tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27112312081182800032024-03-19T04:53:38.627+00:00Trouble BrewingAre you contemplating buying a beer not backed by multi-million Euro advertising, not universally available, and not even the sponsor of a major sporting event?
And you think a local Irish beer, brewed in small batches with attention to quality, freshness and a distinctive taste would be a better choice...
Then it's time to get into Trouble.Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-19992877318762438502012-10-11T16:14:00.000+01:002012-10-11T16:14:14.322+01:00There's a Pumpkin Theme for Hallowe'en.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhsWp_fMGsNADzCPWjib1h1NfewisozX4EVk-bt2XesQV-Fgdy6Mt8IWUgGf3dqarY3eucuv8i_cD10xJX6jauJJTCKpWDtdvsQGmtcUIRZzR5WmzyJ3PZ3b9qp9JWmf0QySY0TGcq1As/s1600/PumpkinBeerFull.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhsWp_fMGsNADzCPWjib1h1NfewisozX4EVk-bt2XesQV-Fgdy6Mt8IWUgGf3dqarY3eucuv8i_cD10xJX6jauJJTCKpWDtdvsQGmtcUIRZzR5WmzyJ3PZ3b9qp9JWmf0QySY0TGcq1As/s320/PumpkinBeerFull.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A good sign that Pumpkin Brew is being poured.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">About this time last year we bandied about the idea of a
pumpkin beer. Alas time wasn't our friend, as such projects tend to need
planning and forethought and as Homer Simpson was advised, "Homer, you've
got to sell your pumpkin futures <i>before</i>
Hallowe'en". So we went with the compromise option, in that we
requisitioned some casks of our Golden Ale and turned them into Pumpkin Ór by
means of adding pumpkin and pumpkin spice directly into the cask, and let them
mellow out in the beer for the week or two leading up to Hallowe’en. Happily
the feedback that we received about the beer was very positive, not least from
some of our American friends who have come to live in our land, but who have left
behind a nation that has fully embraced the pumpkin-in-beer concept.
Unfortunately, I’ve no idea if the reviews squared up to how the beer tasted,
as the beer sold out before I had the opportunity to pop into <a href="http://www.lmulligangrocer.com/">L. MulliganGrocer’s</a> to taste it. One of the major problems of the pumpkin-in-cask
compromise.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Proof that pumpkins can be found in August in Ireland.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So with one year of history with pumpkin in the brewery
behind us, we decided in a most un-Trouble-like fashion to get prepared well in
advance for the 2012 Pumpkin season and get some of them into our beer. With
that in mind early in August, our friends and relatives were given a task, (if
they chose to accept it, (most did)), to be on the lookout for any pumpkins
that we could potentially acquire. I also had to acquire some pumpkin spice,
which is something that is seemingly a staple of the supermarket shelves
in North America but not on any Irish ones. But upon learning that it’s essentially a blend of various
“common” spices, such as Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cloves, All-spice and Ginger,
amongst others, we blended up a proprietary recipe of our own.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We also didn’t want to simply brew a batch of our regular
Golden Ale with added pumpkin-y stuff in, so we came up with a new beer recipe
for a traditional amber ale that we thought would work well with the additional
ingredients.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3Hw_BApJyBtFG_E0RgXk0aXTf7rHa2ZvvaMCg7QkicFY80HJfBZ0T3-yg4ejhoRuxvnMTCX5kEEJQh57riIAVGmP_FcTZEmxvdih6hY8SEbn95OpY5R0xlIFWUR-TsTVXSDRtg0nxi8/s1600/IMAG0405.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3Hw_BApJyBtFG_E0RgXk0aXTf7rHa2ZvvaMCg7QkicFY80HJfBZ0T3-yg4ejhoRuxvnMTCX5kEEJQh57riIAVGmP_FcTZEmxvdih6hY8SEbn95OpY5R0xlIFWUR-TsTVXSDRtg0nxi8/s320/IMAG0405.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">An enterprising pumpkin roasting solution.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">With the ingredients and recipe settled upon and the
research done into the various different options about how to prepare and add
the pumpkin and pumpkin spice decided, we set about brewing the beer. The very
first task of oven roasting the pumpkin meat presented the first problem, in
that the brewery doesn’t possess an oven. However, the Enterprise Park where
the brewery is situated, have offices with such like facilities that they
allowed us to borrow. So soon enough I had filled the building with the lovely
aroma of roasting pumpkin. Which prompted various people to leave their desks
and come and investigate what was being baked, and in turn, be curious about the
concept of a beer brewed with pumpkin.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNPq_hMS0qMeIcUQTHhz_w38KfiMOrSUIdcA2yIQFt2A8sFBXLQ4JaPumT2hhPB4y4qlz3tEBDKanXlfZhzVq22JZVr6NSUp_SIQ2kL20f9rmHuRW_GQ_A4oW6UGgKnf3tBY1aa9zZRt8/s1600/IMAG0406.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNPq_hMS0qMeIcUQTHhz_w38KfiMOrSUIdcA2yIQFt2A8sFBXLQ4JaPumT2hhPB4y4qlz3tEBDKanXlfZhzVq22JZVr6NSUp_SIQ2kL20f9rmHuRW_GQ_A4oW6UGgKnf3tBY1aa9zZRt8/s320/IMAG0406.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Assisting the brew, with pumpkin added.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The brewing of a new beer is always less straightforward
than one that’s brewed regularly, but fortunately, I had some help in the form
of Darragh who was working with us for a week’s experience. So not only was
this brew to be Trouble and Ireland’s first pumpkin beer, it was also Darragh’s
introduction into the world of craft brewing. (Don’t worry; I had him engaged in
cleaning and more cleaning for the rest of his days with us, so that he’d not
think that this brewing business is always about formulating and brewing new
and exciting beers.) Anyway, we added the
pumpkin directly into the mash and had a slightly longer sparge time than usual
which was the only significant variations to our usual brewday. The pumpkin
spice addition wasn’t added until after the beer had finished fermentation and
was added for the conditioning stage, this method was preferred as it was
designed to stop the spices overwhelming all the other flavours.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I also had the happy job over the last four weeks to keep an
eye (and taste) on the beer as it progressed to readiness. And now that it is,
we’ll be sending it out to the world this week, which should do an excellent
job of helping the Hallowe’en party.</span></span></div>
Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-69427368117143525012012-06-27T10:06:00.001+01:002012-06-27T10:06:40.935+01:00So It Has Been A While<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">It’s a little over two years since
we launched at the Easterfest in the Franciscan Well, at this point it’s fair
to say we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we started.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKsM6Rz48kn2QBoIZhptqen-F88WEND_2dOpUNJLfrGw9AijMbGtKHsnuRz6_PvaAEIcCJf5EbORlmQdb3vCI9aHvmwvcUJFHRKKPLwEtQyCtc4E1xTADowKoEUltny1MO2vTwwNUPuA/s1600/BrewersOnTheBay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiKsM6Rz48kn2QBoIZhptqen-F88WEND_2dOpUNJLfrGw9AijMbGtKHsnuRz6_PvaAEIcCJf5EbORlmQdb3vCI9aHvmwvcUJFHRKKPLwEtQyCtc4E1xTADowKoEUltny1MO2vTwwNUPuA/s320/BrewersOnTheBay.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Obligatory festival picture, here at Brewers on the Bay</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Initially when we set up the brewery
we had to take out a loan, this process involved a lot of form filling and
conjecture. Essentially success or failure of our application was based on our assumptions of how much beer we would sell. Obviously we had hopes and
expectations but it was practically impossible for us to predict if people
would like our beer, or if publicans would be willing to give us an opportunity
by putting a tap in their pub.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">It was very difficult for us to
imagine two years ago that we would have so many pubs and off-licenses that
would be stocking our beer and so many people supporting what we do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Over the last two years our sales
have continued to grow and grow, and this has meant that we have now gone from
occupying one very small space in Allenwood, to occupying three small spaces in
Allenwood. During this time we have put in place the facilities to double our
production capacity from what it was originally.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNExFa7QnG5cFg3RNPAvJxpTUZiZCSf1Td-0FdRNsE3OeKlCZKYEkECFhsmNRnn7cqKJ6BZVENqQDQ_QlfEs0BGPpIAJfAbFz7hXHWSeWiWUT9oIY7GxdzoWaV6Qso8MKfCVvCKQT7MZE/s1600/RDS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNExFa7QnG5cFg3RNPAvJxpTUZiZCSf1Td-0FdRNsE3OeKlCZKYEkECFhsmNRnn7cqKJ6BZVENqQDQ_QlfEs0BGPpIAJfAbFz7hXHWSeWiWUT9oIY7GxdzoWaV6Qso8MKfCVvCKQT7MZE/s200/RDS.jpg" width="156" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Here's to the RDS Festival in 2012</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">While we pride ourselves on making
