As many of you will have seen, this week we took the heartbreaking decision to temporarily close the brewery because of the Coronavirus outbreak. It’s horrible, it really is, for many reasons. However, we’re determined to stay positive and here’s a few things that we’re excited about, looking forward to or thankful for, regardless of what the world’s throwing at us right now.
We have time to ourselves. Running a business alongside other careers and interests is hard. Well, running a business is hard. So now we have some time to genuinely relax, as well as catching up on paperwork and those other bits and pieces we never quite get around to doing. We also have time to dream and plan, meaning we’re really looking forward to when we open again and we can start to put those dreams and plans into action!
We’re hoping to open a delivery and/or takeout service… soon-ish! The main reason we haven’t done this already is licensing – the brewery doesn’t have a permanent premises licence and we rely on temporary event notices for our monthly tap room events. We’ve taken advantage of our little bit of downtime to become possibly the only people to apply for a premises licence in March 2020! We’re guessing it completely confused the council. Anyway, if it all goes well, we should be able to partially reopen in the nearish future – keep your eyes peeled for news.
Our house is probably the tidiest it’s been for years! We had some work done on our house last year and even though it’s nearly a year since it finished, we still have some stuff that’s not been moved back to its normal place. Mrs Beerblefish found the potato peeler in the (converted) loft today – a genuine win, both because we can now peel potatoes safely and because it’s one more item towards the loft being a properly usable space again.
Brett is great in sourdough. We’ve had many brewing-related baking accidents over the years, mostly before the brewery was commercial and James was still homebrewing. We’ll never forget the mince pies that rose or the gingerbread people that looked pregnant because of the amount of yeast floating around in our kitchen. However, we very intentionally added a small amount of brett to our sourdough starter (named Barry) and it gives a wonderful, almost meaty flavour to the bread. Definitely one to try at home!
We’ll be back again next week with some proper beer and/or gin news, but in the meantime, keep yourselves well, wash your hands and REMAIN INDOORS!
Somewhat ironically, today’s blog post was supposed to be about holding parties at the brewery! We’ll be saving that one for another time but this is merely a blip in our blog planning and it will pass.
We’re living in uncertain times all of a sudden, and this week’s closure of pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants has a great impact on many people who work hard to provide quality beers to the general public. The owners and staff of those venues are, of course, at the front line of that impact, but there are many other links in the supply chain that will be feeling the pinch right now, from the breweries to the yeast manufacturers and from the distributors to the farms that rely on spent grain as animal feed.
We think we’re in a reasonably good place overall – our unique business model and social enterprise aims give us a bit of wiggle room to weather this kind of storm. We’re looking at ways to get our beer out there even though the pubs are shut. We’re unlikely to be brewing as much in the near future as we had planned, but we’ve got some stock of our best beers and our Limited Edition Hopped Gin, and we’re hoping to be able to find retail outlets for it very soon.
In the meantime, if you want to help us to keep going (not just financially, but motivationally!), now would be a really good time to buy a tshirt from our online tshirt store – we know that our fulfilment partner, Teemill is looking after its staff at its factory on the Isle of Wight, but many of their processes are automated, so they’re able to keep going when others might not be able to.
We’re really looking forward to what the future holds for the brewery, so keep an eye out here on our blog and on our social media for all the latest on what we’re up to.
In the second of our series on our regular stockists, brewery manager Glenn talked to Kate, the co-founder of Holtwhites Bakery & Deli in Enfield to find out about all things bread!
Spotlight On… Bready Beginnings
Kate told us that she can’t remember what her life was like before setting up the bakery with her husband, Richard, in 2011. She said, “Life was slightly crazy because I was running a micro-bakery from home, I had young children, I was working as a social researcher and Richard was a Spanish teacher.”
Kate and Richard were baking for friends and word got out. They would bake on Friday nights and it got to the point that they’d have 60 people lined up outside their house on the Saturday, waiting to pick up their weekend loaves. Having a deli was part of their original plan, as it made sense to serve tasty cheeses and other delicacies.
The couple lived just around the corner from the shop they set up in, so they knew the area and the space seemed perfect. As they lived on Holtwhites Hill, it made sense to use a local name for the new venture.
