Cantillon

During my last trip to Brussels I found myself with some time to kill so I took the short walk from Midi station to Brasserie Cantillon. This brewery in Brussels's Anderlecht district is famous for its lambic beers, fermented spontaneously with wild yeasts from the local air.

It's the first time I've made the trip. I didn't get a chance to take the tour (next time!) but i did have a nose around the entrance and the foyer, buying a few beers to take home in the process.
Blink and you'd miss the brewery entrance on a quiet, shabby street. The double yellow doors have a small notice on with opening hours. Step inside and the first thing to notice is the brewery smell. Slightly sour and stale. Promising and alluring.

A smart modern brewery tap is built between a functional office, and a smart seating area. On the other side a bottle shop and merchandise desk busy with tourists and a map showing all the distributors of the beers across the world.

I brought back 3 beers:
Organic Geuze
Kriek (cherry lambic)
Rose (Rasberry lambic)

At a later point in the future after my January abstinence is over I'm going to review these with a friend of mine who doesn't really know much about sour beers to gauge some reactions.....

January

I take a break from drinking in January. For me this isn't the dry January that has become a fad recently. I've been taking most of January off alcohol for over 10 years. I first did it to help me quit smoking.

I had a 20 a day habit, and in the days before the smoking ban i'd find that if I had a drink in a pub, i'd immediately want a cigarette. The chemical addiction to nicotine is broken in 3 weeks, so i figured that if could go without a drink for a month i could also go without smoking.

It worked, but i also noticed that i saved lots of money, lost weight and reset my drinking habits. Now whenever the new year approaches, and I'm becoming weary of partying and excess I look forward to a little break.

Of course  at this point in time i really fancy a drink. I break for my wedding anniversary at the end of the month, and I'll celebrate with a really nice beer (something like Beavertown's Gamma Ray) on Feb 1st.

At the moment, if i really crave something hoppy, i'm reaching for Brewdog's Nanny State. Unlike seemingly every other low alcohol beer, it is very drinkable. Brewdog have backed lots of hop punch into the beer, got the carbonation spot on and given it enough malty body to satisfy. It's 0.5%, so you'd have to optimistically drink 9 nanny states to get anywhere near the alcohol content of a bottle of Punk IPA.



Of course it's not the real thing but it has got a much better hop taste than many boring shop beers. Well done Brewdog.

London Marathon training beer

2016 starts for me with a health kick - as a tonic to get over the excesses of the holiday period, but also to get me in proper condition to run the London Marathon. After 7 years of trying I have finally got a place and I want to make sure I get a decent time. This doesn't mean total abstinence but it does mean that when I want a beer i'll be better off with something low abv%, but full of flavour. 

For this homebrew I've decided to make a stout - I've been meaning to make one predominately from wheat for ages and I think it will suit a low abv beer well by adding a silky texture to the beer. With a low abv it's important to try and get some flavour into the beer so here's how I've approached this one. 

• Mash at a high temp to leave the final beer sweeter and  have more body
• Use of very high proportion of wheat malt to give a silky mouth feel
• Lots of hops - british/german hops but in large proportions to give a pleasant flavour and bitterness
• A low attenuating yeast with some pleasant fruity esters, leaving more sugar and body in the beer - in this case White Labs London Ale yeast 
• A bit of peat smoked malt to add some depth
• Some juniper added into the boil at 15 mins - for some more depth

Because of the use of 90% plus wheat malt I made this using brew in the bag (BIAB) method to avoid getting a stuck sparge. 

The wort has a lovely dark black colour, and is already frothing nicely - a good sign if it does this even before it is fermented.

Grains on the top of the BIAB bag, I sparged a few times with a kettle at 80C to try and increase the efficiency - it came out about right at OG1035.

After 24 hours the fermentation is going very well, great hoppy smell (leathery, berry and earthy English hops) coming off this. Really interesting black protien on top of the krauzen, makes it look a bit like the moon surface.

Grain Bill
3kg Wheat
600g Black Prinz Malt
320g Caramel Malt
30g Peat smoked malt

Hop Bill (all blitzed in a blender) 
Mash       20g East Kent Goldings
60mins    10g Nugget
15mins    1Tsp juniper berries
5mins      26g Brewers gold
                14g Fusion
Whirlpool 14g East Kent Goldings
                  26g Fusion

Yeast - While Labs London Ale