanship that often brings inspiration to the table. So, when a good idea knocks us on the head there very well may be an element of building on top of something that we already know works. And this, we’re happy to admit, is how Safe Stout came about.

We brewed our Christmas beer, a Cranberry Stout called Black Christmas, last year and found the juiciness of the fruit made for a satisfying and flavourful beer that outshone all those too potent with sickly Crimbo spices. We found the red-fruit notes worked really well to lighten the darker and roasted malt flavours and was something worth us remembering for future brews. (We do log a lot of ideas that come to mind and would make for a great beer, should we have space in our brew schedule and revisiting the list of sometime whacky and sometimes simple recipes is always a lot of fun).

In the same year, we had also brewed Safe Word, a fruit IPA with slightly tart chokeberries. With this recipe, we discovered that the fruit aromas and taste of Mosaic hops really sung when used in conjunction with the chokeberry. With both these tasty brews under our belt, it wasn’t too long before we found ourselves driven to do a dark version of Safe Word.

Using a very similar grain bill to Black Christmas, except for accommodating for the same ABV ballpark as Safe Word, we pretty much had a solid recipe at our fingertips. We experimented a little with the quantities of fruit in the recipe re-write, to get the level of juiciness we wanted in a darker beer. We also dropped out the dry hops we had for Safe Word when making Safe Word to ensure the richer, stouter flavours still had prominence.

Both beers rock playful, gimpy Lup’ins which to us, represent the fun-loving, no holds-barred ethos we have regarding brewing. They also represent the out-of-the-ordinary, little-bit-daring nature of our brewing with an odd fruit called chokeberry as well as the recipes we like to have some fun with. If you want to know more about chokeberry, a.k.a Aronia, read here.

As with our chokeberry IPA, Safe Word, when drinking this beer you’re guaranteed the same punchy chokeberry delivering tart, red-fruit notes.  Tie in the aforementioned, juicy Mosaic hops to play on that, and also subdue some of the fruit's bitterness, this beer goes down far too easy for 7%. All the while that you’re relishing these flavours, you’ve also got melt-in-your-mouth chocolate and a silky mouth-feel desired of a delicious stout.

With great pleasure do we share this beer with you. Cheers!   

The Spreadsheet Ninja Side of brewing. The Final? Ninjaing of the Ninja, Changes to the Core Range.

So here we go again, yet more changes to Spreadsheet Ninja.  This poor ninja is obviously not very good at his job as he has taken quite a kicking over the last year or two.

So, what is the issue now? Fermenter space is the simple answer. The brewery is full so we can't put in any more fermenters. There is pressure on the production side of the brewery from increasing sales, so something has to give. 

Why does this impact Ninja?  Well a properly brewed pilsner will take a long time in the fermenter. While an ale will take 2-3 weeks all told, a pilsner with a cool 12 degree ferment and proper cold conditioning will take 5-6 weeks. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that it is possible to brew 2 ales in the time it takes to brew one pilsner. We will not compromise the pilsner brewing process for a quick turnaround.

But don't you factor in this extra time in the fermenter into the pricing of Ninja? Well, no we don't. We probably should but a 4.8% pilsner selling for £120+vat for a 30L keykeg is not going to sell well in the current market. There is a reason that there are not large numbers of good craft-brewed lagers in London.

So what does all this tell me? Sadly, Ninja drops out of our core range. It will be brewed once a year as a seasonal to be launched in May (we could not kill it completely!) and it means I have to stockpile enough kegs next May to do my kegerator at home for a year!

Anything else we need to know about the Weird Beard core range? Yes, a few.  We have dropped Decadence to an occasional beer, great though it is and as much as it is loved on Ratebeer, a 5.5% stout is not a great seller, especially in the summer months. We also intend to bring an English hopped pale ale into the range in the New Year. See this blog for information on that one. This leaves us with only four core beers at the current time. 

Will this be the final Ninja-ing of the Ninja? Who knows but if anything changes, we will be sure to let you know.

Meet the Weird Bearders

Weird Beard Brew Co. is known to be founded by Gregg Irwin and Bryan Spooner. Our founders are both bearded brewers who, other than their mutual love and passion for beer, share a similar interest in music, horror films and Metal that you will see and continue to see featured in our branding. These guys were running the show as a duo for the best part of our beginning. As we grew, Gregg has transitioned away from physically brewing, still developing recipes but runs the business-side of things. He is our Spreadsheet Ninja. Bryan on the other hand, well described in his twitter bio of “brewery gimp” is strapped to the brewhouse most of the time. He’s not complaining though as he is in his element there. You’ll hear Bryan say how lucky he is to have a business partner, like Gregg, who had the skills and want to put down the mash-paddle but take up the reigns of running the business.

But Weird Beard couldn’t have grown like it has without some extra bodies. We’ve seen some great individuals, mainly our friends, come and go onto progressing their career, making a mark on our beers and contributing to the dynamics of our team. We’ve also had some folk, the majority of whom started off as part-timers, get happily stuck among us. Suddenly it’s 2 years and still counting. So here’s a little bit about each individual who makes up our slightly eccentric team. Other than the same enthusiasm, respect and love for brewing and beer, there isn’t a defining factor of what makes you Weird Beard. But, we’re pretty sure we’re a fairly weird lot and we like to think our mish-mash individualism lends to the fact our beers are never too ordinary, we know no bounds and are always pushing for innovation.

