About the JUSTAPUB Brewery - and my beer ...I have no more of our own Hede-Bazouges Best Bitter (HBBB) left in stock on board 'Body and Soul' whilst at Taden - which is a good 20 minute drive from Hede-Bazouges and the 'JUSTAPUB' brewery!... must get some more in.... we have a 20 bottle beer cooler on board now.
I tested our Irish stout on a real live Irishman yesterday and he was amazed and impressed by it....indeed, as he should be - dear Frank is on holiday in the holiday park, nearby. I brewed this stout from the malted grain, using my own version of a mashtun which encorporates the use of a large office-type wire wastepaper basket!....seems to work amazingly well.
I use only 'carbon filtered' water (the liquor) from the 'Body and Soul' water filtration plant and I plan to make all our beers using this water and brewing from the grain in future. I am in need of a larger boiling vessel - 50 litres would be good, 60 even better - stainless steel of course.
With a relatively small amount of liquor in the mash involved, I find it easier to mash the grain into the hot liquor, without the wastepaper basket and then concentrate on good agitation and keeping the mix at the right temperature for that crucial hour and a half; then I can strain it through the wire basket into another similar container, whilst sparging at the same time. The wastepaper basket does the separation bit very well. Our new fermenting vessel holds 60 litres and works with either a full or partial load. Alain's potager (veg. garden) is benefitting splendidly from the spent hops and yeast.
I hope to be able to brew another good batch of 'Mild' ale - my favourite - some more Stout and Yorkshire bitter in time for our next pub night, possibly in Oct/ November time. We still have plenty of beer maturing in bottles. Our pigstye brewery is mercifully cool during this hot spell but not ideal for full - bottled beer storage.
One lesson learned is that brewing in cold weather has its drawbacks - in that the fermenting vessel temperature of around 19 degrees centigrade is hard to sustain. This can lead to under-fermenting the 'wort' (brew mash liquor) and bottling too early even after the normal ten days.. We have been using our old electric bed blanket in an attempt to keep the brew warm enough with some success. We wrap it around the fermenting vessel and switch on during the fermentation process - for the 10 days or so, unfortunately, we have had some popping bottles! But luckily my new system of plastic 'corkage' (caps) in the wine bottles allows for this to happen without bottle breakage. I suppose I should buy a hydrometer (like most sensible brewers do) to test the brew's specific gravity before bottling and before adding the pinch of sugar per bottle. We may have to purchase a proper immersible, temperature controlled, 'wort heater' too.
Thanks to all our hard work, we now have a good stock of clean and 'label free' wine bottles and our marketing department (darling Pascale!) has been working well in both labelling and club function arrangements! We have quite a bit of beer in bottles too, which can now have the time to mature..
Alain has improved our brewing facility no-end by adding a beautiful, large, butler's sink for general washing, cleanliness and hygiene. This means that I do not have to keep running to the garden tap with buckets for water which is needed in the whole brewing and bottle washing process. He also wrestles with the 'accounts' side of things - thank goodness - he's a natural! What a team! Thanks too, go to all our hard beer-drinking fans who are an essential part of long term success and continuity and to Lucie for her 'endless' patience.
Our current 'selling price' of our proper beer (ale) for our members is at present still 2E for a 75cl. bottle (that is 2 Euros for three 25cl glasses of euro fizz beer in a French pub, who dare to charge up to E2.50 per 25cl glass!) that is, at current rates of exchange 1.78GBp ) or approx. 2.37GBp per litre- that is 1.33 per pint. My aim, once all hardware equipment is bought, is to lower the cost per litre or pint still further to 1GBp....? that's approx 1.11Euros to our French contingent! - it's a challenge which all true ale/beer drinkers face. Beer should not be as expensive as it is, that's for sure. But it ain't all plain sailing, y'know!