Spotlight On… Rising to the Challenge
Glenn asked Kate about the challenges she’d faced in setting out: “On opening day, I’d never operated a till!” On a more serious note, Kate said that being responsible for the livelihood of her staff is a massive responsibility, but there is a good network of support amongst bakers so she and Richard could ask questions when they needed to.
Spotlight On… the Proof of the Pudding
Kate and Richard pride themselves on only using the best quality ingredients and traditional, “slow” baking methods which means that their products look, smell and taste great naturally. They aim to delight their customers with great customer service and want their shop to be a warm and welcoming haven for people who love good food.
Kate said she thinks the business is such a great success because, “It’s a labour of love. We really believe in the product.” She thinks that regular customers would describe the bakery as a nice place with a lovely community atmosphere.
Spotlight On… Going Against the Grain
Of her products, Kate’s favourite bread is the sourdough rye and the 100% wholemeal. Portuguese custard tarts are very popular with the customers. She’s seeing a big interest in Scandinavian baking at the moment, along with a surge in interest in vegan products – Kate thinks that’s down to people converting to veganism (rather than the bakery attracting new customers who are vegan). Around thirty per cent of the coffees that Holtwhites sell are served with oat milk.
Spotlight On… Liquid Bread
Holtwhites started stocking Beerblefish bottled beers before Christmas to complement their existing line up of craft ales. So far, they’ve had 1820 Porter, 1892 IPA, Infinite Improbability Saison, Amarillo Single Hop and Cashmere Brut IPA.
Kate told Glenn that her customers love Beerblefish beers, saying, “When we first started stocking the beers, one customer noted that he was a fan already.” Apparently, the Cashmere Brut IPA has also attracted a core following!
Spotlight On… Blooming Romance
Glenn asked Kate if any romance had bloomed in the bakery: “Besides staff… I’m not aware of any customers getting together, although it is a friendly atmosphere in here so it may have happened!”
It’s easy to forget that, in beer terms, stainless steel is a relatively recent innovation. Until the mid-twentieth century, wood was the primary material used for beer casks. In the 1960s, the tide turned in favour of first aluminium and then stainless steel.
Enter the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood (SPBW), which was established in 1963 to try to keep up the traditional use of wooden casks. Through social events and support for breweries, pubs and coopers interested in beer from the wood, their work has helped to stop wooden casks from falling completely by the wayside.
While metal casks undoubtedly have their benefits (among other things, they’re lighter and easier to clean), the brewing industry has caught up in recent years with what the SPBW has been trying to tell us – that something was lost from the creative process when the shift was made away from wood.
A constant supply of new hop varieties, different grain combinations and experimentation with yeasts give brewers an enormous playground in which to innovate, but adding back a couple of extra variables – the type of wood used and the length of time the beer spends in contact with that wood – gives an extra dimension that can be exploited in a different way now that brewers have much more control over their processes as a result of technological advances.
Different types of wood can give different flavour profiles, as can any other drink that’s been aged in the vessel before. It’s important to avoid toxic woods, of course – yew and oleander are particularly nasty – but there are plenty of others to choose from and modern coopers make their casks from a range of trees, including hard maple, for its syrupy notes and white ash, which can give a tantalising hint of campfires and marshmallow. However, it’s very noticeable that there aren’t many firs or pines on the list – some people have reported a hint of turpentine in beers aged in conifer wood, so it’s probably best avoided!
In pride of place in the Beerblefish Brewhouse is our French oak wine hogshead that once contained Beaujolais. The first beer we aged in it was a version of our 1853 ESB that we made for a wedding – some of the lees from the wine were still in the barrel and gave the beer a fantastic round mouthfeel and mellow flavour during the six month aging period. The wood is quite old, so there weren’t the vanillins that one might expect from newer oak.
Since then, we’ve aged a few beers in the wooden barrel, most recently our Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout 2019, the latest in our annual series of imperial stouts. We’ve also borrowed some wooden pins and provided the same beer from wooden and stainless steel barrels so that drinkers can spot the differences.
We’re enjoying our beer from the wood so much that we’re about to invest in our own oak casks in preparation for SPBW’s Woodfest 2020 at the Turk’s Head in Twickenham on 28 to 30 May.