the highest quality beer and giving great customer service, it is also fair to say
that we have been caught up in a serious craft beer revolution. It might be
clichéd, but I really feel like we are part of a movement with more and more
people coming to realise the variety and quality of beer available to the craft
beer drinker. This has resulted in a surge of demand for beer from all over the
country, leaving us and the other craft breweries a little stretched, but in a
good way naturally. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Over the past couple of weeks alone
we have put new lines into two new craft beer bars in Cork (The Crane Lane
Theatre and The Mardyke), one in Drogheda (WM Cairnes & Son) and one in
Navan (The Central Bar). We have been working our portable bar hard at Bloom
2012, Brewers on the Bay, Whiskey Live, the
Yelp Back-yard Bazaar and have supplied beer for the festival in the Porterhouse.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMFAC_6d0wjzd4QVENhzipZKstgERZX-czpV-wCRNG9swljhQevL-TsfbvSRHF6EMMZnxfZ_6K0eH_J_uOmQ_TWr5Vj4a7nOJUJku6xJaCQvmibBIHM1q_1NdsHzjug7_aWKrQRHSJKk/s1600/Bloom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMFAC_6d0wjzd4QVENhzipZKstgERZX-czpV-wCRNG9swljhQevL-TsfbvSRHF6EMMZnxfZ_6K0eH_J_uOmQ_TWr5Vj4a7nOJUJku6xJaCQvmibBIHM1q_1NdsHzjug7_aWKrQRHSJKk/s200/Bloom.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We were ready to go for Bloom 2012</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Now is clearly not a time to for
sitting around drinking beer, (for us anyway), over the next six months we are looking forward
to introducing a new beer and a couple of seasonal beers. A bigger, bolder
Trouble Maker competition will crown a new champion of Irish homebrew in 2013 (we might
even buy a trophy). Plans are also in place to increase our capacity even
further. It’s all go at Trouble HQ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">For your continued support we are
grateful!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Stephen.</span></span></div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-1894544465953254112011-09-12T10:27:00.000+01:002011-09-12T10:27:25.676+01:00The Craft Delusion<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Lately I seem to be spending a lot of time in off-licences,
some might call it an occupational hazard, turns out the ones I am in and out
of, are pretty cool. One recent visit however left me a little annoyed. The
source of my annoyance can be traced to one word, that word: <u>craft</u>. Big
breweries just sticking this one simple
word on their beer label and suggesting it is craft beer is ridiculous to me
and serves to highlight the priority of these breweries, (as if it isn’t
blatantly obvious).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">People can argue over what the meaning of the word craft is,
but to us, craft beer is not just word on a bottle, it’s a community thing. The
people that support what we do know us, and understand what we are about; the
people that buy and drink our beer, the publicans, the off-licences the other
breweries, these are the people that make up this community. These are our
friends and our friends’ friends, they are people that have heard about us and
are interested in supporting our story. A story of people that enjoy and care
about what they do. It is an insult to these people and us to class themselves
in the same bracket.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">It’s one thing for craft breweries to evolve into relatively
big breweries, for example, the Boston Beer Company and the Brooklyn Brewery. This
is naturally going to happen when you have a well run brewery making great
beer. But when it comes to the big boys seeing the success of smaller breweries,
and the demand for the beers they produce, and deciding that they can stick the
word craft on their beer and take advantage of this, it just shows a complete
lack of understanding for what is happening in the world of craft beer.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">For me, it’s like the politician that rolls up in his brand
new Merc to insist he is still in touch with his constituents, as far as I am
concerned it’s only themselves they are fooling.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">All that said, I am strongly of the opinion that no one has
the right to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t drink, people should be
free to drink what they like. However I know what beer I will be reaching for
the next time I fancy craft Irish Pale Ale.</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stephen - Owner, delivery man, head of sales, brewing assistant, event
organiser, chief keg washer...</span></div>
Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-23874687220473625492011-08-30T14:16:00.000+01:002011-08-30T14:16:00.967+01:00Mummy, Daddy, where does bottled beer come from?<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjthFgs6PcQoZVvcFyCVAen4gkeEV0Y9-LU5VYVEdOU_qbzLujdazyVmqIWjOpthCg2tDbyQglrQgVbyKogDfe7eslqSQzij1OzVcpM5yplfRlNnLdgpn9yt52k-wXU_HiutFBqnGTvpks/s1600/t06kal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjthFgs6PcQoZVvcFyCVAen4gkeEV0Y9-LU5VYVEdOU_qbzLujdazyVmqIWjOpthCg2tDbyQglrQgVbyKogDfe7eslqSQzij1OzVcpM5yplfRlNnLdgpn9yt52k-wXU_HiutFBqnGTvpks/s320/t06kal.jpg" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Here's one we made earlier.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">Beer festivals are great fun, they give a brewery, or at least the workers therein, a chance to get out from behind the fermenters and meet people. Though people have questions. Some good: "Where can I get more of your tasty, tasty beer when not at this beer festival? Even if I shall be drinking it for the rest of the day, as I scarcely imagine that there'll be a tastier brew to be had all evening and dare not waste any of my precious beer tokens on what will be undoubtedly a less enjoyable beer" Some understandable: "So why did you open a brewery?" To which the answer is obviously; "so we'd own a brewery and the alternative is to work in a office with other people." Some bad: "Do you have a lager?" To which the inevitable reply is; "yes indeed, we have both <a href="http://www.troublebrewing.ie/index.php?page=Beers">Ór Golden Ale Lager or Dark Arts Porter Lager</a>". And finally the ones that require long and tedious explanations like: "So can I get your beer in bottles?"</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqZDY8w2jsrWulv9fYvotsBApxKY3vh5Lc6ok8hadGGqQaLNa6D7GvtcQXOTOgnOHqgut29XMRji-EtNTdTlFEA9xfLxVGOJMGgMBn_jDCajdl4Ma35lpK7PiNM_-gmcRS7kfMUPRBmA/s1600/IMAG0054.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqZDY8w2jsrWulv9fYvotsBApxKY3vh5Lc6ok8hadGGqQaLNa6D7GvtcQXOTOgnOHqgut29XMRji-EtNTdTlFEA9xfLxVGOJMGgMBn_jDCajdl4Ma35lpK7PiNM_-gmcRS7kfMUPRBmA/s200/IMAG0054.jpg" width="145" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">To the off-licence, my friends.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">So in order to avoid long and tedious explanations to people at beer festivals as to why we only have kegged beer (and the occasional cask), we decided to put the beer in bottles. Or rather, we decided to pay some putting-beer-into-bottles specialists to do the job for us, as the only thing longer and tediouser than the explanations about the non-bottling of beer is the bottling of beer itself.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">And so after a few mundane e-mails about transport logistics and some thoroughly more interesting ones about making the label look cool, we arranged all the arrangements and sent off the first shipment of beer. Expecting that the next time we would see it, in 18 to 21 days, it'd be sub-divided into small 500ml sections, surrounded by glass.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This indeed came to pass.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The evidence of which we observed when we took delivery of the multitude of bottles of beer. Obviously a quick quality check was essential, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">unfortunately </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">it turns out we don't possess a bottle opener, which we</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> only realised after a frantic search around the brewery. But where there's a beer bottle to be opened, there's a key or a radiator or a shoe that can be pressed into service to accomplish the task. We'd previously been remiss in capturing such landmark occasions in the medium of digital imagery; but not this time! Indeed we sent a wee teaser of a photo, of all hand and very little bottle, into the digital wilds on <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/trouble_brewing">our Twitter account</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutoxnzOKUnT-XMobIWhN5PJPB7XoB0FT8z3M6kLcFUU1MWIOG-wdolS_ueSqrCWMDUUP1egdSrhRg4cgTyKfzeNv8qXVs54TwubMlGRqgCHKOpOTPftA5eiYl-RE_PFoh8q43IhYNYPk/s1600/IMAG0057-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutoxnzOKUnT-XMobIWhN5PJPB7XoB0FT8z3M6kLcFUU1MWIOG-wdolS_ueSqrCWMDUUP1egdSrhRg4cgTyKfzeNv8qXVs54TwubMlGRqgCHKOpOTPftA5eiYl-RE_PFoh8q43IhYNYPk/s320/IMAG0057-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Not just your average picnic...