NHC Summer Beer Competition Winners’ Brewery Day Out

On the Sunday 20th October 2013, the National Homebrew Club held the finals of the Summer Beer competition at Farrington’s of Temple Bar.  The prize for the winner, sponsored by Barry Kavanagh (Farrington’s) in association with the Brú Brewery, was the opportunity to brew a beer with Paddy and Daire at their brewery in Trim, Co. Meath. A huge congrats to Cathal and Emma who were the winners on the day. They also won the Twisted Pepper competition later that evening and to crown their achievement of a perfect double they decided to brew one of those beers for their brewday prize.

So here is Cathal and Emma’s own account from that brewday.

Rascal’s Ginger Porter Brewday @ Brú Brewery 10/11/13

An early but easy start at 6:30 am of a Sunday morning.  As we hit the countryside temperatures dropped from 4°C to -2°C, freezing! Beautiful morning though. We had prepared nearly 1 kg of ginger. This was peeled and blended the night before in surprisingly quick time. We arrived at the brewery before 8 am, same time as Daire. He had the grains weighed out and the HLT up to temperature from the night before so we could hit the ground running. First thing was to transfer 100L of hot water into the Mash Tun to heat it up. Next job was to mill the grain, 190 kg crushed and pumped to the Mash Tun in no time! Grains included Pale Malt, Chocolate Malt, Roasted Barley and some Flaked Oats from the local farmer. In Brú’s system the crushed grain and the hot liquor are mixed on route to the mash tun, minimal stirring required, but Cathal still had to have a go. A good gang of the NHC made it down to the brewery throughout the morning for a chilly days brewing. Finally someone had the time to take our photo as we started transferring the wort to the kettle. During the sparge it was time to get the hops ready, strange weighing out nearly 2kg of hops compared to the normal 50g!

Lucky we had Brendan keeping a close eye on us !

The hops need a little encouragement getting through the shoot with Daire’s patented poking device. As it was such a cold morning Cathal was more than happy to jump into the mash tun and get warm again. The quality inspection team were willing to offer a hand.

With 10 minutes to go in the boil the last of the hops and our not so secret ingredient, ginger, were added to the kettle. After cleaning and sanitising the line and fermenter the final product was cooled and transferred. A nice bucket of yeast was added and the fermenter was closed up.

Lastly, it was time for a few we made earlier!

A brilliant day was had out in Brú Brewery, a big thank you goes out to the lads, Paddy and Daire for hosting us and to Farrington’s for sponsoring the prize! There will be 14 kegs of Rascal’s Ginger Porter ready to drink in 2-3 weeks in Farringtons – Temple Bar, Laguna – IFSC, The Old Boro and The Forty Four – both in Swords. But if you can’t make it into any of the pubs to try our beer, here’s our homebrew recipe.

 

Pale Malt	4.2Kg	80.8%
Chocolate Malt	0.3Kg	5.8%
Roasted Barley	0.2Kg	3.8%
Flaked Oats	0.5Kg	9.6%
EKG	50g	24.3 IBU 60 mins
EKG	30g	8.8 IBU 20 mins
Ginger	25g	10 Mins