Brew Day with a difference@ Studio Kildare Saturday 15th June

[Brew_Diva]

Well thought I should report back about the Brew day yesterday in Brendan and Kellie's Studio in Kildare that was very informative interesting and good craic to boot.

The Kegerator is very impressive indeed with two separate areas that can be set at different temperatures, and I believe it can store up to six kegs- maybe Brendan would like to do a more detailed post about it with pictures also, as its apparently fairly low cost to do and not that complicated but very useful I would think especially for those of you who have multiple brews on the go in Kegs- for some of us this is a kind of dream at this stage, especially for me as am only getting started, but I have to say paying a visit to Brendan's studio makes one really see how great Kegs are and feel the need to upgrade  :
bottling is obviously the best solution it seems for transporting the beer, though a combination of the two would be my ideal, especially for enjoying  the homebrew at home

It was cool to see a kit beer being used and modified for the Spruce beer for which we firstly foraged 700g of Spruce from their spruce tree in the garden and this was boiled in the bag with dana hops... (there is a more detailed list of what was done for the Spruce beer on Kildare page)

Definitely gonna order a couple of Kits soon though I think for practise and volume 

The spruce tasted pretty interesting, with flavours somewhat locked in is the only way I can describe it. but when you chewed the leaves it really was an explosion of citrus flavour, which also came out in the boil, and am sure will show up in the flavour of the beer in some capacity looking forward to trying it 
We tasted an interesting Lime Wheat Beer of Brendan's also that opened up a whole conversation about last minute additions. Other examples included talk of a small piece of lemon lime or orange peel, added to each bottle, or lemon grass, or herbs, and these are all things I'd love to try but only after having yielded okay tastes first of all a couple of times at least using straightforward methods

Awesome to see so many different varieties of Hops growing in the Polytunnel and garden aswell, they seem to be doing very well and am inspired to get some going in the yard myself. We agreed that this was the real deal Homegrown homebrew!! Great stuff

We enjoyed a lovely lunch thanks to Kellie, and also participated in some beer tasting, including deliciously smoky Coffee Stout, 2 German Alt Beers, the Lime Wheat Beer I mentioned, a bizarre but delicious Cider that I believe was done with Lager Yeast...? as well as some from John and Gavin who appeared later. Forgive me I cannot remember each and every drink we tasted, will take notes next time,
but John's Blonde Ale went down well to finish off the day. Had to leave a bit early myself to get back for MFA degree show opening, but it was a really enjoyable day and great catching up with Brendan and Kellie in Kildare where I had witnessed my first all grain brew from start to finish.

I should say how handy it was for me to get to Studio. Hopped  on the M7 Express bus on Westmoreland st at 11.45 and was at Kildare Village in less than an hour, where Kellie picked me up, but Brendan n Kellie have the minibus aswell so it would be no problem if multiple people wanted to travel down with M7 express, very fast and only a fiver each way, well worth it for a visit to this Brewing Wonderland.