</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">All that was left at that stage was to load up the van and drive the beer to all <a href="http://www.troublebrewing.ie/index.php?page=Where#offsales">the off-licences</a> that had been busily pestering us, in the nicest possible way, for deliveries since the word had got out that a bottled Trouble beer was afoot.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">So next time you see the Trouble stand at a <a href="http://irishcraftbeerfestival.com/">beer festival</a>, we're happy to answer any questions, with the exception of "So, when are you bottling the Dark Arts...?" Though the answers given might variously be factual, facetious, curmudgeonly, brief or downright unbelievable depending on our mood, the time of day or if we've chosen underwear that is too tight.</span></div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-3967246173072972322011-05-30T12:04:00.000+01:002011-05-30T12:04:23.445+01:00Not what we had in mind for World Domination...<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAZTUyKwtlbZKIA1CbOWsAIB-D19v1LZLo_0ca1NFBf4c3zy5PxcXhr6M4ANIyPHzBEhFR3tCiH8mL_V7T4RwYyuMCd0sYP8WH08VOAnssRkIvDD1KzAkDmBdqfdG9QM6K0Fr5nVaOrb8/s1600/Photo0492.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAZTUyKwtlbZKIA1CbOWsAIB-D19v1LZLo_0ca1NFBf4c3zy5PxcXhr6M4ANIyPHzBEhFR3tCiH8mL_V7T4RwYyuMCd0sYP8WH08VOAnssRkIvDD1KzAkDmBdqfdG9QM6K0Fr5nVaOrb8/s320/Photo0492.jpg" width="314" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Source Code: only safe in the hands of a trained expert</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">Our brewery has a great trick of being able to scare the bejesus out of you all by itself. It happens when you stand too close to the chiller unit when it's just reached it's high temperature limit and chooses to click into action with nary a warning, emitting a deafening roar of fans and refrigeration motors, blindsiding anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. Now I'm not normally one to anthropomorphise ugly bits of industrial machinery, but I reckon that chiller has gained intelligence in a Terminator Skynet sort of way and is out to get me. Luckily for us all, it's chosen not to try taking over the world and killing all humans but to use it's powers of evil to make sure it frightens me as often as possible. I reckon it's taken the fact that I called it's use of the Fahrenheit scale nonsensical, (which I standby, I get offended that we have to chill our beer to 33</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">°</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">F rather than 1</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">°</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">C). Generally we try to be a pro-SI units sort of brewery, though <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pounds_per_square_inch">PSI</a> seems to have slipped through the unit selection process, which is unfortunate as the alternative is "bar", which would seem to specifically lend itself to use by a company in the beer business.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCcydHdAArxj-fyNK4Kvk31eIMkIzzpbgGltH7HDghIRFe9yx19J6rYU9K5hx466Mt5lIP3HyCtC3_McG4zBu5nEwGMgDBdfxE4FuJUXbot_LMT-l7UUTJdJ30Rp0kK39beCWqoxAds4/s1600/Photo0491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCcydHdAArxj-fyNK4Kvk31eIMkIzzpbgGltH7HDghIRFe9yx19J6rYU9K5hx466Mt5lIP3HyCtC3_McG4zBu5nEwGMgDBdfxE4FuJUXbot_LMT-l7UUTJdJ30Rp0kK39beCWqoxAds4/s200/Photo0491.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Programming: a high pressure job</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anyway, it so happened that the subject of this evil chiller and the various unpleasant character traits that it's wont to display came up when we were enjoying a few-post match drinks in <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000879614787">The Mill</a>. (No prizes for guessing the beer of choice.) So during the course of the conversation it fell out, that the evil chiller was a source of disquiet in that it needed a good deal of manual intervention to keep beer at the correct temperatures during the various aspects of fermentation. Involved in this conversation was our soon to be Senior Process Control Engineering Consultant <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/shanebrennan">Shane</a>, who immediately saw an opportunity for the practical application of his knowledge of electronics, programming and computery stuff generally, in that the process of checking temperatures, opening and closing valves could be readily automated. Computers being much more suited to that sort of thing than Stephen, who rightly objects to being asked to stand beside the chiller interminably to make sure it's chilling prowess isn't misdirected. (Seemingly sleeping and eating are also other priorities that he's using to try and absent himself from his chiller baby-sitting duties.) So it was an enthusiastic Shane that left the pub that evening, with a grand scheme concocted to automate the refrigeration process, fermenting in his brain. I was enthusiastic about the not having to crawl in behind the fermenters to open or close valves every time a change to the beer's temperature was needed. I was less enthusiastic about giving the chiller more processing power, after all maybe that's why it hadn't wiped out humanity yet: not a lack of ambition, but insufficient processing capabilities, that couldn't take it beyond occasionally frightening people.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Still, at heart, I like to do things the easy way if at all possible, so I gave Shane the green light to go ahead with his operation and he didn't disappoint. A series of ever more complicated and incomprehensible technical drawings came winging to our Corporate Headquarters during the design phase, until the point where I gave up trying to decipher them and was happy to go with the nod and smile approach. I limited my input to reminding him that although the Fahrenheit scale is indeed silly, just be mindful of not airing that view within the brewery itself, and especially not near the evil-minded chiller.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9N7XWkzL9KDeAvTQBvki9tlRM43VzM5NN-mU07IinyMkoZc9Agvf6vvND4CHTXQnJZgWqtviu4nlfp5C-Wv83ZPdtfMpLCtx80TaM4JPM48_yCgPC7Wnw6CzHXk6ynnD1zGz7j1hyW0/s1600/Photo0489.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9N7XWkzL9KDeAvTQBvki9tlRM43VzM5NN-mU07IinyMkoZc9Agvf6vvND4CHTXQnJZgWqtviu4nlfp5C-Wv83ZPdtfMpLCtx80TaM4JPM48_yCgPC7Wnw6CzHXk6ynnD1zGz7j1hyW0/s320/Photo0489.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Trouble Fermention Control Nerve Centre</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;">So the "go live" date, as those in the computer nerd business say, is just upon us, so if this is the last blog post ever then you'll know what has happened: we have over-specced the equipment, our evil chiller has seized control of the spare processing capacity and is now waging a war against mankind. And has no doubt, ruined the beer in the process.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">On the upside, if the chiller is merely playful rather than some sort of genocidal maniac, which we all hope, it'll make us a little more environmentally friendly and gives Stephen a chance to go and have dinner and a sleep.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I have a feeling though that Shane won't merely be content to stop with upgrading the fermentation process, and other automation processes will soon be envisaged. Before that happens, I really ought to give him a small token to say thanks for his good work, I think a selection of some classic sci-fi movies would be appropriate: The Terminator, The Matrix and Robocop seem like a good start.</span></div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-55063525598272826572011-02-09T09:15:00.001+00:002011-02-17T10:45:09.345+00:00The Dark Days Aren't Over.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhhvXg1Ca3yC1BF-CHlw2LYQbf_cbM6GH1ZJx4i7z_8qRPxfFCURJx3R9bqqcksDjSRQfURfrrMp5haXpz3aW0gkYyJz-fpZgTCmOO5AzNuD-12hhjpEFogH2JrClU0qpN38D7LKO-x60/s1600/DarkArtsTapFont.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhhvXg1Ca3yC1BF-CHlw2LYQbf_cbM6GH1ZJx4i7z_8qRPxfFCURJx3R9bqqcksDjSRQfURfrrMp5haXpz3aW0gkYyJz-fpZgTCmOO5AzNuD-12hhjpEFogH2JrClU0qpN38D7LKO-x60/s200/DarkArtsTapFont.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The tap font to look out for!