30 looming

I turn 30 early next month. Inspired by Alex’s gift to Greig and David Woods recent purchase I decided to (cheekily) arrange a 1979 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale as a birthday gift from Sarah. I’m more than a little excited as Hardy’s Ale is one of my all time favourites and I have never had a bottle of Eldridge Pope brewed version let alone one that exceeds the much touted 25 year mark!

I’m currently organising a birthday party for mid November, it will consist of an Asian themed BBQ and Twisted HoHop bright beer on tap.

The 1979 Hardy’s is photographed on our brand new Indian made farmhouse style kitchen table, lovely.

Audits Progress

A fortnight after brew day I have run Alfred’s Audit Ale from its two fermentors into a secondary vessel where it will slumber in the cellar for a month or two before bottling. I’m not going to give it the full 8 months in secondary that the Merchant gets as having one keg tied up for that long is hard enough!

I took a gravity reading and the ale currently is sitting at 10.5%abv, I don’t think there will be any need to prime the bottles as there are still a lot of sugars left.

Its tasting clean, incredibly malty and sweet with a firm bitterness and some hop aroma and flavour. The hops will come out as it leans up.

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Alfred’s Audit Ale

I have had barley wine on the mind recently. I have been writing an article for the up coming issue of The Pursuit of Hoppyness on strong blue cheese and Barley Wines as a match. During the course of this Adam has kindly lightened his cellar and we have tried the best barley wine this country ever produced Limburg Oude Reserve 2004. Let me tell you it was fantastic but that’s another story. I have also had my first serious go at brewing a barley wine.
I have held off doing a barley wine up until now for several reasons. Firstly I have been working to fine tune my imperial stout recipe and didn’t want to start trying to perfect two vintage beers until I had the R.I.S. down. Also until recently I didn’t have enough nip bottles. Having collected the empties from every Regional Wine Tasting to have used a beer in nips over the last two years I now have enough to do two vintage beers a year. And so Alfred’s Audit Ale is born…

Alfred’s Audit Ale is named after my grandfather who was born in the draymans quarters above the horse knackering yards. I loved my grandfather and hopefully he would have approved of the beer which will bear his name.

Brewed to a modified clone recipe for my favourite Thomas Hardies Ale I achieved a staggering 1130 original gravity! An initial mash of 5kgs of NZ ADM Pils Malt was left over night at 70C , the runnings of this were then used to strike a mash of 6kg ADM Pils Malt, 4kg Maris Otter Pale Malt, and 200g Dark Crystal. The runnings of this mash were then boiled in the kettle for 3 hours with 60g of NZ Super Alpha 50g of English Goldings added an hour from the end, 50g of English Fuggels and 40g of NZ Styrians were then added 20min from the end of the boil. The wort was cooled to 24c then divided between 2 corny kegs with a sachet of s-04 added to each, the ferment cooled down to 18c over night and has more or less steadily sat there since. I will pitch another ½ sachet into each fermentor after one week has elapsed.

I also made a small beer of 1045 with a second wash of the mash and hopped this with Super Alpha and NZ Cascade.