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Hazy Double IPA - New Adventures in Water Chemistry and Dissolved Oxygen

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There are some benefits to being a home brewer over a commercial brewer, and I think we often don't stop to appreciate them enough in our quest to replicate a professional brewery on a minuscule scale. For example, I can brew a pomegranate molasses dubbel and not have to worry about selling 5 hectolitres of it. Also, I can pour a terrible beer down the drain (which luckily hasn't happened yet) and not have to think how I will pay my staff, my rent or for my ingredients. Even better, there can be an international pandemic and instead of brewing less we can brew even more! However the main plus as I see it comes with hoppy beer. And that is how much control we have over its quality. If the stars ever align and a large suitcase of unmarked bills comes into my possession and I feel like investing them terribly by starting a brewery, my main concern would be hoppy beer. In this equally wonderful and terrifying daydream scenario, I think I wouldn't let my hoppy beer out of my s
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A trio of dubbels - first & last loves

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There was a time when my living room wasn't half taken up by bags of malt and slowly splooting carboys, when I didn't stop chatting in the pub to record a beer in an orange app or have a wine rack full of far too old, far too expensive sour beer. A simpler time, some would say. Certainly a cheaper time. Ignorance is perhaps bliss. I approached my twenties continuing my family tradition of drinking real  beer, which in our case almost exclusively real ale, a dull brown in colour with a whisper of carbonation and poured spluttering from a brass pump with a wooden handle. Beer, I was certain, should not be fizzy. That was for people who liked football, read The Sun and watched EastEnders. And even more certainly knew it shouldn't be sour... My eyes were opened (and my wallet lightened) to what beer could be while I was working in Southampton in a cavernous basement-dwelling Belgian-esque brasserie called Belgium & Blues . The experience changed my life. Belgium &am
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Imperial Stout v1 - Black Ops and roasty bitterness

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At time of writing the UK has been in lockdown for 65 days. It is oppressively warm weather and I'm hungover from drinking too much homebrew last night. What better time to start a homebrew blog? I've been thinking a lot about imperial stouts, as one does when its lager weather. My last attempt was interesting, fermented warm with an English strain that had the happy accident of producing a strawberry-like ester in the finished beer. This was somewhat ruined with my addition of extremely tannic oak barrel chips, which although had been soaking in Woodford Reserve for 6 months, still had enough astringency to fell a small horse. Alas. ti-tannic - my first attempt sunk But where to draw inspiration from? Looking at my UnTappd check-ins , there are very little surprises in my highest rated imperial stouts. Brooklyn's Black Ops, Founders CBS, Goose Island Bourbon County, Buxton Yellow Belly, Lervig 3 Bean Stout, countless Omnipollo, hordes of Mikkeller, a smattering
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