They Brew it, I sell it, You Drink it... and so do I..

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Home Brewer Turning Brewer

David Bishop (@Broadfordbrewer) has been quite busy as of late with his garage brewing. He's given me four samples of his recent home brews, and to be honest, he's put a lot of hard work into these, and his recent home brewing in general. He asked me to let him know what I really thought, so instead of writing a couple of (slightly impersonal) 140 character tweets, I thought I'd let him really know what I think here.

Four different beers, four different styles.

Stylus; 4.5% Pale Ale.
I was talking about home brewing Pale Ales earlier today. I think it's a lot easier to brew a Porter or a Stout, because they're so full of flavour regardless, from the flavourful malts used. I think it's much harder to produce a good light % Pale Ale well, that has something more about it, these days. A little darker than expected. The aroma is all about the citrus fruits, grass and fresh hay topped off with loads of sherbet. It's slightly thin on the mouthfeel, but it has a nice, refreshing, depth of flavour which is similar to the aromas. Dry with a nice lasting bitterness.

Aire; 4.5% Porter.
This brew pours very dark brown with a chalky white head. The aroma is fruity with quite a bit of chocolate biscuit malt. I get a lot of light roasted bitterness and just a hint of that dairy like creaminess, you sometimes get in darker beers, in the body. A lasting chocolate malt dryness in the finish is quite prominent. As the beer warms up a bit I get a really nice burnt toast flavour, making the beer really moorish.

Damn Nation; 8.3% Belgian Golden Strong Ale.
This cloudy Golden Ale has some great aromas. Bananas and cream, lemons, rhubarb and custard penny sweets. It's certainly a Belgian Ale for sure. Loads of buzzing carbonation, a nice yeasty bready bite, all the flavours mentioned in the aroma and then some. It's a beautiful beer, which is definitely my pick of the bunch. It's better than a lot of Belgian beers we sell! I think I saw Dave asking if it would benefit from some more time in the bottle last night? (it's very fresh) - I don't really think so, it's pretty perfect now.

Progress; 6.1% IPA.
Last of the bunch comes an IPA. Progress sits in the glass with a clear deep amber orange hue. It has a lot of big juicy aromas. I'm getting grapefruits, tangerines and again, lots of sherbet dryness. I (and others) talked about IPA in my previous post, and this really seems like a UK style of Indian Pale Ale rather than a IPA. (Think a more fruity version of White Shield rather than a hop bomb US IPA.) Loads of sherbet tang in the the flavour. Moorish, easy drinking, and a pleasure to sup as I type.

I can only say thanks to Dave for passing these beers along to me. It's obvious that a lot of thought and hard work has gone into these beers, and when you do that you end up with something that you can be truly proud of. For now I'll keep a keen eye on what's happening in Bradford, but what I will say though is; when is this beer going to come along??


9 comments:

  1. hey! Some of these homebrewers are actually alright ya know... so we can await a Broad-Ghost Brewday mash up then?!

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    1. You're damn right they are. I guess that one will be up to Dave, just as a pdtnc/ghostly colab will be up to you ;)

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  2. Looking forward to what David has kept for me now!

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  3. I'm watching Broadford Brewery with interest from afar...right back at you Dave!

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  4. Ghosty, what can I say, thanks for the write up and hope you feel you can tell me when the beer ain't so good. I've said it too much already, but I did not like the English IPA one little bit, it just didn't work for me...which is the worst situation for a homebrewer....beer you don't like after hours of work! Most pleased that you liked the Belgian Strong. I have tried to up my game on that brew and hopefully in future brews, just paying more attention to yeast and priming. I have a Belgian Pale for you next. A collab would be great, we'll chat next weekend!

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    1. I wouldn't write about them if I didn't enjoy them dude. You're obviously hard at work with your beers. The only thing that I thought could have been a little better was a bit more body in the Pale Ale, but you couldn't fault the flavour. I liked the IPA, I didn't find anything wrong with it, I thought it had a great English IPA quality.

      Chat to you soon, come get loads of new beers from the shop ;)

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  5. I'd really like to try Davids beers at some point, they sound fantastic!

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  6. I'm the proud owner of a course of bottles of Dave's Belgian strong! Lookin forward to it even more now! :-)

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