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So things have settled into something of a routine at Trouble HQ, the crisises that we stumble our way through have become less crisisesier and the time between them has increased. Which is all well and good for keeping stress levels in check but less good for writing blogs where people are expecting to hear about exciting and interesting stuff. Honestly, apart from the car crashes, and the fighting zombies it's been general routine mundanity. Filling up, and emptying, various sized stainless steel containers seems to be the order of almost every day. That, and wondering why they're called "stainless" when they need constant cleaning. I'm going to give the good people of Sheffield the benefit of the doubt and presume there was some kind of typographic error when the original name was conceived, and that somewhere the space between the "n" and "l" got lost in translation. Those being days when the correction of misspellings was a considerably more difficult operation.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqpt-epG2tNpCfNwClK8ZvF3Tk5cH_Kx8ulNfFpynE4x7VrLcjdl5BRvlMvcat21TjXGp17EKVpJ6xvR1cOcmL1IX-6GJADI8mqD56U-0Y62pstPgStpa-xr1yI031eFTi9NBpPzhMZ8/s1600/DA_Keg.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqpt-epG2tNpCfNwClK8ZvF3Tk5cH_Kx8ulNfFpynE4x7VrLcjdl5BRvlMvcat21TjXGp17EKVpJ6xvR1cOcmL1IX-6GJADI8mqD56U-0Y62pstPgStpa-xr1yI031eFTi9NBpPzhMZ8/s200/DA_Keg.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Kegged, labeled and ready to go.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Though as a result of this constant cleaning, we noticed that we had several clean fermenters to spare, that would be eminently suitable to use to ferment beer, the hint for their use being in the name. So we made a dramatic and momentous decision that we'd double the range of beer that we produced. Overnight we'd increase our range by a massive 100%. Although I might be overselling the drama or momentousness of the decision, I'm sure I'm spot on about the accuracy of my figures. Our previous range of one beer would be increased to two beers; a 100% increase, ask any mathematician, I'm sure they'll tell you the same, before berating you for the elementariness of the question. Thereby reinforcing my long held opinion that there are stupid questions, despite academia's reassurances otherwise.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu4anNb83Ue6SWbXcFaD3OQAS4_h4fR7tHONwtP_C4bEil10saHeqU7q6l9FjSrMJMSy2m2AqNFP0Evy7QQr23FC8sjAMHlrZYyd8_1_xp2VSJppvw5MWxQrKTinDM3xqluMXWkagRooQ/s1600/DA_Pint.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu4anNb83Ue6SWbXcFaD3OQAS4_h4fR7tHONwtP_C4bEil10saHeqU7q6l9FjSrMJMSy2m2AqNFP0Evy7QQr23FC8sjAMHlrZYyd8_1_xp2VSJppvw5MWxQrKTinDM3xqluMXWkagRooQ/s320/DA_Pint.JPG" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Dark Beer, Dark Logo, Shiny Fermenter. </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So with the mathematics of increasing production taken care of, we moved on to the thornier issue of the form that this new beer would take; that it would be a dark beer for some contrast had been the consensus view. However some said stout, others said porter, yet others said they're both the bleedin' same anyway, as a rose by any other name would still taste as sweet, assuming you were in the habit of eating rose bushes. (or Rose's bush, as a to-remain-anonymous friend of mine did for a while, well before they split up anyway.) We settled on the porter option, to be called Dark Arts, and the bleedin' difference between it and stout is one that I'll leave to be judged by anyone with a pint of it on front of them. The pub being the ideal location for the airing of such generally inconclusive debates, and doublely so when it comes to the vexed question of beer categorisation.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We also went with a more complex grain recipe, with chocolate malt and black malt thrown into the mix, in addition to some flaked barley, the idea being that it would be a more malt driven beer, with the hops being cast in the supporting actor role this time.</span></span><br />
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<ul><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Dark Arts Porter is currently on sale in <a href="http://www.lmulligangrocer.com/">L. Mulligan Grocer</a>, Stoneybatter and Glennons, Allenwood.</span></span></li>
</ul>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-25937607035924272732010-11-12T19:46:00.000+00:002010-11-12T19:46:20.774+00:00I'd like to put it on the record...<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">As anyone who ever been to a pub well knows, some of the greatest ideas to ever come to man can be born there. Alas this is usually outweighed by the vast amount of genuinely nuts ones. But thankfully most of us have the good sense, when the morning-after rolls around, to be able to tell the difference. Either way there's usually a fairly clear demarcation between the two. The idiotic ideas are quickly dismissed, normally with a cheery: "jaysus, we talked some amount of shite last night". Just occasionally there's an idea that crops up and stubbornly refuses to be one or t'other, usually making wild swerves between either side, a bit like Jim McDaid driving home from the races. Is it genius? Is it crazy? These are the kind of notions that should be paid serious attention. After all, one of them was the idea to open a brewery, and look at the Trouble that got us into.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">So it was at one of the many informal Trouble Brewing board meetings in the pubbie, (we have them there so we can combine such meetings with quality control, i.e. drinking our own beer, and market research, a.k.a. drinking other breweries’ beers), that one of these defiant half-casked ideas reared its head. I'm not sure which of our merry little party mentioned it, I know it wasn't me anyway, but it came to pass that someone suggested a <a href="http://www.troublebrewing.ie/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=10&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01returnid=15">brewing competition</a>, open to home brewers, that we would brew as a once off special. "That's genius", said someone. "That's crazy", said someone else. "Who's round is it?", said someone else with different priorities at that point. "It’s like finding a 2 euro coin when you bite into an onion", said someone else who enjoys weird non-sequiturs. "Ah, your right of course", said someone else, at this increasingly crowded meeting, who specialises in pointless platitudes. Thankfully these board meetings aren't minuted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">So it came to pass that we went ahead and put the competition together, with our usual "what could possibly go wrong?" attitude (generally the answer is: a lot), and released it into the free roaming plains of the Internet and waited. Then after five minutes of waiting, we stopped waiting, realising that such things are defiant of our MTV-generation attention span, and went and did some more productive stuff. Though once again our record keeping let us down and there's no record of what that productive stuff was. I've a strong suspicion that I single-handedly solved the economic crisis. Obviously someone's messed it up again rather quickly, but since none of it was documented, I guess we'll never know.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anyway, we let the competition ferment, as is befitting brewers, and by closing date we were delighted to find that a grand total of 15 different beers, of various hues and styles, had found their way to us. So now we have 30 bottles lined up in Thomas's conditioning room ready for judging. He insisted on there being two of each bottle in case one got broken or befell some other misfortune that interfered with its beery well-being. Even though that policy did make sense, I chose to interpret that as him being a chancer on the mooch for free beer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">We now have the judging date finalised and the talks are in progress to find suitable candidates for judging panel who’ll do the blind tasting, and will pick the big winner. Hopefully they’ll have finely honed beer sensitive taste-buds and also fit in the appropriately ridiculous Edwardian judges’ wigs we’ve already purchased. Though I’ve a feeling the latter criteria may determine a greater weight of their suitability, and head size be damned.</span></div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-31874320740369675282010-07-27T12:24:00.002+01:002010-07-27T22:06:24.709+01:00Visitor numbers are up this month.<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There was an event recently that made me call into question whether some of our more well-worn clichés can be trusted. The cliché in question being; "they couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery", I'm having this new found self-doubt after we organised said piss-up, in our brewery, and found it not quite the simple and straight-forward enterprise that it's made out to be. In fact, it takes quite a lot of planning and organisation.