prodigal2
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Evening all, long time no post.... work has a habit of getting in the way.
Well seeing as I am still in the UK, I have been staying with the inlaws down in darkest somerset, and the next town along is Wiveliscombe, which is home to Exmoor and Cotleigh breweries. Cotleigh in my humble opinion makes some of the most balanced and interesting beers in the UK, perhaps Cottage brewing is on a par. So under that premise I decided to pootle on down to brewery and buy a mini pin(18 pints). I got chatting to the owner about the malts they use(more on that latter), and before I knew it I was having a impromptu tour which I got quite a few interesting facts from. Sadly there are no photos, as this was an off the cuff visit.
What started the tour was the question whos crystal do they use? As I find that many of their beers have the faint taste of chocolate malt in them(which to me is a BIG plus), even the pales. Well the answer the ensued was that their chocolate malt comes from tuckers and their crystal and pale comes from Norfolk(any one know which maltsters this could be?), this is because they don't get the same extraction from the tuckers pale malt. i was then ushered into the malt and hops room which if I'm honest smelt like heaven, the smell of goldings just hung in the air, mmmmm. And I was given a taste of both the chocolate and crystal malt. I must be honest these where without doubt the best tasting malt I have ever crunched, and all of a sudden I understood where that nutty/coffee type flavour was coming from... the crystal!! And in the darker ales the Chocolate offers a more burnt and bitter flavour to the crystal backbone. Ok so the next question I asked was what temprature do they mash at and for what length of time... it depends on the recipe was the answer. Next we moved onto the boiler and they have a very simple hop regime copper hops in at beginning of boil(between 5 and 7 lbs to a 33 barrel batch) and then aroma hops at flame out( although some, it transpires do go in a 80C, recipe dependent again). I should point out that all FV's HLTs and Mash tun are for 33 barrels a batch, and the total output is 3 million gallons a year. They also only use whole leaf hops, and unless it is a festival special, don't dry hop their casks.!!
Any how, we move onto the fermenters. Cotleigh have their own house strain which is as old as the company(30 years this year). This is top harvested and acid washed off every batch. This stays in the FV around 5 days..... at..... between....... 24C and 26C recipe dependent, at which point I fell of my perch almost as it goes against everything I thought I knew about english ale. I mean these beers are sooooooo clean and balanced these temperatures seem wrong... but that is what I was informed... ANd there is no phenolic character to their beers, I do not know where the strain originates from, that I will have to ask on another visit. Now the other interesting thing with the FV's is that they are mounted inbetween the first and ground floors and gravity is used to fill the casks. Also all of the FV's where open, and they smelt fantastic, they had a couple of batches of Tawny on the go at the time. there where 4 FV's in total in the fermentation room.
Then the tour went on to the cask cleaning and filling room, which is under the FV room. And I was informed with a serious amount of pride that Cotleigh have NEVER had a bad batch and they only have 0.001% ullage, which in real ale circles is seriously low. I must admit it is the cleanest micro I have been too.
Then we moved onto the secondary fermentation room, which at its 15C seemed positively balmy today, where the casks stay for at least 7 days. I did learn also that cotleigh lay down casks for upto 6 years as specials, Which I would kill to have a taste of, well seeing as its their 30th this year I believe in wellington there will be a special festival(get there before the tickers is all I can say). ANd they have 3 special brews on too, some of which will be laid down for the future.
Not bad for 15minute tour. And they sorted out the minipin of Snowy Owl(not normally sold in mini pins), and I may have bough a few more bottles too of buzzard and others.
Well the lesson is learnt, open ya gob when you pop into the brewery, you just never know what useful bits of info you may learn. Also if you ever see a cotleigh beer give it a try, they are fantastic if you like well balanced british ale(they export to the states too, Virginia I believe). And the website is here:
http://www.cotleighbrewery.com/
they list the ingredients for each beer.
And yup you guessed it I am smitten(and the wife too) with their beers, and I hate to say it they are infinitely better than Exmoor ales!!