Here’s us:

Gregg Irwin
Director, Co-founder, Spreadsheet Ninja
Beard Status: Big badger beard
Fun fact: Previously ran his own Photography business, who besides Spreadsheet Ninja-ing with us is an international lacrosse referee

Bryan Spooner
Director, Co-founder, Brewery Puppet-Master
Beard Status: Down-to-his-belly long, often plaited
Fun fact: Formerly a BBC Broadcast Engineer for all national stations with an obsession for classic VW Campervans and shouty music, so not a hippy

Patrick Knowles
Warehouse Manager, Master of Warehoue Tetris
Beard Status: Depending on his mood, bearded or baby-faced
Fun fact: Spent a day driving Wolf from Gladiators around in a Vauxhall Zafira

Natasha Wolf
Events and Communications Manager, Brewery Mouthpiece
Beard Status: Invisible beard, but if you saw it, surely ginger
Fun fact: A pick’n’mix in terms of heritage, Greek-South African by nationality with German, Polish, Russian, Israeli, Dutch and Irish thrown in

Rachel Esker
Sales Executive, Beer Pusher
Beard Status: Invisible beard, she’s ballsy so beardless is not an option
Fun fact: Classicist by trade, her cars are often named with a nod to Ancient times and she currently drives Archimedes

Ryan Ringsell
Lead Brewer, No.2
Beard Status: Patchy at best
Fun fact: Exchanged Architect’s blue-prints for brewsheets and is our one-eyed team member who we affecionately albeit jokingly call Ryeclops

Kit Kazarinov
Brewer, Mr. Acid
Beard Status: Still trying
Fun fact: Kit’s extra-brewery achievements are as cool as his dreadlocks: Master of Philosophical studies, long-time DJ, improvisational Jazz pianist

Ben Hughes
Brewer, The Machine
Beard Status: Luscious beard
Fun fact: Machine at any physical activity inside and out of the brewery including packaging, cycling and race-car driving

London Craft Beer Festival Line-Up

It's almost time for us to join our brewer friends and pour some great beer in great company. So what have we got lined up for the city's most exciting beer festival? Well, the short answer is: "a lot of specials to drink". The long answer is as follows:

"Brett You Didn't Know We Did This" 

We've got a special release keg of a barrel-aged bretted beer for you guys. We've got an ongoing project of these so this is the first of many to come your way. This exclusive brew is somewhere between a brett-summer ale or brett IPA. We hope you like it; we're excited to release these beers into the wild.

Curse of the Ryeclops, 7.5%

The next in the Ryeclops series, we've got a brand new Rye IPA that we are launching at LCBF. It boasts white-pepper spice and juicy pineapple, with a little Citra thrown into the all-American Equinox, Chinook and Cascade hop-mix.

Little Things That Kill, 3.8%

Our go-to session IPA to keep us, as well as you, hydrated all festival long. We've brought the latest recipe which is a punchy, tropical fruit-bowl of Green Bullet, Galaxy and Vic Secret. 

Hops Maiden England, 4.5%

Our new-release English hopped Pale Ale. This prototype is Olicana, UK Chinook and UK Cascade that is a mix of earthy hop notes and subtle grapefruit pithiness.

Defacer, 11.1%

Our dangerously delicious Triple IPA, that is only seasonally released this time of the year. Be warned it drinks far, far, far, too easy.

7th Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower, 6.5%

Our Anspach and Hobday Collab, a clever recipe that is a Dark Cream Ale with a clever name to match.

Safe Word, 6.6%

A Chokeberry IPA, which ticks the right boxes in terms of fruity, tart and bitter; our summer-time favourite IPA. We'd brew it more often if we could.

Sally Squirrel: Teen Detective, 5.7% 

A whirlwind of flavours in a beer of undefined style. Made with walnuts (CAUTION! NUTS), miso, chokeberry and fermented with Sake yeast, this is a beer we brewed with none other than Nanban's headchef, former MasterChef, Tim Anderson. 

Sadako, Ole Smoky Barrel Aged 9.2%

Old Smoky Moonshine Barrel Aged version of our flagship Impy Stout. Toasted marshmallow flavours meet bonfire smoke.

Something Something Barrel Aged, 9.2%

Bourbon Barrel Aged version of Something Something Dark Side.

Heaven and Hell, 9.5%

Heaven Hill Bourbon Barrel Aged version of our hop-changing DIPA, Holy Hoppin' Hell.

See you at LCBF! And if you've yet to get tickets, there is still some time so, don't miss out.

London Beer City Open Day Line-Up

We've promised an amazing line-up for Sunday's Open Day and we feel we've done just that.

Since it’s London Beer City (LBC) and all, on our “Friends’ Tap” we’ll have the official London Beer City beer on. This is brewed by our friends at Fourpure, Five Points and Beavertown alongside Fullers. The beer is refreshingly light and summery, easy drinking and we’re stoked to be one of the few taprooms to have it on.