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKleLquCqHZ94Gm5dkVGUhPNr5_IKzue5XwCPQMebFt8cMEva5ah9cFf5xWjHrgJr8psAuElbT5fi_uDMYNqPpjwEe2vlLUszEmg-PkiP2IqR0ZznEAoqFPvB3ph_LN9zCTCK76Hs3o_Y/s1600/bbq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKleLquCqHZ94Gm5dkVGUhPNr5_IKzue5XwCPQMebFt8cMEva5ah9cFf5xWjHrgJr8psAuElbT5fi_uDMYNqPpjwEe2vlLUszEmg-PkiP2IqR0ZznEAoqFPvB3ph_LN9zCTCK76Hs3o_Y/s320/bbq.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">A career in McDonald's awaits...</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The invitees were the good people at <a href="http://www.irishcraftbrewer.com/">Irish Craft Brewer</a> (soon to be <a href="http://www.beoir.org/">Beoir</a>), a group that to whom beer is anything but small beer. Unless it is literal small beer, and then they'll undoubtedly be able to tell you the very definition of small beer. In short, they are the folks that know their beer. Anyway, we'd put up <a href="http://www.irishcraftbrewer.com/Community/viewtopic.php?t=4892&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0">an open invite on the ICB website</a> and organised a bus from Dublin to bring everyone in. So we were heartened to see that when the day rolled round that there was a healthy list of people interested in coming along. It was also nice that the rain stayed away, no means a certainty in mid-summer in Ireland, I was working off the theory that Irish people using barbecues angers the rain gods and they seek retribution upon us with a damp sodden summer for affronting them. Hence I disguised our barbecue as a tumble-dryer until the last possible moment, and it seems to have worked and the sun shone.<br />
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Interspersed between the ICB crowd, we snuck in sneakily a few members of The Mill Trouble Brewing Appreciation Society, to give them their full makey-uppy title. Who get their moniker by manfully keeping the craft beer tradition alive in <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000879614787&ref=ts">The Red Windmill</a> (i.e. our drinkin' buddies). Obviously they're not to be trusted with the serious business of brewery tours, by breaking out a game of footie in the field nearby, instead of picking our brains about brewery operations and such. Most uncouth behaviour.<br />
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As to the day itself, our idea was that if we opened the brewery bar for people to help themselves (a Trouble Brewing version of the gimmicky pour-your-own-pint tables), filled the barbecue with burgers and hot-dogs then most likely a good day would be had by all. The barbecue however wasn't self-service, and I spent the first half of the day being manly and cooking meat outdoors, but in a safe controlled environment as nature intended. Though much of the credit must go to Kathryn and Mairead who pretty much did all the real work of preparing the non-meaty goodness part of the spread. Though I think Homer Simpson put it best when, through the medium of song, he opined "you don't win friends with salad..." Sorry ladies.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizS3V6gGS4Lz2qmssNzinMtH-uqWUM02VVLG__f2OjYEeycntrZX7wqSZryudnVLzS_p_IKq0wzTkAcgTTapIJ0RzEnX3aiy24ZWu4VMni5ar7C7FwEtYXvry1XsR_MhaUq2i491CHjA/s1600/cat.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizS3V6gGS4Lz2qmssNzinMtH-uqWUM02VVLG__f2OjYEeycntrZX7wqSZryudnVLzS_p_IKq0wzTkAcgTTapIJ0RzEnX3aiy24ZWu4VMni5ar7C7FwEtYXvry1XsR_MhaUq2i491CHjA/s320/cat.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The cute furry kitten, the only one not on the beer</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">After the wonderful, delicious and beautifully cooked food was eaten, the crowd reassembled at the brewery to top-up their pint glasses and have a look around. There was also the opportunity to fuss over another attendee that was not officially invited, a cute furry kitten that had decided that it wanted in on this brewery tour business. It was about this time that Thom and Stephen, mainly to distract from the show-stealing cute furry kitten, mounted the platform to thank everyone for coming and announce that Trouble Brewing would shortly hold a competition on ICB whereby people could submit their own beer and the best would be brewed as a once off for the round of festivals next summer. Thom also gave a overview of the brewery set-up, but I think in his heart he knew already that it was a little redundant, as I suspect he knew all in attendance were already well up to speed with their brewery knowledge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So after a few more drinks, a few photo opportunities and some time for a chat, the bus arrived back for pick-up, we emptied the brewery and filled the bus and headed back to <a href="http://www.lmulligangrocer.com/">L. Mulligan</a> to relax with a few more beers. We left Thom behind to take care of mundane brewery duties in preparation for brewing the following day and Mairead to take care of the cute furry kitten that she had only moments earlier adopted.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDB0QpMDdE-06W-Yn2XEUi8QREURgjWxYxvheyvw8UV8sT4NiJYH5ihNik01KXOCujzDCnBbs_af0em_qWAWmGp2yirRaaVv2Yr4Zqlm2uO4zc5EEqegZmVSyAtAFG17d-TNCgJDfmy5U/s1600/group.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDB0QpMDdE-06W-Yn2XEUi8QREURgjWxYxvheyvw8UV8sT4NiJYH5ihNik01KXOCujzDCnBbs_af0em_qWAWmGp2yirRaaVv2Yr4Zqlm2uO4zc5EEqegZmVSyAtAFG17d-TNCgJDfmy5U/s320/group.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The obligatory team photo, from L to R we have...</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So until next time, assuming I can indeed fight my way out of a human-size wet paper bag, which after the experience of recent events, is no way certain.</span>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-53945850271536878802010-06-06T12:00:00.000+01:002010-06-06T12:11:46.306+01:00Something for the (Longest) Weekend...<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAyT6BBHDjGLcanZjLNraw5albE65QQMI8Jv8bwcMD-aIEWnkuBAbkV6jHQi2INSC835eX-uERBLdBbEvln34cb2FHJGqD2rKeIxiM10pb7akVRI4B9r9XpsoGtx9J0e3Cb93hXQhVrMk/s1600/Trouble+Cork+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAyT6BBHDjGLcanZjLNraw5albE65QQMI8Jv8bwcMD-aIEWnkuBAbkV6jHQi2INSC835eX-uERBLdBbEvln34cb2FHJGqD2rKeIxiM10pb7akVRI4B9r9XpsoGtx9J0e3Cb93hXQhVrMk/s320/Trouble+Cork+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">I've always been a big fan of the Good Friday drinks ban, it has many advantages, not least of which is the slightly counter-intentional effect of promoting the day as one of the most important drinking days of the year. There's no other day that you can combine having a few beers at home with a very civil civil rebellion. I always make it a point to make sure that Good Friday stands for "Good Number of Good Beers Friday" in my house. So this year I was expecting that having a brewery full of beer that I might be able to avoid the pre-prohibition enactment in every off-licence in the country on Maundy Thursday. It didn't quite work out as I'd expected. Rather counter-intentionally having a brewery full of beer meant that it proved to be the soberest Good Friday I can remember, that is, it was a Good Friday I can remember. In the end I had one token pint of beer, before a very early night, the reason for this was the day was spent preparing for the Franciscan Well Easterfest in Cork.<br />
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We'd signed up to be at the Easterfest a few weeks earlier, despite the fact that we still didn't have a functioning brewery, though we were nearing completion. We figured that it was just about possible that if the beer gods smiled upon us (i.e. worked our arses off) that the first batch would be ready just in time. So we'd presented ourselves with a deadline, and as every college student knows, there's nothing like a fast approaching deadline to get you motivated. So we got the brewery completed, roughly on time, got it cleaned up, did our initial test, and completed our first brew day, all with enough time to let the beer ferment and condition. Though we barely had time for a hearty round of "hurrahs" and "jolly good show chaps", (we'd chosen "international-pretend-to-be-upper-class-English-day" for our brewing), before having to sort out all the other festival related paraphernalia needed. So while the beer fermented, which is fortunately a labour diffuse process as we also had to get a bar built and source the bar taps and fittings. Not to mention ordering a big orange banner and lurid orange t-shirts.<br />
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All of which brought us to Good Friday, the day that we had precisely timed the beer conditioning to end, and one day before the festival started. This meant that the pre-festival rush to get the kegs cleaned and filled, and the van loaded and driven to Cork was on. Not overlooked was the fact that we had our very first taste of the finished beer ourselves, for if that went badly we'd be making a very forlorn and apologetic call to the Franciscan Well and probably going home to hide in the wardrobe for the weekend instead. But fortunately we didn't have to deal with this eventuality and we were off to Cork to set-up stall. All of which meant that by the end of Good Friday bed beckoned rather than the now traditional session.<br />