Traditionally brewed during the colder months, saison is a farmhouse ale that was stored for summer drinking by the seasonal workers, saisonniers, in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium.
In the eighteenth century, when this style emerged, clean drinking water was in short supply and beer was provided to the workers to slake their thirst under the hot summer sun. Therefore, it’s likely that they weren’t that strong – about 3% to 3.5% ABV – and, due to brewers having access only to local ingredients, would come in as many varieties as there were farms. As water became cleaner, so saison ales became scarcer, but breweries managed to keep them going, eventually amalgamating them into a more or less unified style.
Our farmhouse saison, Infinite Improbability, is a very English take on this Belgian classic. While it uses Belgian Belle Saison yeast to give it the peppery notes that are characteristic of the style, this is paired English ale yeast and B.claussenii for a fruitier body. The English twist continues with English malts and a dry-hopped finish of archer hops.
The ale retains the slightly cloudy, golden hue typical of the modern saison, but has a rounder mouth feel than its Belgian relatives and, at 6.7% ABV, it’s more in line with its modern counterparts than the original water substitutes.
Because it’s a farmhouse ale and we only produce a small amount each year, we label it up with our farmhouse-style labels and let the beer speak for itself. If you’d like to get your hands on some (in KeyKeg or bottle), please Contact Us.
That is not to say brewing is not a physically and mentally demanding job, but our task as brewers is to herd our microbes of choice – and let them do the hardest work in the brewery, munching on sugars to produce the alcohol in our beer. In the video above, Beerblefish owner, James Atherton, shows us how different microbes do this job (while the video is generally accurate, it’s fair to say it might not be entirely serious…)
Most brewers choose to use a single culture of Brewer’s Yeast, often from the Saccharomyces genus, while some making sours will use Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces together; people who are gluttons for punishment, like us at Beerblefish, will use a varied mix of yeasts (and occasionally blends of bacteria). As you can imagine, herding one invisible fungus can be challenging, herding up to five in a single brew requires a little more attention to detail, but that’s what gives our heritage beers their distinctive flavour and character.
Different yeasts produce different flavours, work at different rates and will consume different sugars/dextrins. Saccharomyces will usually start consuming simple glucose before turning their attention to other monosaccharides or longer chain sugars. Lactobacillus will rapidly multiply and chew through glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose and galactose in that order – but they are not able to metabolise long chain dextrins or starches. Brettanomyces tend to work a little more slowly than brewing strains of Saccharomyces in an aerobic environment then, slow down considerably to about half the metabolic rate in an anaerobic environment.
An interesting thing, if you are herding your microbes, is that placing saccharomyces and lactobacillus in the same environment causes Saccharomyces strains to abandon their usual preferences for simple sugars for more complex sugars. The presence of Lactobacillus in a Saccharomyces culture causes them to rapidly metabolise all the sugars they can pull in. This can lead to more off flavours and is why many brewers these days will kettle sour with Lactobacillus rather than allowing it into primary fermentation.
First, let’s look at the differences you’ll notice when you actually drink them. The amount of hop bitterness is a big differentiator. IPAs are often highly hopped (more than40 IBU and commonly over 60 IBU), whereas lagers are generally far more subtly hopped (around 20-40 IBU). IBUs are international bittering units, a standardised way of quantifying bitterness in beers.
Traditionally Lagers would have used Noble Hops (Saaz, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Tettnang, Spalt), whereas an IPA would have used Goldings and Fuggles. Modern IPAs, such as the west coast and east coast styles from the USA are often more bitter than the traditional British variety and use newer hop varieties, including Simcoe, Amarillo, Mosaic and Citra.
These days any beer can use any hop – we have more hops and world trade means we can get some hops from Germany, New Zealand or the USA just as easily as we can from local hop growers, but it is unusual to find a very hoppy, bitter lager or a subtly-hopped IPA.
Now for a science lesson, as we look at the technical differences.
The main difference is the yeast. Ales are typically brewed with a top fermenting yeast, S.Cerevisiae whereas lagers are brewed with a bottom fermenting yeast, S.Pastorianus.As a result of the different yeasts used, ales are fermented at higher temperatures (14-20℃) than lager(10-12℃); the ranges can be larger but these are a rough guide. Some steam lagers are fermented at ale temperatures but with a lager yeast.