Now you’ve probably heard about “Hops Maiden England”, the all-English hopped pale ales we’re churning out in the hope to find a wickedly tasty and exciting prototype that will feature as part of our core range. The blog here bares all. Anyways, we’re getting a lot of good ratings for both the prototypes we’ve first released but not many votes as to which one is better. We will be releasing more but want to get the ball rolling on what hops work and are preferred. So we’ll have Hops Maiden Englands on: Olicana, Minstrel and Bramling Cross in bottle vs. Olicana, UK Chinook and UK Cascade on draught. The former has the aroma of British hedgerow, Primrose Hill summertime and floral notes; the latter is zestier with some earthiness and sandalwood. Make sure you cast your votes!

Warning contains Nuts! Sally Squirrel is our pretty whacky (or nutty, if you’ll excuse the pun) collab with Tim Anderson for Nanban. It’s essentially a dark lager base, brewed with miso for umami & saltiness, chokeberry for tartness & sweetness, walnuts for an added dimension of earthiness and Mosaic hops for bitterness and a fruitier aroma. Then we fermented it with Sake yeast to dry it out and well, because Tim and ourselves are Japanophiles. It sounds full on but like any great chef and with the help of one, we worked real hard to balance those aromas and flavours.

Lord Nelson was originally brewed at our brewery when Andy Parker of Elusive Brewing had just started out. This is version 2, called Lord Nelson (2016), where we got to christian Andy's brewery with his first collab and re-make this fantastic beer. The beer itself is a farmhouse style ale fermented with Saison yeast and heavily hopped and dry hopped with much coveted New Zealand Nelson Sauvin. Full of lip-smacking gooseberry and vinous notes on the palate with a dry finish.

Now an occasional brew but originally a milestone beer to mark our reaching Brew 100, we love a bit of Double Perle. Essentially, an amped up version of our Black Perle, it is more of everything: creamier, slightly sweeter and more chocolate-y. It’s a richer beer but we suitably add more Has Bean coffee to compliment the roasted flavours of the darker malts used.

The big beer of our Open Day is massively limited and supremely special. We will have a Brewery exclusive pin of Defacer, the triple IPA that we developed to mark our 200th brew. Casks of this bad boy do not exist so this is a big deal. That’s an 11.1% beast of an IPA, with heaps of Sorachi Ace alongside Summit and Apollo. It’s got lemoncurd, sherbert, coconut and citrus notes, packing a juicy punch with its strength and bitterness. Yet we find this is one of the easiest drinking TIPA out there.

But that’s not all! We’ll have other specials to drink-in or take-away:

·       7th Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower: our Anspach & Hopbday collab Dark Cream Ale

·       Safeword: Chokeberry IPA that’s officially an occasional beer now, with an awesome new label

·       Attack of the Ryeclops: the 1st of our Rye series, a Rye Pale Ale

·       Heaven & Hell: Heaven Hill bourbon barrel aged Holy Hoppin’ Hell ie: barrel-aged DIPA that is as great as the song it’s named after

·       Sadako, barrel aged in Jack Daniels Whisky: 660ml waxed bombers of beautiful beer

Remember drinking-in will be happening at Unit 5 our brewery, whilst take-out is from Unit 9, the warehouse. T-shirt and glassware sales will be facilitated at both. Also at Unit 9, be sure to partake in the LBC raffle. We’ve got a range of prizes from free-drinks or bottles or merch.

See you at the event Sunday!

Hops Made in England - All English hopped Oatmeal Pale

We decided there was a hole in our core range, there was room for another pale beer.

Weird Beard have been feeling the strain with hops, as outlined in our Spreadsheet Ninjas blog. We are frequently struggling to get the hops we want from around the world, mainly US and New World. This frustrates us. We are also becoming more aware of interesting new British hops coming out on the market. They all have big bold claims about the tropical fruit flavours, but I am sceptical. I have tried some great UK hops, but they are always unmistakably UK hops; they all have a tell-tale earthiness to my pallet. Something down where the bitterness lingers, that just screams UK hops.

And we have experimented with British hops on a number of occasions. To me, the most successful of these was Weird Wired, a beer we brewed in collaboration with NZ brewery 8Wired. The idea of that beer was to pair UK and NZ hops in an ultra simple, ultra pale beer. We went with Bramling Cross for the UK hops, and it tasted great, but the beer had those NZ hops to prop it up.

Our session IPA, Little Things That Kill, in which the hops are different in each batch, has also had the UK hop treatment recently. We made a couple of really good batches, but again, we mixed in some US hops. Some people didn't rate these batches, because it didn't give the usual big US or NZ hop profiles we usually go for. But you have to take UK hops for what they are, and alter expectations accordingly.

A good example of this, and a bit of a marketing failure for the hop sellers in my mind, are UK Chinook and UK Cascade. These really shouldn't be called “UK blah” in my eyes. People are obviously going to judge the hop on its US counterpart, and these hops have no chance of standing up against those. It makes it difficult for brewers like us, who like to sell beer on the hops used, as people will see Chinook, or Cascade, and in their mind they are already anticipating something, leading to disappointment. The beer may be great, but it was not what the drinker was expecting.