:
:
Well seeing as I am still in the UK, I have been staying with the inlaws down in darkest somerset, and the next town along is Wiveliscombe, which is home to Exmoor and Cotleigh breweries. Cotleigh in my humble opinion makes some of the most balanced and interesting beers in the UK, perhaps Cottage brewing is on a par. So under that premise I decided to pootle on down to brewery and buy a mini pin(18 pints). I got chatting to the owner about the malts they use(more on that latter), and before I knew it I was having a impromptu tour which I got quite a few interesting facts from. Sadly there are no photos, as this was an off the cuff visit.
What started the tour was the question whos crystal do they use? As I find that many of their beers have the faint taste of chocolate malt in them(which to me is a BIG plus), even the pales. Well the answer the ensued was that their chocolate malt comes from tuckers and their crystal and pale comes from Norfolk(any one know which maltsters this could be?), this is because they don't get the same extraction from the tuckers pale malt. i was then ushered into the malt and hops room which if I'm honest smelt like heaven, the smell of goldings just hung in the air, mmmmm. And I was given a taste of both the chocolate and crystal malt. I must be honest these where without doubt the best tasting malt I have ever crunched, and all of a sudden I understood where that nutty/coffee type flavour was coming from... the crystal!! And in the darker ales the Chocolate offers a more burnt and bitter flavour to the crystal backbone. Ok so the next question I asked was what temprature do they mash at and for what length of time... it depends on the recipe was the answer. Next we moved onto the boiler and they have a very simple hop regime copper hops in at beginning of boil(between 5 and 7 lbs to a 33 barrel batch) and then aroma hops at flame out( although some, it transpires do go in a 80C, recipe dependent again). I should point out that all FV's HLTs and Mash tun are for 33 barrels a batch, and the total output is 3 million gallons a year. They also only use whole leaf hops, and unless it is a festival special, don't dry hop their casks.!!
Any how, we move onto the fermenters. Cotleigh have their own house strain which is as old as the company(30 years this year). This is top harvested and acid washed off every batch. This stays in the FV around 5 days..... at..... between....... 24C and 26C recipe dependent, at which point I fell of my perch almost as it goes against everything I thought I knew about english ale. I mean these beers are sooooooo clean and balanced these temperatures seem wrong... but that is what I was informed... ANd there is no phenolic character to their beers, I do not know where the strain originates from, that I will have to ask on another visit. Now the other interesting thing with the FV's is that they are mounted inbetween the first and ground floors and gravity is used to fill the casks. Also all of the FV's where open, and they smelt fantastic, they had a couple of batches of Tawny on the go at the time. there where 4 FV's in total in the fermentation room.
Then the tour went on to the cask cleaning and filling room, which is under the FV room. And I was informed with a serious amount of pride that Cotleigh have NEVER had a bad batch and they only have 0.001% ullage, which in real ale circles is seriously low. I must admit it is the cleanest micro I have been too.
Then we moved onto the secondary fermentation room, which at its 15C seemed positively balmy today, where the casks stay for at least 7 days. I did learn also that cotleigh lay down casks for upto 6 years as specials, Which I would kill to have a taste of, well seeing as its their 30th this year I believe in wellington there will be a special festival(get there before the tickers is all I can say). ANd they have 3 special brews on too, some of which will be laid down for the future.
Not bad for 15minute tour. And they sorted out the minipin of Snowy Owl(not normally sold in mini pins), and I may have bough a few more bottles too of buzzard and others.
Well the lesson is learnt, open ya gob when you pop into the brewery, you just never know what useful bits of info you may learn. Also if you ever see a cotleigh beer give it a try, they are fantastic if you like well balanced british ale(they export to the states too, Virginia I believe). And the website is here:
http://www.cotleighbrewery.com/
they list the ingredients for each beer.
And yup you guessed it I am smitten(and the wife too) with their beers, and I hate to say it they are infinitely better than Exmoor ales!!
:
:
nice to see you back again :thumb:
