Archive for category: General

Here at the Briarbank, we love the fact that we have our very own microbrewery on-site, right underneath our first floor bar. Not only does it mean that our beers travel a short distance from brewery to tap, but we think it’s rather special that our customers can see our microbrewery in action while enjoying one of our handcrafted beers.

But what does a typical day look like for our head brewer Rob? To be honest, there isn’t such a thing as a typical day. Rob handles all the brewing, bottling and labelling of all our beers, and you’ll even find him behind the bar serving them too. Our latest blog takes a look at Rob’s typical brewing day.

An early start
A brew day typically sees an early start, with Rob opening up the brewery at 7:00 am, if not earlier. Enjoying the peaceful mornings and the soothing hum of the chillers working, Rob does a quick recap of the day’s recipe, and brew sheet then gets to work measuring out the grains for the brew. Once this is done, the kettle goes on, ready for a much needed morning coffee.

While the kettle is boiling, Rob gets to work pre-heating the mash tun with hot water and checking the water temperatures are correct. Then it’s time to mash in and start mixing the malted barley with the hot water in the mash tun, making sure it’s stirred throughout. He then checks the mash temperature and moves onto pouring his coffee.

With his coffee freshly poured, he gets to work setting up the pipework for the mash transfer and then sets about checking the day’s emails. Finally, a fill and rinse of the boiler mean it’s ready to use.

Mid-morning
After a recheck of the recipe, Rob starts to recirculate the wort (liquid) back into the mash turn and, once it’s clear, pumps it into the boiler. During this time, his coffee has gone cold, and he starts to re-boil the kettle.

After adjusting the flow of the wort, Rob ‘sparges’ the malted barley, which is a lengthy process involving sprinkling hot water over the mash to rinse out the sugars and bring them across to the copper with the wort.

Mid-morning also sees Rob start his cleaning regime. There’s plenty to do, from cleaning the fermenters to digging out used malted barley from the mash tun.

Hops for the recipe are measured out and, his now second cold coffee remains in the same place untouched.

The hops are added to the boil as it hits 100*C. Rob then tucks into a spot of lunch and a well-earned break while the wort boils. Finally, and most importantly, he gets to drink a hot cup of coffee.

Afternoon activities
After lunch, Rob is straight back into his brew. After an hour, the boiler is turned off, and late hops are added to the wort. The wort is then transferred to a heat exchanger into a clean fermenter. Yeast is then added at the desired temperature, where the brew is left for four to five days.

Then it’s time to dig out the hops and trub for the boiler, set about cleaning the boilers out and preparing the microbrewery for the next day.

A visit to the bar
After a full day brewing, Rob heads upstairs to our first-floor bar to taste the fruits of his labour. He then heads home for a relaxing evening, ahead of another day at the brewery (and hopefully a warm cup of coffee in the morning)

The Briarbank is open from 5 pm Wednesday and Thursday and midday on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They are currently closed on Monday and Tuesday.

We won’t lie; the past 12 months have been somewhat different from what we’re used to. We’ve really missed the hustle of our upstairs bar, chatting to and serving our customers, and, of course, hosting our brewery tours, but there have been some momentous moments too. We’ve won five awards, four gold and one silver, we’ve run our annual homebrew competition, albeit a bit different to previous years, and we’ve launched our online shop, making our beers available to enjoy at home.

We’ve often talked about bottling our beers, and it seems 2020 was the year to do it. With the upstairs bar sadly closed, we started up our two-barrel system, sourced some bottles, and redeveloped our website to implement an online shop. Since we launched the shop in August, we’ve been brewing, bottling, labelling and shipping weekly. The support we’ve had from our customers has been phenomenal.

Our core range is available to purchase in bottles or mini-kegs, and with seasonal gift packs available too, you can grab a present for the beer lover in your life or even just yourself. The brewing, bottling and labelling are all done by our head brewer, Rob, and if you live within the ten-mile free delivery radius, he’ll even deliver them straight to your door.

We are currently working on expanding our webshop to allow for nationwide delivery. If you live outside of the free delivery radius and cannot collect, make sure you keep an eye on our social media pages for details on when nationwide delivery will be available.