We don't have a lot of experience of most of these hops. We have used them, as explained above, in combination with other, more tried and tested varieties, but the idea here is 100% UK hops. So we come up with quite a classic malt bill with oats and a touch of biscuit to compliment, yet give the hops a chance to shine, as a backbone to this beer. A number of incarnations will be brewed, with different UK hops each time. Then, looking at the sales, feedback and our own personal tastes, we will decide on the combination that will make it onto our core range.

First up we have Olicana, Minstrel and Bramling Cross. And second we went with Olicana, UK Cascade, UK Chinook.

We are quite well known for the inspiration for our beers, especially the naming and branding. We draw a lot on our love of horror movies, but mostly heavy music. This time was no exception, and the perfect name came to us almost instantly. Usually we go with song titles, but this time it was the title of a 1988 world tour by one of the biggest metal bands in the UK, and a personal long time favourite of mine. We contacted the band, through someone who knew someone, who knew someone...you know how it is. We explained our idea, and asked how far we could go with the branding. If you look at our recent beer, 7th Church Of The Apocalyptic Lawnmower, we have totally based the product's name and label around the band. But on the other hand, we have Little Things That Kill, that some people still don't realise is a song title. Here, however, the band in question's representatives gave us full permission to use the name, or the 2 words we wanted from the English language put together, as long as the label was “not overtly metal”. Now a lot of our branding is pretty metal anyway, so this put us in a bit of a pondery. We currently have a basic label and branding for this beer while we test out the different hops, but will come up with something different when the final beer is decided on.

We hope you enjoy the beer as much as we always enjoy developing and brewing all of our beers. And we invite you to be as critical or as complimentary as you want. All feedback will be great, so let us know by email, comments on the blog, postcard, or the usual social media what you think. We will also be checking up on things like untappd and RateBeer, so be sure to check in the correct versions.

7th Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower

Anspach & Hobday (A&H) started back in early 2013 around the same time we did. They took a very different approach to us, starting a small brewery with a tap room in Bermondsey. We went for a larger scale production brewery based in the middle of nowhere. Regardless of these differences and the distance, we have been friends, but this became stronger while we were doing our monthly Bottle Shop residency, just a couple of railway arches down the road. A&H guys would run samples of their newest beers to us and we would return the favour by sending over any of the specials we had on. Then, we would usually end up sharing a beer at their tap room after our event had finished.

So when the A&H brewery was out of action while they got their new floor put in and a bunch of sexy new stainless tanks delivered etc, it seemed the perfect time to finally get together and create something special. I have always been a huge fan of their Cream Ale, a style that I hadn't really tried before trying theirs. It is stuffed full of Sorachi Ace hops, very much like shooting fish in a barrel getting my thumbs up. So when deciding on a style, there was no problem with inspiration. I probably quite unfairly obsessed with brewing a version of this. It is a beer they do so well, so we got the basics of their recipe. To make it a little more collaborative, we tweaked it here and there and incorporated a bit of “Weird Beard”.

Ryan and Paul over the brewsheet

How did we do this? We started with the Cream Ale, or the classic U.S. 'lawnmower beer'. That is, a beer somewhere between a lager and an ale: clean, crisp and dry, yet malty and sweet. It’s the type of beer you crack open and quaff down while mowing the lawn/working in the 'yard' or drink in the sun on a lazy day. Then, we added a twist and took the beer off-style, as we quite often do, deciding on going for a Dark Cream Ale. Why? If you believe the likes of RateBeer and Untappd, we do dark beers very well. The idea of a Dark Cream Ale maybe doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven, but it does sound like the makings of an interesting beer. Using an adequate amount of flaked corn to still get the silky mouthfeel and sweeter flavours of a Cream Ale, we then added Black Prinz. We saw that little bit of dark malt would play with the coconutty flavours of Sorachi Ace. We upped the ABV and of course the hops to balance that out; there’s a little Summit to the hop mix. At Weird Beard, although we are some of the biggest fans of Sorachi Ace out there, we feel the addition of a little Summit really makes it sing.

The brewday itself had a great atmosphere. Along with myself, we had Ryan our lead brewer to back me up just in case it was one of those collaborations where the guest, let’s say ‘forget their wellies', and Natasha, social media, events and general people person, representing Weird Beard. We were expecting Paul and Jack to show up, but since there wasn’t a lot to do at their place, pretty much the full A&H team walked through the door. We had Paul and Jack along with Dylan and Dan. It was a great day, talking and drinking beer, and getting to know each other a little more. The guys really got stuck in as well (Jack did all the cleaning) making the day pretty easy and enjoyable for all involved. We look forward to having a play on their new kit soon.