A lager would typically be allowed to warm towards the end of the primary fermentation for a couple of days diacetyl rest but this is not always required with an ale. However, if your ale has fermented at the lower end of the yeast’s preferred temperature range, it may benefit from a diacetyl rest.
Lager fermentation usually takes longer than ale fermentation due to the lower temperatures. Steam lagers can finish just as fast as an ale, reaching final gravity in four to five days.
Lagers should, according to their name, be stored for a period of time in secondary/lagering vessels: lager means storehouse or larder. This is not always required and a drinkable lager can be produced in under two weeks, but we would question if it should be called a lager if it has not been stored at 0-4℃ for a week or more.
Now for a short history lesson: how did lagers and IPAs evolve?
Lagers were first made in Bavaria and later in Bohemia (with pilsner) in the early nineteenth century. IPAs started out in London, then production moved to Burton upon Trent. Both these paler varieties of what had gone before were made possible by new indirect kilning methods that allowed for the production of lighter malts.
This little bit of history is important, as lager is usually made with a double or triple decoction mash, whereas IPAs are generally made with the British-style single temperature infusion mash. There are no hard and fast rules though. You could technically make either with either method, and these days many lagers are made with single infusion and, although we’re not aware of any IPAs made with decoction, it can be done. We know a few German brewers who would be horrified to think of a Lager made by British and, therefore, incorrect methods.
There is a very long and complicated explanation for this, but the short answer for our purposes is: in a single temperature infusion mash, the water (liquor is heated to about 75℃ and all the grain (grist) and about a third of the total liquor are mixed together, creating a mash at about 65-67℃. This is then allowed to stand for an hour for the enzymes in the grains to convert the starches in the grain into sugar. You want the lovely sugar as this is what the yeasts will eat and turn into alcohol and other delicious flavour compounds.
The other two thirds of the water are used to shower (sparge) the grain to wash out the remaining sugars.
This method is only possible due to thermometers. Without the ability to accurately measure temperature, single infusion would be highly error prone. The evolution of well-modified, consistently malted barley strains has also helped the reliability of this method.
Decoction mashing, on the other hand, is a far older method, in which you do not need a thermometer. You just need a way to measure time and to boil a mixture of grain and water (the mash). In decoction mashing, grain and water are mixed and then portions of the resulting mash are pulled out of the mash tun, brought to the boil and then returned to the mash tun. This way, even without a thermometer, the malt can be taken through the acid rest, protein rest and saccharification rest consistently – no modern technology needed.
The major downside of double or triple decoction mashing methods, we think, are that they take much longer than single temperature infusion mashes; but the purists would argue they are the one true way to make a lager.
In these enlightened days of brewing, where methods and ingredients travel so easily, the remaining hard and fast differentiator between IPAs and lagers is the different yeasts used to produce them – they are the little ones that do all the work and we brewers just have to keep them warm (or cold) and feed them sugars so they can do the important bit!
Liz told us that her life before The Hackney Carriage was a calm, organised, normal family life. Having visited a micropub, she spotted the opportunity to offer others a safe place to catch up with a friend for a drink. As Liz had been an estate agent for 18 years, she knew how important the location was, so she did some demographic research before settling on Sidcup.
Deciding on a name was easier – Liz’s husband, Mark, is a black cab driver, so The Hackney Carriage Micro Pub was born.
Liz said there were plenty of challenges in setting up: at first, the locals didn’t understand the micropub concept, and it took them a while to realise that Liz was trying to create a quieter, more inclusive environment than they might find in a larger venue.
Liz also encountered sexism along the way, telling us, “People automatically assume that it’s my husband’s business, so they ask to deal with him.” The new venture also turned her week on its head: “You can’t just meet friends at the weekend, as this is now the busiest part of the week!”
Spotlight on… Community
On the micropub’s success, Liz said, “I truly believe that the success of the pub is the community. My husband and I are always around to meet customers and interact with them.” Liz even occasionally drives a customer or two home. “We have one customer who is elderly and gets the bus to us when he can, and I often will take him home. We appreciate everyone, as this is a community pub and we support each other.” The Hackney Carriage’s regulars describe the pub as a community hub; many have found new friendships and met neighbours who they never knew before.
Liz is proud that the pub is there for the community, no matter where they are in life. They have welcomed many newborn babies since opening, and new puppies get a treat on their first visit. Liz said, “I recently agreed to close for our first wedding, as they are regulars and have asked to hold their reception here, which is an honour.” The pub has also opened up for local community network and workshop events and, sadly, also hosted family funerals for regulars.
Spotlight on… Beer
The micropub is a real ale haven, particularly since bar manager Ben is a strong beer connoisseur. This led to the team creating “Strong Beer Thursday”, which has been very popular with customers.
The Hackney Carriage has stocked most of Beerblefish’s beers in the three years since it opened. Liz said, “They are always of the best quality, and we have also asked them to do a house bitter, which our customers love!”
Spotlight on… Romance
As it’s Valentine’s weekend, Glenn asked Liz whether romance had been in the air at The Hackney Carriage. She said, “Over the last three and a half years we have had one couple meet and move in together. Now I’m waiting for the wedding so I can buy my Cilla hat!”
Spotlight on… Success
Liz has a few words of wisdom for anyone thinking about starting a micropub: “It may look fun but it’s not easy; a busy micropub consumes most of your time and energy. I truly believe my success is due to the time and devotion I invest in my community hub/pub.”
Many thanks to Liz for taking time out of her busy day to talk to us!
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and, whether you’ve been loved up for decades or you’ve got a new paramour in mind, you might be thinking about a way to spoil them. If they’re a beer drinker, there’s no better way to surprise them than with a bottle of delicious beery nectar – but what if you don’t (or can’t) drink beer yourself and don’t know where to start with selecting something your Valentine will love?
The path of least resistance would appear, at first glance, to be to get them a beer that you know they’ve enjoyed before. This is a perfectly valid course of action if you’re certain you know which one to get. However, many beer lovers these days are adventurous and want to try new things, so you might want to think a bit outside the box.
We often get people coming to us at fairs and markets wanting to buy something for their significant other, but not knowing which beer in our range they would enjoy the most. The first thing we always ask is, “What colour is the beer they normally drink?” Now, to be fair, the answer they first give is usually, “Er, brown…” (which is a completely reasonable thing to say!), but after a little bit of further digging, we can usually get to a colour that falls into one of the following:
Really dark, almost black: in this case, they are probably fond of stouts and/or porters. Slightly less likely is mild, and there’s an outside chance that they’re really sold on black IPAs. Our 1820 Porter, Blackbeerble Stout, Imperial Mild and Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout fall into this category.
Dark/mid brown: this one’s trickier – lots of beers are brown! We’ll hazard a guess, though, that their tipple of choice will be a bitter. Bitters are having a resurgence right now, although we don’t think they ever really went away. Our 1853 ESB and Edmonton Best Bitter are in this basket.
Reddish brown/red: there are a few possibilities here. Some reddish beers are red ales, others get their red colour from added fruits (such as cherries), and yet more will be traditional IPAs or slightly red bitters. Beerblefish 1892 IPA has a lovely red tint to it.
Amber/Golden: many beers this colour are actually called amber ales or golden ales, which is really helpful!
Yellow: This is probably the hardest, because there are so many different kinds of pale beer. Broadly speaking, these are in two camps – it’ll either be lager (which would also encompass, for our purposes, pilsner/pils and kölsch) or it will be a pale ale (which we’ll say covers modern IPAs and American Pale Ales). Wheat beers are also typically straw-coloured (and cloudy). Our Pan-Galactic Pale Ale, our Hoppy Pale series and our CashmereBrut IPA are pale ales, and our Lager is, well, a lager…
Once we’ve nailed down the colour, the next thing we ask about is whether the lucky recipient of the gift likes their beers to be hoppy – you might not know right now, but you could take a look at a bottle they’ve got in the fridge or cupboard. If it says it’s hoppy or hop-forward, then it’s hoppy. If it doesn’t say, but has a long list of types of hops on the label, it’s most likely hoppy. If it says something like “malt-forward” on the label or there’s a longer list of different types of barley or other grains than there is of hops, then it’s less likely to be hoppy. Sometimes beers claim to be balanced – that means that they are neither too hoppy nor too malty.
