Category Archives: beer

Seriously, are they *ever* going to start brewing in Waterford?

Posted on January 4, 2012 | Comments Off

And well you might ask! This process has been much longer than we had either hoped, or even dreaded, but we are making progress and are hopeful that Waterford Brewday Number One is not far off.

We’ve been hard at work over the last couple of months pulling all the threads together that are necessary to start brewing at the Waterford brewery. As I type, the electrician is plugging away downstairs (pardon the pun) now that we have located that elusive third phase into the building, and our sexy new distribution board will be live any day now. The plumber will be back later this week to commission the gas burner for the kettle, and we’re hoping to knock out most of the refrigeration work next week.

Parallel to this we’re making savagely long lists of things we think we’ll need to buy, trying to figure out where we’re going to get it all from, and wondering how we’re going to be able to afford it all. Hurrah! We are, of course, continuing to brew at White Gypsy in the meantime, and deliver beer to our customers, although we are pretty much at capacity now and won’t be able to take on any new customers until we have moved production to Waterford – a good incentive to move things along as quickly as possible.

I am ever hopeful that the next blogpost will be about our inaugural brewday!

Comments Off

Posted in beer, brewery, General

Tagged , , , ,

Hilden Beer Festival – 2011

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

On Sat Aug 27, @metalman_tim and I took a trip up to Ireland’s oldest independent brewery at Hilden for their annual beer festival. For one reason or another (usually my MSc exams) we had never managed to make it up for this festival before, so it was with great excitement that we boarded the train at Connolly on a wet Saturday morning to trundle northwards for a pi**-up errr I mean a team-building and research exercise. And to see our beer in its export capacity of course!

We were not to be disappointed, the rain held off (mostly) for the day, the Hilden location is lovely for a beer festival, with delightful gardens, a very cool Nordic tent set-up, main stage and tasty grub – the pork belly was absolutely lush.

There was a tantalising selection of beers and ciders before us, some which we had tried before and others that were new to us, which meant that careful planning was in order to ensure that we tasted everything we wanted to taste, but also made the train back to Dublin. The “Divide-And-Conquer-In-Halves” is yer only man for this sort of task, and we got through them all. (I won’t say how many, ahem.)

In my humble opinion, one thing that struck me was that there appeared to be considerably more variety in the styles of Irish beers available, compared to those from the UK. While the UK beers comprised exclusively of blonde or pale ales with varying degrees of hopping, the Irish beers also included dark lager, Belgian ale, smoked ale and porters. Interesting. Another thing that struck me was that this considerable range of Irish beers constituted only a fraction of what is currently on offer from Irish microbreweries. Not just interesting, but amazing and exciting too. The revolution is coming!

Thanks to Owen, Nathan et al for their hospitality on the day.

To see a few pics of the day, click here.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in beer, brewery, Events

Tagged , , ,

Beer tasting at Revolution

Posted on May 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

The first beer-tasting session at Revolution happened on Friday May 27th, and while the turnout was smaller than expected, we nonetheless had an interesting time tasting some different beers. (Regrettably, I forgot my camera, so no pics, sorry!)

We followed a blind-tasting format of 5 beers – each participant was given a scorecard for each beer to rate it based on appearance, aroma, flavour, finish and overall appreciation. The beers were poured and presented to each participant, and we got stuck in – certainly some interesting results, and I won’t go into the details of what people thought of each brew (that is up to each individual to blog about if they wish), but I think it’s safe to say that there were surprises in store for all involved.

Once we had sampled all 5 beers, each participant was given a sheet with details of the beers we had just tasted, along with tasting notes from the brewers, and a couple of reviews from one of the popular beer-rating websites. Then came the task of matching those beers to the evening’s scorecards, which certainly raised some eyebrows among our intrepid tasters!

Personally, I love blind-tasting beers – it removes any preconceptions (positive or negative, subconscious or not) I have regarding what I already know about the beer or the brewery. It seems easier for me to analyse the beer if I know nothing about it beforehand, I tend to be more clinical in my assessment of the beer, and inevitably discover something that I didn’t notice about a beer before. So it was with some envy that I sat amongst my tasting compatriots who were blissfully unaware of the name on the bottle of each beer before raising it for a sniff and a sip – maybe next time I will need to make @metalman_tim do the organising!

For those of you interested, the beers we tasted, in order, were :

  1. Shepherd Neame’s Whitstable Bay
  2. Carlow Brewing Company’s Curim
  3. Metalman Pale Ale
  4. Sam Adam’s Boston Lager
  5. Shepherd Neame’s Bishop’s Finger

Picking out five beers from the bar’s menu that were adequately diverse, yet had enough elements in common to make the final matching of beername to beer a bit of a challenge, is fun, but it’s also trickier than it sounds :-)

→ 1 Comment

Posted in beer, Events, General, Metalman Brewing, pale ale, waterford

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Ask a simple question…

Posted on May 17, 2011 | Comments Off

This week, we will brew our second (and last) batch of Windjammer for 2011, which should be enough to see us through the Tall Ships festival in Waterford (the inspiration for the beer) and some of the upcoming festivals in the summer. We’ve been really pleased with the reception to Windjammer – especially since it was a bit of a gamble, what with us being new kids on the block and all, concocting this seasonal brew with a combination of exotic hops which we hadn’t used before. But it appears to be paying off, and the feedback we’re getting is that people love it – so much so that we are definitely planning to bring it back again next year as our spring/summer seasonal.

That said, a big challenge we’re facing is getting it out on our native turf – Waterford is only just getting used to the idea of our Pale Ale, and convincing bars to let us put *one* tap can be a formidable enough job, let alone two. While we have some excellent publicans onboard already who are keen to try something different, and support a local business, there are plenty who don’t feel there is any need to change what they are currently stocking. “There’s no demand for your beer in our pub”, we have been told by more than one establishment. And yet, we know for a fact, that people who like to drink our beer go to the pubs in question. It’s a curious thing – is it that we as a drinking populace have gotten too conditioned to just asking for what we know to be available in a given pub, rather than asking for what we really want to drink? Do we not want to rock the boat, or cause trouble, by asking for a beer that they might not have? We wouldn’t think twice about it in a shop – if we can’t see what we’re looking for, we ask someone who works there if they stock it. And if they don’t, we either select a suitable alternative if there is one, or we leave and try somewhere else. And the latter option can send a very powerful message – it’s very possible that the next time you are looking for the same product in that shop, they will have started stocking it. (Depending on the nature of the shop of course – this is assuming that you haven’t gone looking for an iPod in the butcher’s, or lingerie in the Spar. Although you never know.)

So could it be that simple?

Could getting a better selection of beer in your local be as easy as asking for it? Well, yes. It will be in vain at first, but keep asking, and the message will ultimately sink in, especially if a publican sees people leaving their bar to go somewhere else for a product that he/she could easily be stocking as well. Be bold, be adventurous, and risk the wrath of (or probably just a dirty look from) your local landlord! If you order it, it will come!

Comments Off

Posted in beer, brew, brewery, General, Metalman Brewing, waterford

A weekend in Salthill

Posted on May 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

Brewers on the Bay returned to The Oslo in Salthill for the second installation of their celebration of Irish craft beer. Having missed out on attending last May, I was really excited to trundle up to Galway to experience it first hand this year, rather than hearing all about how great it was through @metalman_tim. So we set off in the Metalman mobile with beer, a borrowed bar, and a miscellany of barware – some of which we even knew what to do with!
Set-up on Saturday morning was manic, as we continue to learn the things about keg dispense that never cross your path as an I.T. monkey or a mere beer drinker (who knew there was more to this stuff than flipping the tap open?) and with a cool 20 minutes to spare, we were ready to serve at 3pm on the nose. Plenty of time to fuel up on chicken and chips from The Oslo before the masses descended.

Lots of studying of menus going on

There were 11 bars in all, with 12 breweries represented, including Breweyed from Banagher in Co. Offaly, making their festival debut with a pale ale and lager. The kick off of the festivities coincided with the Leinster rugby game, which was shown on the big screen in the beer hall, and attracted a mixed crowd who were not necessarily there to sample the delights of Irish craft beer on offer. Many pints of cider and macro lager pervaded the room, some of them were even left on *my* bar, harumph! The staff at the Oslo were stellar though, and quickly swept all this detritus away out of sight :-)

Before long, those not interested in plunging into the waters of non-macro beer filtered away, and many eager faces appeared, brandishing their menus and looking for something to galvanise their tastebuds into action – and we didn’t disappoint. Our Windjammer on keg proved a great hit, and sold almost as much as our Pale Ale, to the point where we are wondering if “seasonal beer” is going to be appropriate for this beauty after all – maybe we need to think about making it available for more than a couple of months in a year?

Sunday saw more of the same – a soccer match in the afternoon on the big screen drew its own crowd, but by Sunday evening it was Irish craft beer all the way in the beer hall of The Oslo. We managed to get a few photos of the proceedings, take a look at the slideshow here. For only its second year running, this was a great festival, and will surely only go from strength to strength based on what we saw this weekend. I’m already looking forward to next year, and have decided what my aims will be – at least three beers available, a much faster set-up, and no falling down the stairs when packing up to leave!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in beer, Events, General, Metalman Brewing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,