X for Exceedingly Exciting

During a summer holiday in Sweden, the little horrors scavenged the woods for exotic fruit, and the cupboards for rare and mysterious ingredients; these they combined in an arcane ritual to produce the mythical X Cake. What does this have to do with beer? Well, yesterday we toddled off to those very nice people at Roosters to run a test brew, incorporating our own mysterious ingredients. Inevitably this experimental brew is now known as X Beer; with a little luck and some magic, it will be even more scrumptious than the legendary X Cake.

Hops go in to the boil...

...producing a lovely bright wort, thanks to Sam's diligence.

Pitching the yeast.

  

First report of fermentation after 24 hours :

1040 down to 1026 at 2.30pm Tastes fine, malty toffee. Lightish body. Nice malt finish. So far - so good.

X Beer will be casked and bottled for tasting in October; progress will be reported here.

First tangible progress

We moved some tanks in last month - from Korea. Thanks to Sam and Mike for muscle, Terry's for the forklift, Colin for supervision and various urchins for not getting in the way too much. These tanks are made by Specific Mechanical; three stainless steel 20 hl fermentation vessels, and a 10 hl conditioning tank in shiny lacquered copper. We should have had a second pretty copper 20 hl conditioning tank, but that was damaged during decommissioning, and leaves us short of capacity. The silver lining is that the four tanks fitted in a single 40 ft. container; the air in the container was redolent of teak (flooring), and invoked nostalgia for Womble.

One of the little urchins recorded this video snippet :

The premises are pretty tatty at the moment; refurbishment is under way...