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So by the time Saturday rolled 'round we were ready for our first taste of beer festival life on the other side of the bar, but only after we'd unloaded the van, set-up our bar, made sure the beer was pouring properly and got the little light in the bar tap to illuminate. And naturally we also had to introduce ourselves to the other breweries who were in attendance and who were all very welcoming especially since we were the new kids on the block, in the non rubbish-80s-boy-band sense. It wasn't long after that the doors were opened on the festival and we sold our first ever pint of beer, which we'd named "Ór" from the Irish for gold, it being after all, a golden ale. The Franciscan Well wasn't long about filling up either, so throughout the day there was a steady stream of customers curious about our new beer, with plenty of questions that we were happy to answer. Not forgetting to mention plenty of pints being poured and drunk too. Though there was a good deal of halves being served as well, clearly with so many beers to taste at the festival a lot of people were having a half of each, obviously overlooking the fact that we'd created a session beer.<br />
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The Sunday was more-a-less a carbon copy of the previous day, with the work behind the bar consisting of serving thirsty beer drinkers, making sure the beer was pouring correctly and lugging about kegs of beer as they emptied and needed to be replenished. And full kegs are heavy, heavy things, so after all our efforts to get the beer into them in the first place, I was more than happy to see them empty again so soon. Mainly because it meant that people had been happily drinking "Ór", but also because empty kegs are a lot easier to lug about.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And even though our drive home following day was before the opening of the new motorway and we got stuck in Abbeyleix as expected, it was a very satisfying weekend where we got to meet loads of beer enthusiasts and have a few sneaky halves of not only our own beer, but some of the other breweries beers too.</span></span>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-20612184858513653322010-04-15T14:50:00.004+01:002010-04-29T15:22:37.358+01:00So that's not why it's called a Grain Bed?<div style="text-align: right;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUvk9_OS9KYOebPY-3l2p4ieP2j2mLR10xcREJ0HZloWLB2Q6QIN0lbBF3MkHUAAuDzq1Bxt_M_QlodTsECW45QK1Wdp4GihDLmk-Xcgp9kUqCuQUgAquTI7VZod0uxSPk0OhIhSatR6M/s1600/DSC04104.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUvk9_OS9KYOebPY-3l2p4ieP2j2mLR10xcREJ0HZloWLB2Q6QIN0lbBF3MkHUAAuDzq1Bxt_M_QlodTsECW45QK1Wdp4GihDLmk-Xcgp9kUqCuQUgAquTI7VZod0uxSPk0OhIhSatR6M/s320/DSC04104.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When they're making "Trouble Brewing: The Movie", probably about this time next year, there'll be a moment when the last of the skilled tradesmen leave the scene and the morning sun glints off a pristine and shiny brew kettle and the there's a moment of silent reflection, before one of the three main protagonists who remain on the scene, turns to the others and says something cheesy and Hollywood like "...so let's see what this brewery can do", before there being high fives all round. Which is a perfect example of why Hollywood movies are better than real life. The reality was of course that when the moment came when we were ready to start our first brew, we were all too busy with a myriad of other things to even notice the absence of a stirring John Williams soundtrack. (The main <a href="http://www.troublebrewing.ie/">Trouble Brewing</a> site has our <a href="http://www.troublebrewing.ie/index.php?page=contact-us">contact details</a> for any of the major movie studios who are almost certainly looking to pay us a big pile of money for the exclusive film rights, and as you can see, I'm happy to be involved and to hopefully get a credit as script editor.) </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The brewing machinery hadn't even time for a proper polish either to give it that Hollywood gleam, but since making beer was the aim and not hosting a presidential reception, though which I'm sure is something that is only a matter of time too, we didn't concern ourselves with it. We'd previously concerned ourselves with the making the inside of the equipment very clean indeed, as is only proper if our aim of brewing pristine beer was to be achieved. Anyway to be brief as I can, (which isn't something comes easy to me, it'd be akin to a bear riding a unicycle, it can be done but it doesn't come naturally), The brewing process goes something like this: grain and hot water into the mash tun, leave for a bit, add more hot water and send over to the kettle, bring to the boil for an hour, and add hops at various intervals, finish boil, chill and send into the fermenter and add yeast. And though I think my attempt at being brief and non-technical went well, it did serve to detract horrendously from bringing the skill of the brewer into the equation, as there are innumerable parameters that can make all the difference between the bland and the delicious. Not least of which are the choosing the right grains and hops, something that I think, in my admittedly biased opinion, that we managed to achieve.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Trb2-YeFBoe24votgbWQXESUXXNt_JCurBKreojm_9RJSiFz-5KpJXQY0wd1xiyftbUxTF0tD-q_6GHvpiZAfTAP-4szk6j1y0lcE_s01KjT2i-suBv__KBc7RGyVspMzYYS9L7fSTA/s1600/DSC04105.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Trb2-YeFBoe24votgbWQXESUXXNt_JCurBKreojm_9RJSiFz-5KpJXQY0wd1xiyftbUxTF0tD-q_6GHvpiZAfTAP-4szk6j1y0lcE_s01KjT2i-suBv__KBc7RGyVspMzYYS9L7fSTA/s320/DSC04105.JPG" /></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">What I also think my brief description of brewing misrepresented, was that it made the brewing process seems fairly straight-forward, however on brew-day number one, it was quite the opposite. We learned that heating a 2 meter high tank of water takes a long time, and that if your brewery has a pumping system that was seemingly designed by Erno Rubik you have to be paying a lot of attention to make the water go where you want. Though we managed by dinner time to have kettle boiling away, and not just to make tea, though we did this also, though not using the brewing kettle for the tea making, that'd be a touch of unwarranted overkill. After the boil was done and we had another go on Erno's crazy pipe-work we had cold water pumping through the heat exchanger and were ready to cool the contents of the brewing kettle that was just coming off the boil. Alas, the time taken in heating the water earlier was nothing in comparison to the time taken to cool the boiling wort at the other end of the process. So about 18 hours later, or so it seemed, and after reminding ourselves about once every two minutes to have plenty of cold water for the next batch, the beer was cooled and in the fermenter, with the yeast added and some of us contemplating sleeping on bags of used grain that we'd cleaned out of the mash tun rather than face the long and tired drive home.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Despite the long first day I'm already looking forward to the next day's brewing, I'd imagine it'll be a much improved process when we apply everything we've learned from brew day one, in fact I've already ordered the John Williams tape in anticipation...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">p.s. We're also <a href="http://twitter.com/trouble_brewing">twittering, or tweeting</a> or whatever the hell it's called. I expect the next missive on that latest medium will be to announce the existence of this missive on this medium, no doubt creating some kind of feedback loop that'll probably destroy the Internet.</span></span>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-81303053052088761142010-02-28T20:37:00.001+00:002010-03-01T09:24:07.241+00:00It wasn’t acceptable in the 80s.<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">There's been a lot of action at Trouble headquarters of late, we're in the "prologue to brewing" stage, as I've taken to calling it, whereby we ask skilled craftsmen to "make stuff work" and they set about doing just that. There's the man who'll be fitting the steam generating boiler, which we've taken to calling a steamer; by this I mean the actual machine, rather than the man himself for that would be rude; to distinguish it from the kettle which we've been calling the boiler. Which is an unfortunate chain of events to have started off, as there's the potential to end up with a domino effect where everything gets renamed and eventually the conditioning tanks end up being called Joan Collins, Clive Sinclair or something equally unhelpful.