Naming and branding a beer can sometimes be difficult, especially when you have more than one person involved. I do really like the process though; it gives me a chance to draw on my other passions of music and horror films. This time round I had a whole bunch of names ready before the beer was even brewed. It was just a case of choosing one. My inspiration came from the fact we were brewing a 'Lawnmower beer'. Originally a scene from the film “Brain Dead” came mind, where the main character, Timothy, walks through a crowd of zombies with a lawnmower over his shoulder. But then, our Spreadsheet Ninja, Gregg suggested the band Lawnmower Deth. 

After listening to the music and looking through the song titles it became clear we were definitely onto a winner. And the beer has been really popular with the band and their fans when we posted it up on in the Twitter-verse. That's cool. References to both the film and the music can be found in the bottle label text.

Come enjoy 7th Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower, launching today at Anspach & Hobday’s Taproom from 5pm!

Hot and Cold Liquor Tanks up for grabs

 

SORRY - GONE ALREADY!

We are giving away our old Hot and Cold Liquor tanks!

Totally free, you just have to come and collect them.

When we started, back in 2013, we got these liquor custom-made. They were designed hoping to work in a 10 Barrel set up, but didn't really have the capacity. We used them for over 2 years, changing the way we operated, so it is possible. I would recommend their use with a 7 barrel or smaller.

Not sure of the weight, but without the lids, 2 strong people could probably lift one.

They are both essentially the same size, with different fittings for purpose.

Fibre glass shell with around 10cm of insulation.

The base that sits on the floor is 120cm by 125cm. There are various connections coming out, so space around the tanks will be required.

They have a large main lid, so you can get inside safely; this is then bolted into place. There is another square manhole on each, which a person could happily get through.

With the main lids on, which over hang, the footprint is more like 130cm by 230cm.

Heightwise, with the lid on, and the hatch, they stand about 125cm tall. But they are pretty strong, and the top can be used for storage.

Both are 2000L in total volume, holding around 1400L of usable liquor. This is due to how they were designed with the various fittings etc.

They both have sight glasses, thermowells and float switches.

The HLT has an 18KW element, which is already installed.

See the diagrams and pictures below for details on fittings etc.

Cold Liquor Tank

Hot Liquor Tank

Please feel free to contact us at info@weirdbeardbrewco.com for more information.

Or come on down to us to check them out, although please let us know in advance if you plan to visit, as they are hidden away at the moment.

Churchill's Delusion - a collab with Brussels Beer Project

Here at Weird Beard, usually the first Sunday of every other month, we like to open our doors to the public and serve our beers fresh at source. Nothing new I know as almost every brewery in London has a tap room. But if you see where we are based, probably the furthest place in London from good transport links, you will understand why we make an event out of it. Which makes it all the more amazing when Yves and Dimitri from Brussels Beer Project (BBP) walk through our door. Now they had made a real effort there! We chatted for a long time about beer and our breweries, and I was really inspired by a lot of their philosophies of brewing. I showed them around, while plying them with samples of everything we had on the bar and anything interesting we had in the fermenters. They were also very generous in leaving us a wide selection of their bottles, which made the following weekly management meeting a lot less dull.

But the most important part of this bit of the story, was the talk of collaborations. Last year they had collaborated with 3 Norwegian breweries with cocoa nibs as the star ingredient. This year they wanted to collaborate with 3 UK breweries, with the main ingredient being that oh so classic English malt Marris Otter. To be honest, we have never used this malt before so I got quite excited about it and was in! We just had to come up with a date to brew together. 

This year we were very honoured and delighted to be invited to the second Tilquin English Beer Festival, after spending a 'memorable' time drinking Lambic with Pierre Tilquin out of the back of his van at 4am in a Travelodge car park, but that is another story. We were all over that, which meant we were going to be in Brussels for a few days; it's a hard life. I emailed the dates we'd be over to the BBP guys and luckily they managed to fit a brewday into their schedule around the time we were there. So we were on.  

The brewday itself was a fascinating experience for me and brought out a couple of the 7 sins. I arrived at the brewery just be fore 8A.M for the mash in and I was met by a lovely bar . Walk past the bar and the building opens right up. Up the left you have seating for the bar, but on the right you have a state-of-the-arts brewery. At Weird Beard everything is still done manually: from stirring the malt as it goes into the mash tun, to filling our bottles. But the BBP guys had made the decision to go for a fully automated system, leaving them more free to carry out some of the more monotonous, time consuming things that brewing entails. It was an easy brew, I wont lie, but very interesting. They had the opportunity to take all kinds of measurements at all kinds of point in the process that I can only dream of right now. Some of these would help us out immensely, especially when brewing with stupid things like rye. I won't bore you with that geeky stuff, this blog is about our beer. 

So back to the beer itself....As mentioned before we had never use Marris Otter, and for the collab we decided we had to go with a very classic British style as well. I set my heart on a style that, arguably, we have never brewed before. I say "arguably" because I get very frustrated with one of our beers being described as a mild. But as a brewery we aren't really that concerned about style definitions, so we let it go. Anyway, digressive rant over. We settled on brewing a mild, with Marris Otter, but with a difference; with an addition of something.

