Calum's Brewing Adventures.

23/02/2019

Apologies guys for so massively neglecting this page. If anyone doesn't already know from my posting about it I got a job as a head brewer for a brewery on the isle of Harris.

The adventure continues on https://www.facebook.com/LoomshedLife/

* Permanantely Closed *

10/12/2017

Testing out the sour beer bottles. The beer is "Sour Grapes" a 4.2% golden sour ale matured on Montepulciano grape skins. Beautiful mixture of fruity notes and battery acid, its pretty intense!

03/12/2017

Bottled my wine, the grade A and B free run made up a whole case and I got 4 bottles of pressed juice. Bought a £8 bottle to top up any partially filled bottles and I really think my stuff was just as good. Super dark, rich and fruity. Nice crisp dry finish. Made with the finest imported Italian Montepulciano grapes. The final cost ended up being £3.50 per bottle.

If your keen to be involved with next years cooperative grape import give me a message and I'll add you to the event.

20/11/2017

Had the privilege of meeting the great Sir Geoff Palmer today when he gave a guest lecture at Heriot Watt. For all the non beer geeks, Geoff Palmer is to brewing science as David Attenborough is to natural science. Much of our understanding of malt and barley is due to him. He was really lovely and made time to talk to students after the lecture, top bloke!

I was beginning to get a bit fed up of uni due to all the essays but today's lecture really reinvigorated me. I also got a bit of personal inspiration as I read he got the same undergrad grade as me, a 2.2!

07/11/2017

Now that I'm a member of the institute of brewing and distilling I get the brewer and distiller international delivered! This is the first issue I've gotten.

09/10/2017

Pressed my grapes yesterday, had a great time doing it and it went really well! got 10l of free run wine which is the premium stuff. Then collected 3l of pressed wine has slightly more tannin's but is still very good! also have 5kg of grape solids that are going into a golden sour ale today!

Cheers

05/10/2017

Doing my daily punch-downs and snuck a wee sample! Only day 2 of 7 and but its already ruby red and pink on the edges. Its still very sweet but the other flavors are starting to develop, its a little spicy and fruity and a bit like basil or something. Really excited to see where this goes. Did have a slight hydrogen sulfide issue but I think I've fixed that.

02/10/2017

So I got a delivery of 20kg of wine grapes today! They are the finest Montepulciano grapes imported from Italy. Once washed and de-stemmed they filled a 25l bucket. Really pleased with how much a got, of the 20kg only 0.86kg were stems.

I think a group buy of HW students next season would be a great idea and by that time this batch will be ready!

The numbers
Juice Original gravity 1.100 (23.8 brix)
3.4 pH
Stems 4.4% of total weight.
cost £30 (£1.5 per kg) approx £2.66 per finished bottle of wine (hopefully)

17/09/2017

Got my score back from the national homebrew competition. Delighted to have on beer given the grade of excellent and one the grade of very good. The other was good with means "MEH". Won my first ever homebrew medal, a silver for my sour beer, second only to the lambic that won best in show (overall champion)

Cheers everyone and happy brewing!

13/09/2017

Finally got my Edinburgh ale out the keg as non foam! Really happy with how it turned out but we shall see if the judges at the National Homebrew Competition judges feel the same this Saturday!

11/09/2017

Sorry its been so long since I last posted on here. I have been busy brewing away in the background. Pictured is my Berliner Weiss, a German sour wheat beer next to the only commercial one I could find. really pleased with how it turned out, there isnt much between the two!