Now, onto the awards, we mean, who doesn’t love to win an award? Before the first lockdown, we picked up three awards for the East Region in the SIBA Independent Keg Beer Awards 2020. Black Horse Stout took silver in the Keg British Dark Beers category (up to 4.4%), Hop to It won gold in the Keg IPA category (5.5 to 6.4%), and Mocha Porter scooped gold in the Keg Speciality Mid to Dark Beers category. In July, having now started to bottle our beers, we entered the 2020 SIBA Digital Beer Awards. Our first time entering our bottled beers and being awarded gold for both the beers we entered is an honour. Mocha Porter took the gold in the Speciality Medium to Dark Beers category, and Grapefruit IPA came top in the Premium PAs (4.4%-5.4%) categories.

The 2020 Homebrew Competition was also somewhat different, but the level and quality of entrants were amazing. In fact, it was incredibly hard to choose a winner. In the end, Stuart Betts took the winning title with his Strong Pale Ale, Water, Seeds, Flowers and Fungus…

We can’t wait to have Stuart in the brewery to start brewing his beer. Once we’re able to do so, we’ll be releasing details on our social platform so you can get your hands on a bottle or hopefully enjoy it in our upstairs bar.

Our 2020 round-up brings us straight into 2021. We hope to be able to welcome you all back to our bar as soon as it is safe to do so, but don’t worry, you’ll still be able to get your hands on our bottles or mini-kegs to enjoy a Briarbank beer at home. Keep an eye on our social media pages for full details of when we will reopen and when our nationwide delivery will be available.

And again, we wanted to say a big thank you to all our customers for their support over the past 12 months.

Another year has flown by, and over the last weekend in October we found ourselves judging our third Homebrew competition. 2018 could possibly be compared as the best year yet, on the number of entries, and of course the quality of the beer. With over 30 beers entered, it was always set to be a tough line-up, and the judges (and myself) had a great afternoon critiquing all of them. It’s a hard job.

Our Homebrew competition is open to all levels of brewer, from extract to all grain, and the entries proved that there really is some great beer being made at home. As always, it’s really great to see what people are producing, and how far homebrewing has come from the stigma of yeasty odd tasting beer made in a bag on the back of the door.

We host a number of categories in the Homebrew competition, to try and cover a range of styles, but these are semi-fluid and can possibly change upon the number of entries. If you’re looking to enter the 2019 competition, be sure to check out homebrew page for the latest updated category listings.

We were joined by judges from a range of beer backgrounds. We had some long serving CAMRA members, a beer blogger, distributor, and even our new trainee brewer. All of which undertook the task of spending the afternoon scrutinising the appearance, taste, aroma, and style of our entries. It was a long afternoon, but by the end of it, we had six category winners, and an overall grand champion of the competition.

So onwards to the winners! Each of the category winners had the beer scored highest in that particular category. They were judged against the others in the category, and these are what the judging panel thought really stood out.

• Old Ales, Milds, and Brown Ales – The Nightfly by Pete Young – A great example of a Ruby Mild.
• Stouts and Porters – Yergy-The-Chef by James Pettifor – A delicious Oatmeal Stout, quoted ‘breakfast in a glass’
• Speciality – Mulberry Bush by Nick Davis – A beautiful fruit porter packed with winter flavours.
• Standard Pale Ales – Homeland Honey ale by Andris Mcgee – A great pale ale with a refreshing hint of honey coming through.
• Bitters – Sir Lancerhop by John Watson – A great Amber Ale, with a fruity aroma and peachiness in flavour.
• Strong Pale Ales – Cascading Goat Ale by Nigel Scarie – A lovely pale ale, described as ‘like drinking an English orchard’.

Each of these winners will be joining us at the brewery for a tour, meal and of course some beers while we talk brewing and beer for an afternoon.

The winners of each category were once again laid out and judged, against each other. The outstanding beer that came top of these was named the overall champion, and that went to John Watson with Sir Lancerhop. John’s beer really hit the spot with the judges, its fruity aroma and complex taste scored it just high enough over the rest of these fantastic beers, and John will be joining us in the brewery to replicate this beer for all to try when we serve it across our venues, in Briarbank, Isaacs on the Quay, and The Gardeners Arms!

If you would like to enter our 2019 competition, you can do so easily via our online entry form. Entrants can enter up to three categories each, and there is no entry fee for this competition. We are confident we will see an ever growing array of great quality beers as our competition grows! We can’t wait to see what 2019 brings.