As with all collaborations, lots of ideas were thrown around. I had been reading up on the style of a mild, and a lot references to a tobacco taste kept coming up and we agreed on the idea of a tobacco mild. It was decided to play on these flavours in our choice of ingredients. First off, when you think of cigars and cigar shops, you think of the beech wood boxes they come in. These have their own delicate yet intoxicating aroma. When coming up with our beer's recipe, we therefore added a small amount of beech wood smoked malt. This also adds a slight smokiness that you would expect to have with tobacco.

This was not really going to cut it; this was not going to give us that full-on tobacco flavour we were after. This was just alluding to the fact. Although I do frequently joke that all you need to do to add 'flavour' to a beer is put it on the label, that is not the way we, or the fine gentlemen at Brussels Beer Project roll. So Yves sourced 10 Nicaraguan cigars, that were all broken up, put in a muslin sack and added to the whirlpool. The batch size at BBP is 1000L, so that is one fat arse cigar per 100l of beer, which I think is pretty generous.

And now for a funny story about my research for the beer. As mentioned, I am not a smoker, and to be honest really don't approve, but I won't get preachy. One of my close friends is a smoker, and had left a single cigarette at my place. I decided to break this up, stick it in a little loose leaf tea thing and leave it in half a pint of our Black Perle, Coffee Milk Stout, leaving the other half pint untainted for a fair test. Thinking back on it, maybe a whole cigarette's worth of tobacco dissolved in a liquid for a non smoker wasn't the best of ideas. The beer tasted really good yet really different compared to the control sample. The sweetness was toned down and the slight astringency played well with the mouth-feel. More to the point, the tobacco mixed with the coffee, which I also don't drink, in the beer had a very quick, noticeable effect.

Every good beer has to have a good name and label. The beer was brewed at BBP so we kept to their label template, going with the colours that define our Weird Beard casks: black, green and white. With Weird Beard it also needs to be an interesting name. I went my usual way, looking for songs or horror film references but the BBP guys went one better. The whole inspiration of the beer was "Britishness", and who do you think of when you think classic British and cigars? It has to be Mr Churchill himself, sucking away on a cigar in almost every instance you see him! However, we are not deluding ourselves here; this is a very odd take on a classic style.

It was an absolute pleasure to work with all the guys at BBP and an amazing experience brewing on their kit. We are all very proud of the beer and hope you will like it too.

The beer will be launched this Friday at BBP Tap Takeover event at The BottleShop. See you there!

June Open Day Beer List

Let's get you psyched about Sunday’s Open Day by announcing the taplist, shall we?

As with last time, for this event, we’ll be pouring 6 taps of great beer: 5 of our own and 1 which is “The Friend’s Tap”. Just a reminder of what this relatively new feature is about: at each Open Day we're now offering a guest beer from a brewery that we have collaborated with or are in the process of collaborating with. We showcase their beers because we rate them and think you should to, hence providing you the opportunity to try the beer.

This time around we’ve got something from the guys from Anspach and Hobday who we've quite recently collaborated with to make a Dark Cream Ale (sorry, you'll have to wait to hear more about that in later blogs).

Cream Ale 5.2%

A cross between a pale ale and a lager, Anspach and Hobday's take on this style is uniquely aromatic and flavourful. Bursting with Sorachi Ace deliciousness, perfectly creamy, this beer remains light and quaffable.

Black Perle 3.8%

Roasted flavours and chocolate star in this beer which has the added oompf of Hasbean coffee. Lashings of lactose smoothes the bitterness of dark malts and plays well with the milky quality of Perle hops. It's a treat of a sessionable dark beer!

Little Things That Kill 3.9%

This brew is part of a series where the grain bill is the same but the hops differ in each batch. Here we've got UK Archer and Olicana teamed up with US Amarillo for fresh fruit hopiness.  Always low ABV, this session IPA is still full-bodied because of additions of lactose and oats.

Attack of the Ryeclops 5.5%

A new beer from us: a Rye Pale Ale in fact, that we're launching on Sunday. It's got the perfect combo of floral and spicy hoppiness meets rye chewiness and further spice. Peppery Columbus, fruity Equinox and herbal Chinook all feature in this beer but we've struck an awesome balance to ensure this beer is easy drinking.

Boring Brown Beer 6.5%

Originally number 1 in our "Single Hop Series", this is a our rendition of an Imperial Best Bitter, hopped solely with Chinook. It's lightly nutty, satisfyingly biscuit-sweet but balanced with resinous hop aroma and flavour. This beer is the first we ever brewed commercially on our premises so it's a bit special. It's also a beer we're thinking of laying to rest so be sure to have it this weekend or you may regret it!

Tsujigiri 7.3%

This Japanese inspired I.P.A is brewed with fresh yuzu juice and fermented with sake yeast, certainly a great summertime beer. Sorachi Ace hops add lemon-sherbet notes that compliment the citrus yuzu as well as imparting herbal qualities to the beer. Chinook hops add spice and rounds the drier flavours given off by the yeast.

Other special beers, which are not mentioned above, that will be available for drink-in and/or take away include:

• Limited bombers of Saison 28 (an Imperial Farmhouse IPA)
• Double Perle - Jim Beam Barrel Aged (Bourbon barrel-aged Coffee Milk Stout)
• Something Something Barrel Aged (Bourbon barrel-aged Double India Stout) 
• Weird Wired (Extra Pale Ale brewed in collaboration with 8-Wired) 

No doubt about it, we'll have a range of our core and other occasionals too. Plus, expect some seriously tasty snacks from Pig and Hay and Karkli. Food from Redneck Smokehouse will be on sale outside and we've stocked up on refreshing Square Root Sodas including their "prepared-to-get-hooked" seasonal Strawberry soft-drink.

Merchandise will be on sale from Unit 5 including:

1. New addition of branded Pint glasses (£3) 
2. Branded stemmed or Craft Master glassware (£3).
3. Assorted T-shirts including new Baseball designs (£15)
4. Hoodies (£25)

We're looking forward to Sunday and hope to see you then!

Saison 28 - Our 300th Brew

In some instances, our brewers at Weird Beard are creatures of habit. Yes, we certainly like change in certain things: we have several hop-changing beers (Little Things That Kill, Holy Hoppin' Hell, Spreadsheet Ninja...etc) and we like to veer away from convention in terms of brewing, beer-style, ingredients, whatever we fancy - but all the while we do have our habits. One being, when it comes to a brewery milestone such as a centenary brew, we like to go BIG. It's just how we do those things. 

So, let's take a walk down memory lane...For our 100th brew, which took us 17 months to reach, we made an amplified version of our award-winning Black Perle, a coffee milk stout. This was Double Perle, a double stout version with a similar recipe but additional lashings of lactose and more coffee. 

We approached our 200th brew a little quicker, 11 months after, and we made Defacer. This was a triple IPA version, still a redevelopment of a previous brew: Sorachi Face Plant (double IPA) beer. Sorachi Face Plant, itself, was an amped up version of Little Things That Kills (Summit, Apollo and Sorachi Ace edition), also known to some as "Sorachi Face Punch". Digressions aside, fast forward 9 months later, we hit brew 300 and we're sticking to the same trend in how we mark the special occasion. Since we're still going strong, the beer that we put out, it's gotta match that.

This time around, true to our Weird Beard selves, we remained unconventional in our ideas for the brew. We re-developed the recipe of Saison 14, a 5.6% French/Belgian Farmhouse Ale to make an imperial version, which the name quite obviously yet cleverly implies. Voilá Saison 28! 

Like I said, we mark milestones with a bigger beer. We increased the grainbill and tweaked the proportions of malts used so we could hit an ABV above 10%. To counteract the sweetnes of the higher malt-base, we ensured we enhanced the hops adequately. Keeping to the same hop-schedule of Saison 14, we simply made sure we added more of the same: Pacific Gem and Sorachi Ace. "Of course, there is Sorachi in this special beer", we hear you say. Indeed, we love the stuff!

With Saison 28, the malts and hops play well together to create flavours of candied fruit. Pacific Gem boasts NZ tropical fruit notes but in this beer, it's all about candied papaya and juicy blackberries intermingling. With Sorachi Ace, you've got flavours of lemon-curd developing into coconut. And somewhere in-between, you get candied orange coming through. 

We think these well-matched, fruit-bowl flavours lend themselves to the refreshing quality of a Saison, a beer that we like to sip all through Summer. And, although this beer is big on all accounts, it wouldn't be a Saison by any means, without the Belgian yeast quality. Belle Saison yeast imparts a bold, full-on Farmhouse flavour that rises up to the challenge of the magnitude of hops we've chucked into this brew.  The hops here aren't timid; you get them on the nose, in tasting the beer and the lingering bitterness. It's that bitterness that made us decide to call this beer an Imperial Farmhouse IPA. Even as hoppy, bitter and just the right amount of boozy this beer may be, it's undeniably a saison with spice and peppery flavours coming from the yeast in the finish. 

So there you have the lowdown behind Saison 28. Happy 300th brew to us and happy drinking to you; there's most definitely a "Cheers" in that. 

Not only is this beer a celebratory brew but it's the kind that's for sharing so we've packaged it into 660ml bombers. Saison 28 will be launching on keg at our event at The Hopsmiths on 26th May from 4pm and will be available from then on after.

Suspect Device or is it an Elaborate Hoax.

Growing up in Belfast in the 70s and 80s was enough to put me off organised religion for life. They were troubled times and lots of young people like myself could not wait to get away to university on the mainland and away from the horrendous sectarian politics of the time. 

What was bad for Ulster at the time has turned out to be good for the UK craft beer movement 25 years later with a whole plethora of Ulster brewers, brewing at some of the top rated UK breweries. Watch this space for an uber Ulster Exile collaboration featuring brewers working at Beavertown, Brewdog, Bullfinch, Buxton, Magic Rock, Marble, Weird Beard and possibly more.

Fortunately things have got a little better in recent years. This brain drain has not stopped Northern Ireland from producing some pretty decent beers themselves. Derek from Nelson Sauvin first took me to a farm in Comber to meet a cross community collective of guys and girls into punk music and beating the crap out of each other (martial arts), Farmageddon Brewing. We were provided with a bacon butty and a fantastic glass of cask IPA, lovely.