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">We've also been visited by our electrician who dances the merry dance of the currents, watts and amps of his trade and who, in my imagination at least, holds up cables in the style of cartoon hero He-man and shouts "I have the power!" before turning on mains switches and so forth. He's also been in close association with the man who made the transformer, who we've been referring to as Optimus, which nicely continues the cartoon theme. Though I'd say that joke is done to death in the world of transformer construction, in a similar way that when you tell someone that you're planning on opening a brewery, that everyone jokingly asks if there's a vacancy for a chief taster. I believe it was exactly this scenario that led big quiffed songsmith Morrissey to write "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore". I know it doesn't mention brewing or beer in any way in the lyrics, but if you look at the subtext it becomes clear that's what he was on about. But I digress... </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6eUrN-zoydBfnMICd9pC44UdiVyaBcCoBtzwMMmHBa7Y30eelbDsbdcWuVtbLPTLc9FOd6onK-4FPr6CZUUix2e6onnMWqsGSkMW5C5P85xj5kd_Svd83iWaXIKEyWHY2nJaFgmfLsI/s1600-h/Kegs.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6eUrN-zoydBfnMICd9pC44UdiVyaBcCoBtzwMMmHBa7Y30eelbDsbdcWuVtbLPTLc9FOd6onK-4FPr6CZUUix2e6onnMWqsGSkMW5C5P85xj5kd_Svd83iWaXIKEyWHY2nJaFgmfLsI/s200/Kegs.JPG" width="174" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">We've also taken delivery of some kegs, which apart from the fact that they are empty, seem perfect. This however has given us a slight headache as regards space in the brewery, it means that unoccupied space is at a premium. I would've liked to do a definitive test to see if I could legitimately use the old cliché about the swinging of a cat, but rather unhelpfully Thom has refused to lend me his cat Oscar for the task, citing animal cruelty as an excuse. Probably just as well though, since I suspect that if the test was to prove the remaining space was cliché verifying, I'd be complaining about having to clean up splattered cat brain.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hopefully that satiates the appetite for Trouble Brewing related news for now, and we'll have more to report soon...</span></div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-1875931013520386242009-12-26T15:17:00.001+00:002009-12-26T15:37:17.523+00:00Transformers: Not just robots eating pies...<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"Will you update the blog for Jaysus sake, O Connor" has been the cry around Trouble Brewing headquarters for the last few weeks, and true to my procrastinating nature I put it off even after the threats of physical violence seemed earnest. This, I now admit, was a mistake. But now that I have some time on my hands due to being hospitalised for some totally and completely unrelated matter, and also not wanting Mr. Baseball Bat to be introduced to the second of the knee-cap twins too, I independently decided it was time to get cracking on the job...</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Last time round there was some talk that we'd be booking a cheap €1 Ryanair flight (excluding optional charges) so we could take advantage of the abundant range of electrical transformers in the fine shopping facilities of Dublin Airport for the purposes of getting our boiler up and running. Alas, after some thorough investigation by a crack team of electrical experts we found out that it wasn't quite as straightforward as all that. Apparently those one's in the airport are good for the like of mobile phones, laptops and other such like gadgets of the modern age. Boilers, such as are used in the brewing process, apparently need their transformers to be bigger and more powerful. Being more than a touch naive about anything more sophisticated than wiring a plug, I did suggest that perhaps that 400 or so standard airport style transformers linked together might be an ideal solution, after the guffaws from the more knowledgeable people died down, we set about sourcing the genuine article.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Which is where we find ourselves now, trying to get our head around the amps, watts and frequencies of electrical supply and the making sure we get them right. And I thought the chemistry was going to be the big issue with commercial brewing and not the physics. Anyway we push on and continue to work away on getting the issue resolved, while dealing with the possibility that we might have tempted fate with our company name...</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So having given lie to the old adage that no news is good news, we're hoping that if you're offering a toast this St. Stephen's Day, that the toast is offered to the patron saint of electrical conversion, whoever that might be, that they send good tidings our way. Though if you want to be particularly helpful, toast to the relevant powers of such matters that they sanction the initial creation of the overly specific title of "patron saint of electrical conversion" first.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Anyway until next time...</span></span>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-30952539220584650912009-10-19T14:54:00.001+01:002009-10-19T14:58:05.414+01:00Some Assembly May Be Required<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxz6PBN34u5HBf5kBvp2saeKql9muEiECDFaQ0ocZMlbUL9l0YuHFnWTmOMQR4W1Xeyq3G8ZYnPx_wKyGw9KQc1nW7MbiJ4PenvJGBGvSLmt6Xjhk1ldwmdiVoKVWUazv_TwNVoVHSm2c/s1600-h/There.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxz6PBN34u5HBf5kBvp2saeKql9muEiECDFaQ0ocZMlbUL9l0YuHFnWTmOMQR4W1Xeyq3G8ZYnPx_wKyGw9KQc1nW7MbiJ4PenvJGBGvSLmt6Xjhk1ldwmdiVoKVWUazv_TwNVoVHSm2c/s320/There.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So another lesson has been learned from the discipline of brewery formation that can be transferred to stuff that might reasonably happen in the comforts of routine domesticity. The lesson being, that if you ever venture into the world of flat-pack furniture, then you only find the true value of the seemingly bizarre set of instructions, asking for cowl 4B to be inserted into slot F and so forth, in their absence. We learned this when we set about connecting the shiny brewing tanks by means of the various shiny hoses and clips, but alas there was no multi-lingual step-by-step guide sellotaped to the packaging. But as fortune favours those with the camera phones, as the updated version of that old phrase goes, we did have the advantage of the various pictures that had been taken of the brewery when it was a still an American resident. These were sprung from the bench as substitute for the instruction manual, and as fortune favours those with the foresight to print out in glorious technicolour the previously fortunately taken camera phone pictures, as that ultra-recently updated and peculiarly related to our particular situation, phrase goes.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Once again Bill was playing the part of our lovely assistant, which was a very happy occurrence as he is a man in possession of a good deal of practical knowledge and a variety of spanners and wrenches. Both of which were to be needed in abundance. So after quick reshuffle of the layout of the equipment, to better reflect the practicalities of the brewing process, we set to work. The first step, as anyone who's ever ventured into the world of extreme jigsawing well knows, is to lay out all the pieces and then start to see where they fit. Being ever the purists, we started working the fittings to mirror the beer production line. At each stage using the "so will this result in anyone sloshing about up to their ankles in beer?" rule of thumb to judge the accuracy of the component placement.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The brewing nomenclature was also out in full force, as there were numerous discussions as to whether "that twisty yoke fits onto the sticky-out bit, or do we need a bendy thing for the connection". The ins and outs of the mash tun seemed straight-forward, the ins and outs of the kettle and wort chiller, not quite so easy, being that there were many ins and many outs; much like cricket. We also had to rig up the pump that would be driving all this into the mix. Which was when we discovered a second pump, and hence the reason for the relative ease of the Mash Tun assembly became apparent. So with a bit more re-jigging the Mash Tun pump was hooked up too and hopefully a initial brewday embarrassment avoided.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Ps8XeHuXLewS2TxjD1fCghSRQ5YRaNNKIpFOZP0f1JwDi65AkvzJ_LtWJH_JzHlrIZwLgNcTjFDWpaR51kOpUW9hfUBtaoUPu99qjDftuCE-57l_IxLRmIZE2VOBTedzPh2ZxSFuw4M/s1600-h/Here.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Ps8XeHuXLewS2TxjD1fCghSRQ5YRaNNKIpFOZP0f1JwDi65AkvzJ_LtWJH_JzHlrIZwLgNcTjFDWpaR51kOpUW9hfUBtaoUPu99qjDftuCE-57l_IxLRmIZE2VOBTedzPh2ZxSFuw4M/s320/Here.