#lebrewery

[harunrabbani]

Celebrating the launch of the phenomenal @lebrewery at the Rake with Winston Ellis, @thesimonjordan and Pauline Long. It's truly humbling to watch our friend April Chandler take on the drinks giants of the world with her purely organic vegan beer. Her company is growing at an exponential rate. Check out more on http://lebrewery.com It was also wonderful meeting Winston from the movie industry and Pauline Long who has her own Sky Television show. Both have been recently honoured for their incredible contribution to charities. #lebrewery #leadership #entrepreneurship #organicbeer #veganbeer #vegan #investors #organic #businessgrowth #businessleader

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A very under rated introductory beer. 4.4% very drinkable. You truly are a mysterious lady by zeromine http://ift.tt/1gwuWxK

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Bracken Fire. The most circular fire of all.

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The Famous, er, Famous Knight!

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Well you can’t be in Normandy/Brittany without going to Mont St. Michel can ya?

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Look at what I found in my slice of Galette des Rois, a bearded Virgin Mary!

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Yep, just a bit of tractor porn. Hubba hubba.

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Lambs in February, who’da thunk it?

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Mossy tree.

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Waking Sleeping Beauty (aka The Yeast) with a beery kiss. Malt walks through the Valley of Bubbles and plunges into the fermentation tank where he is united with Yeast and they live happily ever after. Hoorah!

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Malt in the tank. Oh, the malty goodness. I now understand where the magical essence of Malteasers and Ovaltine comes from. Malt me quick.

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Malts and Hops. Or Malops.

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Brewing at Le Brewery

Having quite settled in at Le Brewery we finally got a chance to do what we came here for: Brewing. 

All caffeined up by 7am we donned labcoats and wellies (oo-er missus) and got started with a rather spritely Steve (the sun hadn’t even come up yet, that’s winter for you).

We were making KSB, an amber ale. Firstly: Malt. I never knew there were so many different types and all with delicious names like chocolate and caramel that are used to denote the degree of roasting. The malt is brought to germination then roasted to bring out the sugars. For our batch, we used a combination of pale malt, caramel malt and a little wheat (for head). The chute was loaded up whilst we prepared the hops. Le Brewery actually grows their own organic hops but this time we used a combination of Cascade and Challenger. The water tank holding the burtonised brewing liquor (minerals added to the water in the style of Burton/Buxton water) had been heating up to about 70 degrees Celsius for a while now and the brewhouse was getting nice and warm. This water was then transferred into the brew tank and the malt added to make the mash. The aromas were wonderful and apt for a cold winters morning and the taste of malt in the morning is just the epitome of wholesomeness. The mash is then slowly transferred to the copper and the sugar level is taken every 15 minutes to keep an eye on the alcohol content. When all the brew liquor was gone we added a little more water at the end to tweak the sugar content. 

Now all the brew liquor was nicely sitting in the copper we lit the fire (yes, seriously heated by fire!) and left it to cook for an hour or so. We charged the hops in once at the beginning and then again just before the end. Whilst we were waiting we began to coax the yeast back into life. Steve had said that she (he affectionately calls all creatures great and small she) had not had attention lavished on her recently and had to be encouraged to about 20 degrees before we could add her in. The transfer from copper into the fermentation tank had frothed the brew liquor up and sat on top was an impressive display of bubbles. We added the yeast finally and let her do what she does best. Steve’s analogy of little Pacmen eating sugar and pissing alcohol seems quite appropriate at this moment! 

We checked on the brew on a daily basis. It was a little slow to start with but by day 4 we had a lovely covering of yeast sitting on the top of the beer (known as top fermentation). 

Finally the beer was fed into the conditioning tanks to mature. Then it’s down to casking up or bottling up and we are done, beer for everyone! 

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My favourite beer - Harold’s Revenge.

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Le Brewery Beers - Created by Steve Skews. Artwork drawn by Thad.

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Sailing without getting wet aboard the good ship Emma and the Normandy Beaches