#ISBF9 : Brewday 9 Pt 1 - Pictish
John & Caz - The page is yours…
…5.15. AM. Most would agree, that’s way too early an alarm call.
The things we do for beer, for ISBF and ultimately for charity….
And as we rise at that ungodly hour, we are grateful that our host had taken pity on us part time brewers and agreed to delay the mash in for today’s brew!
So shortly before 6am, Cazoline and I hit the M60 for the half hour drive to The Dale – the birthplace of the Co-op and the home, for the last 24 years, of ISBF stalwarts Pictish Brewing Company. There’s a reason Pictish have been on the bar at every edition of ISBF – and that’s because our glorious leader Jim is quite the fan of the undisputed masters of the single hop pale ale. However, every year as ISBF approaches, Jim has to concede that he isn’t anywhere close to being the top Pictish fanatic on the extended ISBF team – that, possibly dubious, honour goes to their no. 1 fangirl Caz. So today I’m chauffeuring Caz to her fifth Pictish collaboration brew (split between brews for ISBF, MBCF and her own 50th birthday brew) – told you she was a fangirl.
When we arrive at the brewery at 6.30am, we find owner, head brewer and chief dogsbody Paul just finishing racking the last of cask a brew of his flagship core beer Alchemist Ale. He’d agreed to a late mash in but this workaholic isn’t going to use that as an excuse for a lie in himself – we learn Paul’s been at the brewery almost two hours! As well as racking and sealing 27 casks, he’s already weighed out the grain bill for today’s brew which is bagged up and leaning against the mash-tun ready for the off. Assistant brewer and drayman Martin is also up before the dawn and has already loaded the van for today’s run out to the pubs of the Peak District.
As Martin hits the road just before 7am, the pumps go on to start filling the mash tun and the first bag of pale malt goes in. A quick check of social media tells us we are way ahead of today’s two other ISBF brew days – as we take the obligatory photos of the mash, our fellow part-time brewers are sending pictures of train stations and bus stops as they begin their journeys to their respective hosts. Paul pours in a second bag of pale malt, Caz follows with a third. More pale and five kilos of malted wheat follows. Aromas start filling the air. But what’s in this bucket? It isn’t pale – it’s dark – even darker than the sky outside at this early hour. What is the world coming to - the pale ale pantheon isn’t sending a signature pale & hoppy ale to Hemsley House? Well at least it’s not going to be bright red either!
So the last addition into the mash tun is eight kilos of chocolate malt - there’s no turning back now – the recipe de jour is stout. A very special stout.
This fat Geordie is finally called to do some work and get all that grain mashed into the liquor. Except it’s been a while and he’s out of practice - so after a few minutes Paul jumps back in to do it properly! As the mash rest begins, Paul briefly talks us through some of the changes at the brewery since we were last here – new water purification kit, a new heat exchanger, some tweaks to the process – all in the pursuit of even better beer. However this being the domain of the non-stop brewing dynamo, the mash might be resting but we aren’t. There are casks need washing in preparation for tomorrow’s racking of Lancashire Best – the Pictish brewed house beer of Lancashire Hospitality’s pubs which include Rochdale’s The Flying Horse, The Baum & The Cemetery, The Red Lion in Whitworth & the Hare On The Hill in Littleborough.
As we approach the end of cask washing duties, we are joined by the last member of today’s brew team. Bless him, Jock’s had a tough journey to get here today – Middleton is over FIVE miles away. Still, he might be late but he gets straight onto a very important task indeed – making the tea! While he’s doing that, we miss the chance to get one of the classic brew day photos – the whirlwind & his fangirl don’t hang around to pose for Instagram– Paul & Caz have got the early addition hops in the copper while we debate who is having milk and sugar in their brew. With today’s brew being what it is, the hop bill is a fraction of what usually goes into Pictish’s regular hoppy ales – today we’ve just got a modest addition of Eagle for bittering which will be followed at the end of the boil by a small amount of Bramling Cross.
As the wort comes up to boil, we get on to the fun part of the day. Today’s brew might be based on Pictish’s regular winter seasonal special Samhain Stout – but that wouldn’t pass the basic entry criteria for pouring at ISBF as it’s been poured in Manchester before. So we had decided in advance that we were going to put a twist on it – or to be more accurate put a bit of heat into it. Chilli stout – perfect for November supping. Paul likes a pun so when he found a chilli called Carolina Reaper that part of the recipe was fixed – but what hadn’t been decided was how much chilli we needed and what other additions we would add to balance out the heat. And these reapers pack quite some heat. Two of the team were freaked enough by the pungent aroma from the jar but the other two more fool hardy souls braved a flake of the chopped up chillis. Wowser, you definitely wouldn’t want to eat a whole one!
We were going to have to be sparing on the fiery addition but we didn’t want to overpower the chilli flavour with something else. There was only one way to decide what was going to work and that was to get into cocktail making mode. With a generic dry stout as the base, we played mixologist with dried chillies, chocolate, vanilla and more. First attempt was way too subtle, - mix mix - second sample had chocolate distracting from the gentle heat - mix, mix, mix - more chilli gave too much lingering burn in the aftertaste… Did we get it right in the end? There’s only one place you’ll find out – Hemsley House on 7th November. Tickets here….(ed)
Mixology gave way to digging out the mash. Caz takes the lead here - she might be Norwegian but she ain’t a fan of cold mornings, even in her favourite brewery - so jumps at the chance to get up close to all that lovely warm grain. When it could have been his turn to dig, Jock is busy taking photographs (or so he said), so second shift falls to the chauffer before our host finishes off the job – if you want a job doing properly don’t let amateurs do it. A short while later, Caz will jump back in for digging the spent hops out of the copper – another job in the warm corner of the brewery. And then at 2pm, we find ourselves at the final stage of the brew. The Pictish house yeast is pitched and we are almost done for the day.
The cocktail bar is packed away, a final round of cleaning and those lovely clean casks from earlier are lined up ready for their early morning date with Lancashire Best. It’s been a fun day. We’ve gotten to know Paul pretty well over the years but we don’t get to see as much of him as we’d like so it’s been good to catch up. It’s not all been beer talk – we’ve also covered family, pubs, bikes (extreme adventures on the pedal kind being Paul’s other passion) and much more. We head off to decide between a late lunch from McDonalds, Subway or Greggs. Tomorrow Paul will do it all again – this time brewing his other core beer, the classic Brewer’s Gold. But tomorrow he won’t have visitors disturbing his routine so he’ll be mashed in by 5.30am and at home snoozing on the sofa in front of the one o’clock news.