In the Beerblefish range, all our pale ales are hoppy. Our 1853 ESB, Edmonton Best Bitter and 1892 IPA are, we think, balanced. And all our dark beers and our lager are malt-forward, and so less hoppy tasting.
There are plenty more factors you can take into account when choosing a beer or beer style – whether the hops are fruity or floral, whether it’s made just with barley or with other grains added, whether the finish is dry, whether it is sour and what the mouthfeel is like, among others – but focusing on the easiest and most differentiating elements should help you to get something your loved one will like.
At the end of the day, if you still can’t decide which beer your Valentine would like the best, there’s no shame in judging a book by its cover – choose the one you think looks the nicest on the shelf and we’re sure they will be thrilled with your thoughtfulness.
We’re getting towards the back end of the long, dark days of winter and all of the “nuary” initiatives that come with the first month of the year. We’ve dealt with Veganuary (twice!), Tryanuary and, to a point, Dryanuary, but we’re yet to take a look at one more – Ginuary!
Since we launched our Limited Edition Hopped Gin back in November 2019, we’ve been happily sipping it with a single ice cube or adding a splash of our favourite tonic water, but we’ve been inspired to try something new for the new year – gin cocktails.
Some of the team have just come back from a holiday in Gran Canaria, full to the brim with ideas about sunshine drinks and the long lost days of summer. Beerblefish Hopped Gin has a rounded mouth-feel and citrusy notes thanks to the hop addition, so it’s a great base for a Spanish-themed trio of fiesta drinks, inspired by the sun, sea and sand.
We’ve tried to make these recipes quick and easy so you can impress your guests (or yourself!) in a flash.
Agua de Valencia
This is a classic Spanish drink that works really well with a Hopped Gin. This is the short version – if you want a longer drink add a bit more orange juice and cava. It’s not typically served with ice, so make sure your juice and cava are well chilled before you start.
Serves 2, takes 5 minutes (longer if you squeeze your own orange juice).
100ml good orange juice (if you can squeeze your own orange juice, even better!)
100ml cava
Method:
Mix all the ingredients together into a jug and pour into large wine glasses. Add a slice of orange to garnish if you’re feeling fancy.
G & (Earl Grey) Tea
This is quite a delicate drink. You need to make the tea really strong for the flavour to come through well once it’s chilled, so don’t worry about the tea bag to water ratio! We like to make and serve this one in a teapot.
Serves 2, takes 5 minutes to mix plus 30 minutes cooling time for the tea.
Ingredients:
150ml boiling water
2 Earl Grey tea bags
50ml Beerblefish Hopped Gin
50ml Licor 43
50ml good orange juice
Ice cubes to serve
Method:
1. Make tea using the boiling water and the tea bags and leave to steep for 5 minutes.
2. Remove the tea bags and leave the tea to cool (put it in the fridge once it’s at about room temperature).
3. Once the tea has cooled, add the Beerblefish Hopped Gin, the Licor 43 and the orange juice and give it a swirl.
4. Fill a large whiskey glass with ice cubes and pour the drink over the ice. Add an orange slice to garnish if you feel inclined.
Raspberry Fizz
This is an indulgent drink for a special occasion. Or a not so special occasion. Or even no occasion at all. You choose. If you can’t find creme de framboise, you can try the more readily available creme de cassis instead – it gives the colour and sweetness we’re after, but with a blackcurrant flavour instead of raspberry.
Serves 4, takes 5 minutes.
Ingredients:
8-10 fresh or frozen raspberries
50ml Beerblefish Hopped Gin
50ml creme de framboise (raspberry liqueur)
350ml cava
Method:
1. Put two or three raspberries in the bottom of each of four flute glasses.
2. Mix the Beerblefish Hopped Gin and the creme de framboise together in a small jug, then pour the mixture over the raspberries, dividing equally between the glasses.
We’re just past the half-way point of Veganuary and some people might have used all their new year’s inspiration – so we thought we’d offer a helping hand with an idea for how to use beer in your vegan cooking.
Before we get stuck in, remember that not all beer is vegan – take a look at our post from a couple of weeks ago for the reasons why that is – but also remember that ALL Beerblefish beer is vegan and we’ve pledged to keep it that way.