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: x-small;">The mini-triumph of having all the brewhouse components in place was tempered by the numerous pipes and fittings that we hadn't found a spot for. So suppressing the urge to dismiss these as "spares", and thus return to our previous self-satisfied sense of minor achievement, we figured them out as Cleaning-In-Place and overflow pipes and appropriate locations were found for these too. And thus our self-congratulations were fit to continue, personally I may have gone to far with this though, as when we took a quick spin to the local shops for tea and crumpet, (to continue the cricket theme), we found ourselves surrounded by numerous cars waving flags and beeping loudly. The lead car was even waving a trophy, so naturally I assumed the congregated masses were even more enthusiastic than ourselves about our successful assembly job just completed, which brought on some small worry, as I hadn't even prepared a speech. Or in fact even 'phoned ahead to say that we'd just finished; how had they all known? However, as some of the more realistic members of our crew pointed out, the celebrations were in fact for a cup winning team coming from the neighbouring GAA ground. Which I suppose in retrospect makes more sense...</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anyway we left the brewhouse that night, not with a trophy under our arm, but happy that one more step on our brewing journey has been taken.</span><br />
</div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-82268128464898507792009-10-06T10:50:00.001+01:002009-10-06T12:00:59.346+01:00Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is a Forklift Truck.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For the last few weeks we've been like kids waiting for Christmas morning, knowing that big and shiny brewing equipment was traversing the ocean ready to be delivered to our rather bare looking unit. Though it's probably just as well for actual kids that one of Santa's less publicised magical powers include the ability to by-pass customs or there'd be rather a lot of upset children on Christmas morning being wholly unimpressed by assurances that, "As soon as the customs have their paperwork in order, your presents will be on their way". But being more stoical than the average present-hungry child we were able to bear a couple of days delay, well, stoically.</span></span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDagRyM45sLOtODda485vQkfu8PfgAAsiFyks11cEQF6t33SY3EWmHqUw8CfDm450iehl6IbZSn-zGe3FMbO1NKb2z5BU-zecJck-I0yU82CZ7Vv7Q3qdba3AEv17Driocxe-4Utfwcck/s1600-h/Photo0095.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDagRyM45sLOtODda485vQkfu8PfgAAsiFyks11cEQF6t33SY3EWmHqUw8CfDm450iehl6IbZSn-zGe3FMbO1NKb2z5BU-zecJck-I0yU82CZ7Vv7Q3qdba3AEv17Driocxe-4Utfwcck/s320/Photo0095.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the end, the stuff did arrive only few days overdue, on a chilly Monday night and the assembled crew set to work unloading it from the two large containers that arrived on our doorstep. (Or arrived on our slightly inclined ramp leading to the shutter, for accuracy fans.) Having never seen the brewery in-situ when it resided in America, I was keen to get my first glimpse of it in the flesh. My first impressions were, yes this is definitely a brewery, and secondly how are we going to move this definite brewery's many heavy looking components?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We'd roped Bill and Ger into service for the night to help with "Operation Unload Brewery" by saying that we wouldn't like them any more if they didn't help. And luckily enough that bit of emotional blackmail worked as the unloading proved to be a job for the full five-a-side team. We'd also roped into service, a sturdy looking pallet truck, who's services we'd secured by paying the appropriate fee to a company who hires out such items. We'd also picked up some ropes, that didn't need to be roped into anything, it being after all, the essence of their existence.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So after the few mandatory quips about how this might be "Trouble", we got to work. As the equipment had been previously-loved, as the salesman patter goes, we knew that we might see the residue of the brewery's previous life. We got a first-hand insight into what had been last brewed, as when we were dragging one of of the conditioning tanks it seemed particularly heavy, and speculated that the cause might just be an unsolicited beer delivery. So just to be sure, we popped the valve at the bottom and out poured what looked like what was once a dark ale. We emptied three or four tanks in this way and thus about 800 litres of very stale beer went running across the yard and down the drain. Normally the sight of that much beer being wasted would've been a source of anguish, we were just relieved that it made our lifting job that much easier.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgdD62gjY1p6pEoc0eG3y3Dltlkn-cWtsmbuce36qrPOZVGL9-n6nq8NS_b6kDTM5VSRyE4dDBiTzHVIEfyHXPN8td0nqOeNwno7f_jmjrR0tYC-UmyOgmdSZR1YYQ9RV5Ae3zBMI0AQ/s1600-h/Photo0094.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgdD62gjY1p6pEoc0eG3y3Dltlkn-cWtsmbuce36qrPOZVGL9-n6nq8NS_b6kDTM5VSRyE4dDBiTzHVIEfyHXPN8td0nqOeNwno7f_jmjrR0tYC-UmyOgmdSZR1YYQ9RV5Ae3zBMI0AQ/s320/Photo0094.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The basic process, which I can relate from our full three hours of brewery moving experience, is: drop tank on it's side, gingerly lower it onto the ground and then on to a pallet again and hence into the unit. A process we repeated a considerable number of times in the course of the next three hours, the equipment being more plentiful and a lot heavier than I'd originally imagined. Next time I'm going to borrow a forklift truck and use that for moving stuff. I now have an insight into why they're popular with people in the pallet moving game.</span></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Anyway at the end of a hard days work, that's one more hurdle cleared and we're one step closer to producing that first pint.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The next adventure will be converting Irish juice (as electricity is know in electrician's vernacular) in to American juice, to make the equipment work. Apparently it's not quite as straight-forward as buying one of those transformer plugs that are on sale in the airport...</span></span><br />
</div>Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2711231208118280003.post-31742358814097588232009-09-18T10:52:00.005+01:002009-09-29T19:27:30.810+01:00Work in progress<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_cZEDwoNgM2U/SrNPWMxj47I/AAAAAAAAHcM/3Opd8YDIfdw/s1600/IMG00124-20090916-1906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_cZEDwoNgM2U/SrNPWMxj47I/AAAAAAAAHcM/3Opd8YDIfdw/s320/IMG00124-20090916-1906.jpg" /></a><br />
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It's not much to look at, but this dusty little unit will shortly be the home of Ireland's newest micro brewery. It needs a bit of a scrub and a lick of paint but everything will be in order for the arrival of our 10 US barrels (1175) litres) brew house next month. How long after that before you can try the tasty beer we will produce, I hear you ask? It's hard to say, financial pressure behoves us to get on it quick, but the beer itself won't be rushed. Quality beer takes time to mature and we won't be skipping any of the steps.<br />
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This project is two years in the planning. It took us time to get all the essential parts together, as well as deal with time wasting civil servants who held us up for months on the promise of a few quid towards our capital budget, and then refused to back us. But such is life in business and I doubt very much it will be the only time we deal with such unhelpful people.<br />
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We're still shuffling the vast amount of paperwork that is required to open a brewery in Ireland, but things are steadily coming together, including the equipment itself which will shortly set sail from Canada and roll the waves of the Atlantic for some two weeks before stopping off briefly in Liverpool, and then zigzagging back across the Irish Sea to Dublin.<br />
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We hope you'll come along with us on our journey to the realisation of our dream to produce quality, distinctive and flavourful beer for the people of Ireland initially, and the rest of the world in the future - it wouldn't be fair to keep it all to ourselves, now would it?<br />
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Stay tuned for future developments and that all important launch date in the coming months.Trouble Brewinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10112865491250835472noreply@blogger.com4