February: Hello 2025!

Happy New Year!

I know, HNY greetings in Feb, but with daffodils and crocuses starting to come out, it feels like a more cheery salutation now than back in the mess of January 😜

It's been a fairly gentle start to 2025 for the brewery.  Essential cleaning and maintenance chores to kick off the year (woo!) before things got more fun with Aromafest, rabbit-holing on brewing water chemistry and getting a new beer into the fermenter.  More on those below.  Apart from the cleaning - that fun is all for me!

Sniffing hops at Charles Faram's Aromafest

Mid-January saw the Brü Crü dream team from Beer Riff, Dark Element, Gower Brewery and Arthur's Stone descend on the Bristol Beer Factory for a rub and sniff.

Charles Faram themselves explain it best: AromaFest® - searching for varieties - Charles Faram

After smashing our olfactory systems assessing 16 trial varieties of hop, it was time for some delicious beer, food and nerding out with other brewers.  Really fun event, well run and hitting Bristol for pints afterwards is always a winner.  We got well looked after by BBF (their original mild is so good) before heading out to Alpha Bottle Shop, Small Bar, Left Handed Giant and more.  Gert Lush!  Already looking forward to the next one!

Nearly gone: Smooth Rupert

That last of the Smooth Rupert will soon be available on draught in the King Arthur and is available in cans from the fridge in Reynoldston Village Shop & Post Office.

In the fermenter: Dark Mild

I was really taken with Bristol Beer Factory's "Future Proof" mild - utterly quaffable, thoroughly belying it's 3.3% abv.  With that and Adam's exhortation - I couldn't resist experimenting with my own mild recipe.  The Windsor Yeast did its thing on the Maris Otter, caramel, carafa malts - finishing at a high gravity (higher than calculated) and now slowly clearing up. 

We'll see how it's fared when it's had a few weeks to finish out and mature.

Next brew-day: Derfel Gadarn returns!

Soon locking in a brew day in the coming weeks to bring back the warrior monk by popular demand!

Grab-bag

Petallica Flower Farm's market plans are starting to take shape for 2025, so it'll soon be time to build a brew schedule.  Watch this space for more on brewery opening.

Lager this year?  Been biding my time, aiming to get my brewing chops up to scratch to brew a lager.  It's trickier to get a crispy boi right than an ale, but up for the challenge😊

Roll On Spring!

Iechyd da,

Will.