So, who’s up for a risotto? For those new to a plant-based diet, forgoing the lashings of butter and parmesan that typically go into this classic rice dish can be a tough sell, so we decided to see if beer can help. The answer is a resounding “YES”. As we’re trying something new here, we think we’ve got Veganuary and Tryanuary covered in one dish!
Here’s our recipe for Vegan Beery Mushroom Risotto:
Preparation time: 15 mins Cooking time: about 30 mins (and requires constant attention!) Serves: 4
Ingredients:
2 medium-sized onions, finely chopped (we used one red and one white)
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
300g carnaroli risotto rice (or you can use arborio)
500ml bottle Beerblefish Lager (you can use any vegan beer you want, but we suggest using one that’s not too bitter and not too hop forward. It’s also important that it’s bottle-conditioned – we want those yeasts in there!)
500ml vegetable stock using your favourite stock cube/pot, etc., made according to pack instructions
Dash of dark soy sauce
About 350g-400g mushrooms, roughly chopped (we used 120g oyster mushrooms and 240g white mushrooms)
½ tsp garlic powder/granules
1 tsp mixed herbs
Method:
1. Put the stock in a saucepan on the hob and bring to the boil, then simmer gently with the lid on.
2. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large (preferably non-stick) frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onions, then the garlic and fry gently for 3 or 4 minutes until slightly softened.
3. Add the rice to the onions and garlic and fry for another 3 minutes, stirring continuously.
4. Take a swig of the beer to make sure it’s the right one, then add half the bottle to the rice mixture. Keep stirring!
5. When all the beer has been sucked up by the rice and the mixture is starting to get stiff, add a ladleful of the stock; and keep stirring.
6. When the stock has been absorbed, keep adding alternating splashes of beer and stock each time the mixture becomes stiff. Keep stirring.
7. As you put the last bit of beer in, make sure you get the sediment out of the bottle and into the pan – the yeast contains some valuable B vitamins, a teeny bit of protein and a whole load of umami (savoury taste).
8. Add the mixed herbs and stir them in.
Note: If you’ve used all your stock and beer and the rice isn’t cooked yet, add a bit of boiling water at a time, still stirring, until the rice is cooked – this shouldn’t be necessary, but it does occasionally happen.
9. Turn off the heat under the risotto.
10. In a small frying pan, heat the remaining olive oil, then add the dash of dark soy sauce. Add the mushrooms and the garlic powder or granules and fry them until the mushrooms go golden brown.
11. Mix the mushrooms into the risotto and serve immediately!
We hope you enjoy your risotto – let us know how you get on and use #beerblefish to share your risotto pics with us!
In the dark days of the new year there’s often an innate urge to do something different from last year. A new year, a new you. We’re bombarded with media exhorting us to give this up or abstain from that to begin the new revolution around the sun in a healthier, fitter and more prosperous way than we ended the last one.
When it comes to beer, though, giving up drinking altogether for a month could have an impact on your ability to drink beer when February comes. We’re not talking about the health impacts here – we agree that alcohol should be consumed in moderation and that everyone who chooses to drink should drink responsibly – we’re talking about the brewing and licensed retail industries.
Breweries, bottle shops, pubs and bars typically have a field day in the run up to the festive season. Family get togethers, office parties and general joyousness lead to good sales figures and happy bank managers. However, once the Christmas decorations are back in the attic, these businesses’ sales often fall off a cliff. After the turn of the year, a combination of customers’ lack of funds and general new year’s resolve can cause small, independent businesses real damage. If we then add in pledges to not drink for a month, it can make an already bleak outlook seem even worse.
In 2015, a group of volunteers set up Tryanuary to help support the beer industry through the challenges brought by this leanest of months. The idea is to try new beers throughout the month, with special events posted on the Tryanuary website to help beer enthusiasts find their way to new brews.
With pub closure figures still increasing, it’s a case of use it or lose it. If you really want to give up alcohol for a month, then the Tryanuary campaign suggests you still visit your local and have a non-alcoholic beer, a soft drink or a bite to eat instead of your usual tipple.
As for us, we’ll be offering up something interesting for our customers to try at our Tryanuary Tap Room and Bottle Shop on Saturday, 25 January and at Stroud Green Market on Sunday, 26 January.
Remember, a pub (or a brewery) is not just for Christmas!
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