I next met the guys at the Belfast CAMRA festival where their White IPA stole the show and we talked about these experimental hops that they had gotten hold of. They were coming to London to be at Craft Beer Rising so I invited them along to brew with us and they said that they would bring the hops.

We all know that the best way to showcase some new hops is to put a fucktonne of them into a double IPA. Simple malt bill, some Mosaic and Amarillo kettle hops then a big dry hop with two experimental hop varieties, one called Wolf, the other as yet unnamed but going under the codename of Farmageddon.  What you get is an 8.3% beer bursting with interesting and not 100% familiar, fruity, juicy hop character.

As ever naming the beer is a lot of fun.  It is well documented that we take inspiration from music and the Farmageddon guys are into their Punk so we listened to a number of Ulster punk bands for inspiration. In the end "Suspect Device" by the awesome Stiff Little Fingers narrowly beating out "Punishment Beating" by Runnin' Riot.

Listen to Suspect device Below... Beware: it can be a real earworm!

The beer will be launched at our tap takeover at the Bottle Shop in Druid Street on Saturday 23rd April. So come along and try the beer and say hello.

Cheers Gregg

April Open Day Beer List

It’s with great excitement that we announce this coming Sunday’s Open Day beers.

For the event, we’ll be rocking a 6 Tap bar, which includes a new feature: “The Friend’s Tap”. On top of all our latest brews, we will be offering a guest beer from a brewery that we have a collaboration in the pipe-line or under our belt.

To kick start this special feature tap, we’ve got something from our long-time friends from up in Manchester, BlackJack Beers. With these guys we’ve brewed beer together, drank beers together, pub crawled, festival-ed, you name it…and they are the guys that have been bringing our beers up to the Greater Manchester region for yonks. We got a lot of love for them and think you should too.

Dragon’s Tears 5.2%

A classic saison style infused with “Dragons Tears” Jasmine tea leaf that have been picked within the first 3 weeks of the season. Expect this to be floral and fragrant, with the refreshing quality both a saison and iced jasmine tea has to boast.

We always strive for an amazing taplist for those who venture to our brewery but this time, we’re also making up for the recent postponement of the open day. So with Dragon’s Tears to get you thirsty, here’s what Weird Beard brews will be pouring from draft:

Weird Wired 5.7%

A very recent release and all sold out within a week, this is our collaboration brew with 8 Wired Brewing Co and in partnership with the NZ Collective. A crisp, light Extra Pale Ale that is all about showcasing the UK-NZ hops we used for it. Blackcurrant meets tropical fruit in this super quaffable number.

(Disclaimer: Only 1 keg of this so come early to avoid disappointment but we do have some bottles of it also).

Spreadsheet Ninja 4.8%

Our Pilsner, refined and rebranded to a hop-changing lager that now weighs in below 5%. This batch is a reworked recipe of our Gregg’s favourite version and is Citra hopped. For those who know about hop-shortages and follow our blog, we’re lucky and so pleased to have this hoppy Pils on tap.

Five O’clock Shadow 7%

Our core American IPA but the tweaked recipe, which you can read all the about here, that recently won best at BottleDog’s “Blind IPA Tasting”. Because of hop availabilities, we’ve opted for a different choice USA hops: Centennial, Simcoe, Summit and Chinook as well as re-jigged he malt-bill. We believe in staying true to ourselves but here, change was a very good thing.

Single Hop Centennial 8.7%

With a personal favourite of Gregg’s we ought to have the other co-founder and headbrewer, Bryan’s, personal favourite on also. Here it is! A pine-y, orange-juice fruity double IPA that is quite frankly too delicious for its/our own good. We here love this beer so much, we’ve had to hold back on pillaging the fridges of any bottles so that you too can get your hands on them this weekend.

Ole Smoky Blend Barrel Aged Sadako 9.2%

Brewed with 10 different malts including oats with additions of honey, molasses and fresh coffee beans, this is our flagship Impy Stout that has been barrel aged and blended in Ole Smoky Bourbon barrels. It’s a deliciously rich, complex and intense dark beer that has hints of Campfire marshmallow. Limited bombers are available for treating yourselves and others.  

Other bottles, which are not mentioned above, that will be available from drink-in and/or take away include:

• Limited bombers of Macallan Barrel Aged Weird Brodmance (a Maple Syrup Imperial Stout)
• Sorachi Faceplant (A Sorachi Ace Hop-bomb of an IPA)
• Something Something Barrel Aged (Bourbon barrel-aged Double India Stout) 

And a bit of a show-stopper, since it’s only ever been brewed and released one time before a few years ago:

• Bearded Nurse (a Barley Wine) 

All the delicious snacks from Pig and Hay, food from Redneck Smokehouse, Square Root Sodas and Karkli will be on offer as expected from our past events.  

Plenty of merchandise including branded stemmed or Craft Master glassware (£3), assorted t-shirts (£15) and hoodies (£25) will be on sale. 

On that note, we’ll let you plan your beer wish-lists, plan your route and see you at the brewery from 12-7pm on Sunday!